Keough School of Global Affairs

“Muslim Family Law in South Africa: Paradoxes and Ironies,” in Muslim Family Law in Sub-Saharan Africa: Colonial Legacies and Post-Colonial Challenges (eds.) Shamil Jeppie, Ebrahim Moosa & Richard Roberts, (Amsterdam University Press, 2010), pp. 331-354

Politics is regarded as a science for it tells us what to do, when it deals with measurable concepts. But politics is also an art—a form of practice, telling us how and when to do things. Lest we forget, the arts of persuasion and inspiration are part of politics. And, every art also produces an aesthetic. By aesthetics I mean, the ways by which we think about art: recall, art is what we do and how we do things. Those things and acts that become visible when we do and produce certain
actions—jubilation, conversations, speeches, greetings, protests, banners, deaths, wounds and other expressions—all constitute the means by which thought becomes visible, effective, and sensible. Th ese forms and visible expressions of the sensible constitute the aesthetics of politics.
Only the patient will know where the momentum for change in the Arab world is heading.

But, if the outcome of the Arab uprisings is unclear, then there is one certainty: the people have changed the order of the sensible. Thanks to peaceful protests in the face of regime brutality, tens of millions of people have performed change in myriads of expressions: aesthetics. Their feelings have cumulatively changed, and how people feel about governance is ultimately what politics is all about.