Abstract
This dissertation explores how Muslims in Cape Town understand Islamic dietary teachings
and how those understandings shape their everyday food practices. Moving beyond the
largely text-based focus of existing studies, it turns to lived experience, asking how Muslims
think about food, negotiate religious principles, and express faith through daily acts of
consumption.
Drawing on semi-structured interviews and seven-day digital food journals with ten
participants, the study reveals that while halal (lawful) remains the central marker of dietary
observance, the Quranic call to tayyib (pure, wholesome, and ethically sourced) receives far
less deliberate attention. Participants often rely on inherited cultural knowledge or
convenience rather than direct engagement with scriptural principles, suggesting that divine
guidance is acknowledged but not always internalised in daily consumption.
Through this exploration, taqwā (God-consciousness) emerges as a quiet but persistent
undercurrent - shaping choices in moments of reflection yet often eclipsed by habit and
circumstance. These findings point to a tension between the ideal and the lived, between the
aspiration of prophetic moderation and the realities of contemporary life. By
re-centering taqwā at the table, the study argues, Muslims may rediscover food as a site of
remembrance, ethical responsibility, and spiritual renewal - a place where nourishment
becomes worship.