Prof Zahraa McDonald

Associate Professor: Study of Islam (Head of Department)
Name: Zahraa McDonald
Location: Room 605, A-ring, Auckland Park Kingsway Campus
Faculty of Humanities, Religion Studies Staff  Staff Members

Contact Details:
Tel: +27(0)11 559 2737

Email: zahraam@uj.ac.za

About Prof Zahraa McDonald

Zahraa is an Associate Professor in the Study of Islam. She joined the Religion Studies department in 2024 and has been the head of the department since January 2025. She is involved with teaching on the honours programmes and supervising postgraduate students.

Her research niche is situated in the intersecting fields of the sociologies of knowledge, education and religion. On the one hand, she has worked on Islamic education. On the other hand, she has researched mainstream education, from basic to higher education. Her research is driven by the fact that education is a crucial social institution shaping how society changes.

Religious education, moreover, shapes what we think about teaching and learning possibilities. Islamic education is a critical other in the education landscape and helps shed light on taken-for-granted assumptions about knowledge and its production. Connecting these different educational spaces via recognition of prior learning can significantly contribute to the intersecting fields of knowledge, education and religion.

She aims to offer insights from research in this niche specifically related to the coloniality of knowledge and decolonial thought.

  Qualification:

• PhD in Sociology, University of Johannesburg, South Africa, 2013

  Selected publications:

Books: 

McDonald, Z. 2015. Expressing Post-Secular Citizenship: A Madrasa, an Ethic and a Comprehensive Doctrine. Oxford: Peter Lang. ISBN10  3034317999

Book Chapters:

McDonald, Z. 2023. Moving from a Madrasa Situation to the Process of Doctrinal development. An Explication of the Extended Case Method in the Study of Islam, in A. Aghdassi & A.W. Hughes (eds) New Methodological Perspectives in Islamic Studies. Leiden: Brill.

McDonald, Z. 2022. The South African Postconflict Context Reproductive or Transformative Values in Teacher Education? In N. Mead (Ed.), Moral and Political Values in Teacher Education Over Time International Perspectives (1^st ed., pp. 115-135). Routledge, London. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003219507

Journal Articles:

McDonald, Z. 2023. Women generating, reproducing and disseminating texts in a Deobandi madrasa in South Africa. HTS 79(1) https://doi.org/10.4102/hts.v79i1.7750

McDonald, Z. & Motala, S. 2022. Beyond heteronormativity towards social justice: Disrupting gender operationalisation in teaching and learning trends in higher education. CriSTaL 10(1): 23-38.

McDonald, Z., Sayed, Y., De Kock, T. & Hoffmann, N. 2021. Acquiring Pedagogic Authority While Learning to Teach. Africa Development, 46(1): 23-44.