Shaykh Yusuf al Maqassari (1626-1699) is widely seen as a seminal figure of Islam in South Africa. He was exiled to Cape Town in 1694 after resisting Dutch expansion in the Indonesian archipelago. Though he was in the Cape for only the last five years of his life, he played a critical role in building what has proven to be a durable Cape Muslim community. What is curious about Shaykh Yusuf is that, despite his intense confrontation with the Dutch, his writings do not appear to mention them at all nor does he seem even interested in politics in general. Rather, his writings focus on mysticism, in particular, the principles and guidelines of the Sufi path and various aspects of Sufi metaphysics. When there is a reference to politics, it is “anti-politics” in that he advises the aspiring spiritual seeker to withdraw participation in matters of the state. In our view, there is no inconsistency between Shaykh Yusuf’s activist resistance on the one hand and his advocacy of “anti-politics” on the other. Amongst other things, when the need arises jihad remains a duty irrespective of one’s attitude to the political sphere. But what really interests us here are the effects of Shaykh Yusuf’s “anti-politics”. Shaykh Yusuf was writing in a period that coincided with the emergence of the modern, post-Westphalian state. It was a state that, as Charles Taylor has informed us, was geared to producing the homo economicus. As such, the state, via governmentality, shapes the self in particular ways which, from certain vantage points, especially some religious ones, may be seen as reductive. This paper argues that Shaykh Yusuf’s “anti-politics” was a way of resisting being inscribed by the logic of the state and its reduced notion of the self; that his mysticism offered alternative ways of being and acting in the world, that is, alternative views of the self; and that these alternative ways helped the Cape Muslim community maintain its durability in the face of a number of historical pressures.