You are thinking of xmlns as an attribute with scope .
that's the wrong way to think of it.
Just think of the namespace as part of the name.
<rdf:RDF
xmlns="{$prefix}#"
xmlns:rdf = "http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#";>
You don't care about $prefix here, so just do
<rdf:RDF
xmlns:rdf = "http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#";>
<xsl:element name="@owls:class">
but you want this to be in the namespace so
<xsl:element name="@owls:class" namespace="{$prefix}#">
David
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