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 ISLAM, IDENTITY AND REDEMPTION:
THE AFRO-CARIBBEAN EXPERIENCE
By Dr. Daud Abdullah
The return to Islam by many slave descendants in the Caribbean in the late 1960s and early 1970s marked a cultural watershed in the history of the region. In countless instances this was the result of a search for identity – an attempt to throw off the mental shackles imposed by the Atlantic slave experience. Much has been written about the legacies of slavery, often utilising the tools of political, economic and sociological sciences. This paper addresses the subject from an Islamic perspective.
The journey to Islam was for many a redeeming experience, opening new vistas for life fulfilment. At every twist and turn it was driven by a search for cultural identity. This was perceived as a necessary step to heal the mental scars of slavery. Not knowing where it would end, those who adopted this course were sustained by songs of nostalgia and redemption – “Give me back me language and me culture. O Lord we came from Africa.”
In retrospect, certain features of these cultural expressions were presumably Islamic in spirit and origin. In St Vincent, Grenada and Trinidad for example, they were manifested in the remnants of Yoruba traditions. The custom of saraka, which is still being observed bears a striking resemblance to the Islamic practice of sadaqa, also called sadaqa al-tatawwu’ (voluntary charity).1 While those who observe the practice of saraka today are not Muslim, its underlying spirit of saraka or sadaqa still enable villagers to rally to help, in the repair of a house or clearing of land during which food would be provided.
One of the most influential writers on the psychological impact of colonialism on the colonised was the Martiniquean revolutionary Franz Fanon (1925-1961). He noted in his Wretched of the Earth in the run up to this period following his experience in Algeria with the National Liberation Front:
“Colonialism by a kind of perverted logic turned the past of the oppressed people and disfigured it. Thus, ‘the claim to a national culture in the past does not only rehabilitate that nation, ‘it also serves ‘as a justification for the hope of the future.”2
Writing as he was from the theatre of a liberation war in Algeria, Fanon’s revolutionary writings did not explore in detail the psychological impact of slavery on Africans in the Americas and Caribbean. This paper revisits the
subject and illustrates how culture has played a role in redeeming a growing number of Africans in the Caribbean. It explores the role of religion and culture in the process of ‘becoming.’ It is not enough to say, “My father was”. In order to become the aspirant must affirm, “Here I am”.
A lost heritage
Islam in Africa is as old as the religion itself. It arrived in Abyssinia before the introduction of the Islamic calendar, meaning before the hijra to Madina. By the 9th century Muslims had established a presence in Ghana and Borno. Later on, between the early years of the 16th century and the 1860s, hundreds of thousands of West African Muslims were shipped to the New World. They probably represented between 15% and 20% of the 15 to 20 million Africans shipped away by the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade from modern-day Senegal, Gambia, Mali, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Benin, and Nigeria.
Like their non-Muslim compatriots, the Muslims were sent all over America and the Caribbean. The cultural footprints they left can be found in places as diverse as the United States, Jamaica, Brazil, Peru, Trinidad, Colombia,
Guyana, Haiti, Guadeloupe, Cuba, and Grenada.
The bad slave
Although the African was undoubtedly a good worker he was not always a good slave. The institution of slavery was brutal and dehumanizing. Hence the Africans revolted everywhere across the Americas and Caribbean. They were, above all, human and were determined to be treated as such.
Ultimately, the African slaves played a significant role liberating themselves even though most of the credit was given to the abolitionists. In certain areas they maintained a social structure with a central leadership based on the principles of shura (consultation). Hence, some of the most remarkable pursuits of freedom came not from individuals but from well organized and closely knit groups.
One intriguing case can be found in Trinidad where a Muslim association was operating in the 19th century. It was not simply an organization of Muslims but was an Islamic association that presented itself and functioned as such. In a petition dated 12th January 1838, the leadership described themselves as stated, “natives of Africa and of the Nation or Tribe called Mandingo.” It is probable that the organization was made of Mandinga in the beginning, but it soon began to function beyond ethnic lines. A list of the men who signed their names in Arabic on the 1838 petition reveals a number of ethnic origins. They included among others; Mohammed Waatra, Mohammed Sissei, Abouberika Torre, Hammadi Torrouke and Samba Jaiih.
In one letter to King William IV written in January 1830 they began with bismillah and salutations on the Prophet Muhammad. Jonas Mohammed Bath called himself “Chief of the free Negroes of the Mohammedan religion in the Island of Trinidad.”3
What is significant about this group of men is that through their religious mutual aid society, they managed to free themselves and many of their countrymen before the general abolition of slavery in 1834. Up to the time of the declaration of freedom, they had released from bondage more than 500 people in Trinidad alone. Their operations were also extended to other islands.
Elsewhere, this practice of buying freedom was enacted with great skill and impact in Bahia, Brazil, by the semi-independent body of slaves called the negros de ganho who worked principally as porters, artisans and small
shopkeepers. They not only helped to purchase their freedom and that of others but they also provided leadership for the early 19th century revolts in Brazil.
There were several other struggles unfolding at the same time under the slave regime. In the case of the Muslims, there was the resistance to Christianization. Adherence to non-Christian religions was in many instances
an inspiration to the slaves as well as a demonstration of defiance. On another level, there were the tensions that arose as a result of the fusion between Islamic and animist cultures (syncretism). In some parts of the
Americas, Muslims deliberately fused their religion with non-Muslim faiths in order to disguise their practices because adherence to non-Christian religions was forbidden. Altogether, the conflict between Islam and syncretism, the reality of a brutish slave system and the tradition of resistance all combined to inform the slave experience in the Caribbean.
Back in West Africa, the conflict between Islam and paganism was not confined to private life. In many parts there were pockets of Muslim communities living in subservience to pagan rulers. Very often these Muslims were forced to pay tribute to their rulers, a practice that was seen as contradictory to the Islamic way of life. For this reason Shaykh Usman Dan Fodio (1754 – 1817) in his Kitab al Farq unleashed a scathing attack on all those
Muslims who sought to appease and recognize pagan rulers. His son, Muhammad Bello, later justified the jihad against the Muslim state of Borno on the grounds that it tolerated paganism.
Were these ideas transmitted to the Americas and Caribbean? There is ample historical evidence confirming they were. One such document, the Wathiqat Ahl Sudan written by Shaykh Usman, arrived Jamaica in the late 1820s. Originally written on the eve of the Sokoto Jihad [1804-1810], it was aimed at mobilising the Jama’a (followers of the shaykh) for the jihad.
Some of the injustices on the slave plantations had striking parallels to those addressed in the Wathiqa; hence it was well received among the slaves in the Jamaican plantations. In 1832 the slaves in Manchester, an area in Jamaica, under the leadership of Muhammad Kaba, rose up against their tyrannical white masters.
Popularly known as the Baptist Uprising, Sultana Afroz reinterprets those events and argues that they were in fact a jihad, in the tradition of those that were sweeping Brazil at the time.4 The Wathiqa may not have been the only document that found its way to the Caribbean. Some of the arriving slaves may well have been in one way or the other part of the Jama’a or extensions thereof. “By making Islam a rallying point and symbol of liberation from the shackle of the oppressions of the white man, the impact of Shaykh Usman had helped transform Islam into a liberating force. This posture of Islam in the Americas and the Caribbean has endured to this day and remains one of the most motivating factors for the increasing conversions to Islam among the black Diaspora.”5
The accounts of two contemporaries, Bryan Edwards, a plantation historian, and Magistrate Robert Madden confirm that Islam was the religion of hundreds of African slaves who were brought to Jamaica from Africa.6
Madden confirmed they could all read and write Arabic and that one of them showed him a Quran written from memory by himself. Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, a Mandinka slave assigned to Madden, reveals through documents written in Arabic that he was the son of a learned family in Islamic Jurisprudence from the city of Timbuktu.7
The revivalist movements
In the broad sweep of history the founders of the Sokoto Caliphate were Muslim scholars who had inherited a tradition of learning that went back hundreds of years. They sought to follow the path of their mentors. Much of the writings on the Islamic movements in the Americas have overlooked the important role of the early reformist scholars and their impact on 18th and 19th century leaders.
Prominent among these early pioneers were Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti who lived in Cairo in the late 15th century and Muhammad Ibn 'Abd al-Karim al-Maghili in Tuwat (in Algeria) who moved to western Bilad al-Sudan. As an adherent to the Maliki school of thought, al-Maghili found himself intellectually at home in the region. The reception and recognition he gained enabled him to become intimately involved in the process of renewal and building Islamic institutions in places like Gao, Katsina and Kano.
The concept of Tajdid - renewal or revitalization of the Muslim community is inherent in the Quran. It can be viewed as a means to restore Islamic institutions in that society. Tajdid becomes particularly imperative in societies where fasad (corruption) and zulm (injustice) prevail, as a result of the improper application of the Shari’a.8
In the late eighteenth century Shaykh Usman dan Fodio emerged as one of the pre-eminent reformers of his time. He spared no effort to denounce the slave trade. In one of his poems ‘Tabbat Haqiqa’ he declared that those who engaged in this trade would go to the hell fire. By making Islam a rallying point and symbol of liberation from the shackles of slavery, the impact of Shaykh Usman’s teachings helped to transform Islam into a
liberating force. This position of Islam in the Americas and the Caribbean has endured to this day and remains one of the most motivating factors for the increasing numbers of conversion to Islam in the African Diaspora.
Although the Islamic movements which emanated from West Africa did not succeed in the total transformation of Caribbean communities, they did very often inspire a process of revolt against the injustices of slavery.
How did the West African Islamic movements manage to spread their ideas throughout the Bilad al-Sudan and beyond, despite the distance and poor communication? Clearly several factors were at play.
First the vast region of Bilad al-Sudan had over the centuries been effectively linked by a network of scholars and pilgrims ceaselessly plying the trade routes that criss-crossed the region. With the spread of literacy and the flow of Islamic literature, much of West Africa became increasingly incorporated into the wider Islamic fraternity. People throughout the region became well-informed about Islamic thought as well as the history, geography, politics and economy of the known world. On account of his extensive writings and the scholarship which he encouraged Shaykh Usman dan Fodio’s movement was often acclaimed as an intellectual reformist movement.
Conclusion
These narratives demonstrate a critical connection between Islam during slavery and the current process of ‘return’ to Islam that is central to the Afro-Caribbean Muslim identity today. In the shadows of the slave regime Muslim men and women in the Caribbean and Americas made ample use of specific tools provided by their religion. These tools were an essential part of their strategies for adaptation to the hostile conditions of their domicile, as well as their psychological, social, and political resistance to them.
It was clear that they did not just view their faith as a system of beliefs but also as a movement of social change. In the brutal world they were forced to live in, the literate Africans used their knowledge to defend and
protect themselves and regain control over their lives. Their efforts have resulted in a historical legacy that would enable contemporary Afro- Caribbeans, Muslim and non-Muslim to take better charge of their present and future.
Society generally succeeded in preventing the enslaved from learning to read and write because of the subversive nature of literacy, but there was nothing it could do against the Africans’ knowledge. They already possessed it. And although, on the surface, it may have seemed worthless in the eyes of their slave masters, it proved to be of great significance in the multidimensional resistance of West African Muslims in the Americas.
Islam as it was transferred from in the Western Sudan (West Africa) constitutes a cultural, political, social and spiritual template for the reconstruction of men and women who were culturally battered and disfigured by the slave experience. For the first generation of ‘reverts’, their embrace of Islam has proven to be the logical conclusion and continuation of difficult struggles through Christianity, black nationalism, ancestral faiths and Afro-centrism.
As they continue to forge and strengthen this Islamic identity they must ensure it does not become a menace to their regional identity. On the contrary, the Islamic identity must be presented as one that is worthy of allegiance because it cares for all, impartial and a threat to none. Thus while asserting pride in their Islamic history they must not display prejudice or denial of others. The success of the early Muslims in preserving their faith was largely dependent on their knowledge. Our future success will also depend on how well we respond to this challenge.
* Dr Daud Abdullah is CEO of the Middle East Monitor, London. He is Deputy Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB). He previously lectured in history at the University of Maiduguri, Nigeria.
ENDNOTES
1 . S. Diouf, ‘Sadaqa Among African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas’, Journal of Islamic
Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1, 1999, pp. 22–32
2 . F. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, p.169
3 . S. Diouf, Servants of Allah: African Muslims enslaved in the Americas, New York, NY University
Press, 1998, p.138
4 . See S. Afroz, “The Misunderstood Baptist Rebellion in Jamaica. The Jihad of 1831–1832: The
Misunderstood Baptist Rebellion in Jamaica”, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Vol. 21, No. 2
5. U. Bugaji, “The Jihad of Shaykh Usman dan Fodio and its Impact Beyond the Sokoto Caliphate”, A
Paper to be read at a Symposium in Honour of Shaykh Usman Dan Fodio at International University
of Africa, Khartoum, Sudan, from 19-21 November 1995
6. Afroz. op.cit.
7. Ibid.
8. U. Bugaji, The tradition of Tajdid in Western Bilad Al-Sudan, PhD. Thesis, University of Khartoum,
p.44
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