The Legacy of Islam in the Americas

BY: DR. Y. PROGLER

SOURCE : IMAN REZA NET

Muslims have been in the Americas for longer than many people care to admit. The earliest arrivals perhaps predate the European invasion. During the era of European trans-Atlantic colonization, Spanish conquistadors brought Muslims from Spain to work as artisans, craftsmen and builders. After destroying native peoples, the Spanish enslaved large numbers of Africans; many were Muslims. Other colonizers followed suit, with the Dutch, French, Portuguese and British enslaving Muslims and other Africans. In the 20th century, just as the earlier groups of Muslims were on the verge of disappearing, immigration and migration by Muslims from all over the world once again made Islam a visible presence in the Americas, particularly in the United States where it is now the fastest growing religion. The early history of Muslims in the Americas, though of great interest to many who are turning to Islam today, has not been fully-nor fairly-reported.

Islam in Americas in the 12th Century

The first Muslims to reach the Americas were sea travelers, with some voyagers possibly visiting Brazil as early as the 12th century. There are linguistic ties between North and West African cultures and Native cultures of Central America. Words in various Native dialects resemble Arabic in form and use, suggesting to some researchers that Arabic-speaking voyagers and traders from North and West Africa visited Mexico before Columbus. Some plants in Central and South America originated in Africa and the Mediterrancean, and Columbus is said to have discovered African and other traders, possibly speaking Arabic, in the Caribbean. Some historians believe that the evidence for West African contact in the 14th and early 15th centuries is "moderate", and cite Portuguese sources in West Africa, Columbus on Haiti, and Balboa in Panama, but they neglect the Islamic factor in this equation.

Islamic Architecture in Americas

The next group of Muslims to arrive in the Americas were brought by the Spaniards. Arrogant Christian Supremacists forcibly diminished Islam in the Iberian Peninsula at the end of the 15th century. However, artifacts of its civilization remained, and culturally depraved Spaniards realized the importance of Muslim artisans in forging the magnificent Islamic architecture which still stands in Spain today. The Spanish subsequently brought Muslim artisans, known as Mudejares, to their New World in order to design and build the conlonial infrasturucture. A comparison of the architecture of Mexico, Guatemala, and other former colonial provinces with the Islamic art of Muslim Spain, such as done by Muslim historians like T.B.Irving, shows a very clear unity of purpose and form. Muslim artisans also ran away, living with Indians and forming communities in exile from the early Spanish settlements in Mexico and what is now the Southwestern United States. Today, any mention of this legacy is euphemized as "Moorish" survivals, which conceals the obvious pervasiveness and tenacity of Islam in the Spanish colonial sphere of influence.

African Muslims Enslaved by Europeans

Soon after Europeans wiped out most of the indigenous peoples and imposed their colonies on the Americas, they began importing large numbers of human beings from Africa as slaves. Over the next three centuries, they enslaved millions of Africans to erect their colonial empires. While no accurate count as of yet determines how many of these slaves were Muslims, judging from the literature on the slave trade in general and looking at the history of Islam in Africa, one can make the determination that there was a strong Islamic presence among slaves in the Americas, particularly in the early centuries of slavery when Europeans depopulated West Africa. Some historians concede that during this period, up to 20 percent of African slaves were Muslims; the actual figure may well be greater. When the slavers shifted to Southern Africa, where there were few Muslims at that time, their numbers decreased significantly, which means that Muslim Africans were among the first African arrivals in colonial America.

Islam has a long and varied history in sub-Saharan Africa, dating back to the 8th and 9th centuries and spread primarily by pious merchants and wandering mystics. Peoples living on the margins of Islamic societies shared many cultural practices, languages and lands with African Muslims. There were centers of Islamic learning as early as the 14th century, especially in Timbuktu, where African Muslim scholars developed their knowledge and wisdom. Muslims came from all over Africa and returned to their regions to bring Islam to their people. By the time European slavers invaded in the 16th century, many parts of Africa, particularly inland, were thoroughly and deeply Islamized, evidence of which showed up in the European colonies. White supremacist, Black nationalist, and Zionist historians ignore or disrort the rich legacy of Islam in Africa, choosing instead to focus on a few hyperbolic episodes of Arab slavery in East Africa, most of which were products of European colonization.

Ther is more direct evidence of active Muslim communities in European colonies of the Caribbean and South America than in the North. This is likely because in these areas, plantation owners assumed that their slaves would be worked to death, requiring continuous reshipments since life expectancy under such conditions was 5-7 years at best. Only between 5-10% of all slaves brought to the new world came to what is now the United States; in the North, slave owners emphasized breeding, while in the South there were continuous infusions of "fresh" Africans. Fresh people meant fresh infusions of African cultures, and as long as the slave raiders concentrated on areas where there were significant populations of Muslims, they were reflected in the colonies; however, this is not usually reflected in histories of the era.

Forced Conversion to Christianity

The American emphasis on breeding slaves, the separation of families, and constant attempts to convert Africans to Christianity, must have diminished the impact of African traditions. Despite this, African traditions in the USA were not destroyed. As some scholars have shown, there are many African survivals in American culture to this day.But the pressure to conform to white Christian norms must have been tremendous.

White Christian missionaries knew about Muslim Africans on their plantations. For example, the Rev. Charles C. Jones, in his how-to manual for bludgeoning slaves with the "true religion", assures the would-be plantation preacher in 1842 that "Mohammedan Africans remaining of old stock of importantions, although accustomed to hear the Gospel preached, have been known to accommodate Christianity to Mohammedanism. "God", they say, "is Allah, and Jesus Christ is Mohammed-the religion is the same, but different countries have different names."

The family setting in which much of North American Slavery took place provided the perfect atomophere, so the Rev. Jones thought, for propagating Christianity: "But whatever difficulties there may be in instructing those who are grown up before they are brought over, there are not the like difficulties in the case of their children, who are born and bred in our own plantations, who have never been accustomed to pagan rites and superstitions, and who may easily be trained up,like all other children to any language whatsoever, and particularly to our own; if the making them good Christians be sincerely the desire and intention of those who have the property in them and the government over them."

Jones reassured his readers that "As the old stock from Africa died out of the country the grosser customs, the ignorance and paganism of Africa, died with them, "and concluded that whites must teach the gospel for safety, to "endear" the slaves to their masters, because "kindness produces kindness", but also to prevent "distortions" of the Gospel that can cause "Insubordination".

There was no need of "misinterpreting" the Bible in favor of slave "insubordination" in Brazil. Africans there maintained strong contacts with their Islamic culture, as Brazilian historian Gilberto Freyre notes: "The atmosphere that preceded the movment of 1835 in Bahia was one of intense religious ardor among the slaves. In Mata-Porcos Lane, on the Praca slope, at St.Francis Cross, in the very shadow of the Catholic churches and monasteries and the niches of the Virgin Mary and St. Anthony of Lisbon, slaves who were schooled in the Koran preached the religion of the Prophet, setting it over against the religion of Christ that was followed by their white masters, up above in the Big Houses. They propagandized against the Catholic Mass, saying that it was the same as worshipping a stick of wood; and to the Christian rosary with its cross of Our Lord they proposed their own, which was fifty centimeters long, with ninety-nine wooden beads and with a ball in place of a crucifix on the end.

The Legacy of Islam

Volumes of evidence no doubt remain buried in colonial archives and elsewhere. While some Muslims have probed to surface of this fascinating and important aspect of Islamic history, a major project needs to be undertaken that would coordinate the efforts of scholars fluent in Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, French, English, Turkish, Arabic, and West African languages, to assemble the necessary materials for systematic and exhaustive analysis. Muslims cannot rely on White supremacist, Black nationalists, or Zionist historians to participate in this, since most have a poor track record and are politically motivated, either purposefully omitting, distorting or otherwise refusing to recognize the pervasiveness of Islam in the early history of the Americas. However, there are numerous, sometimes subtle and sometimes obvious, ways to recover the lost legacy of Islam in the Americas. Muslim historians can make good use of their Western university educations and take up this challenge to do justice to the stories of their sisters and brothers in the past, Insha'Allah.

Copy and paste: 11 August 2022 > 13 Muharam 1444H: 1.02