By Amal Al-Sibai
Saudi Gazette
Islam is not an imported, foreign religion brought to America by immigrants from Arab countries and from the Indo-Pak communities in the past couple of decades. Islam is part of the fabric of American history. The Southern regions of America were actually built on the backs, sweat, blood, and toil of the African slaves brought to this country at its very founding, and many of them were Muslim.
Slavery in America began when the first African slaves were brought to the North American colony of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619, to work on lucrative field crops, such as tobacco. The cruel practice of slavery spread throughout the American colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries, and African-American slaves helped build the economic foundations of the new nation. The production of cotton solidified the importance of slavery to the South’s economy.
Men, women, and children were captured mainly from West Africa. They were sold to slave traders, forced on to ships, and kept in appalling conditions for the long journey across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas. Historians estimate that at the height of the slave trade in the 18th century, up to 7 million Africans had undertaken this voyage. It is estimated that up to 30% of the enslaved in North America were Muslim.
Maintaining their religion was difficult and many were forcibly converted to Christianity. Any effort to practice Islam, and keep the traditional clothing and names alive had to be done in secret. The slaves were treated as subhuman and their owners tried to erase everything about their past, their history, beliefs and religion, their right to freedom, and their family ties.
Nonetheless, evidence of Muslim origins has been found in documented Arabic texts written by the slaves in captivity. Most of these texts turned out to be memorized verses of the Qur’an, handwritten by the slaves. These texts reveal the slaves’ struggle to maintain their religious beliefs. It shows their high level of education attained in Africa prior to enslavement and forced emigration. Many of them were learned in the Qur’an and Islamic sciences and they could read and write Arabic. Unfortunately, slavery has systematically silenced them, so our present knowledge of these educated people is lacking.
In addition to this, Muslim names can be found in reports of runaway slaves and among the rosters of soldiers in the American war for independence. Many slaves were forced to accept Christian names; however, some kept their Muslim names. Historians discovered men living in the American South named Abd ar-Rahman, Bilali Mohammed, Salih Bilali, Omar ibn Said, and Yarrow Mamout, who maintained Islamic names.
Among those captured into slavery was Job Ben Solomon. His real name was Ayyub ibn Sulayman ibn Ibrahim, he was born in Gambia, West Africa, in 1701 to a prosperous Muslim family. By age 15, he was trained to be an Imam. At age 29, he was on a trading mission. He was seized by a band of men, taken to the coast where he was sold as a slave and transported to work on a tobacco plantation in Maryland. Solomon ran away but was captured and imprisoned. During his incarceration, he met the lawyer Thomas Bluett who became impressed by his story and helped buy his freedom. The two travelled together to England in 1734 where Solomon learnt English and became a prominent intellectual. His transcriptions of the Qur’an are still preserved in Oxford. He later returned to his homeland where he resumed his inherited position.
Another African Muslim, Omar ibn Said was born around 1770 in an African region near the Senegal River, which now forms Senegal’s northern border with Mauritania. Omar ibn Said, an African Muslim, had studied arithmetic, business, and theology before he was enslaved, shipped across the Atlantic, and sold. After he was sold to a South Carolina planter, Said escaped and made his way to North Carolina, where he was imprisoned after entering a Christian church to pray. He was described as the remarkable runaway slave who wrote on the walls of his prison cell from right to left in an unknown language, which was Arabic. He was writing verses from the Qur’an.
Omar ibn Said then became the legal property of General James Owen of Bladen County, who recognized Said to be an educated man and, according to Said’s autobiography, treated him well.
What is unclear is whether Omar ibn Said was able to maintain his religious faith. An anonymous author of an article in The Christian Advocate claims that Said converted from “the Mohamedan religion to Christianity.” However in his own autobiography, Said’s language reflects more ambiguity about his religious beliefs. He never explicitly rejects Islam, the religion of his upbringing, or professes faith in a Christian God.
As Patrick E. Horn, professor of American literature and history at the University of North Carolina wrote, “Like that of other Africans who were enslaved and brought to America Omar ibn Said’s situation was fraught with complexity. He was both African and American, a non-native English speaker, a Muslim surrounded by Christians, a slave in the “land of the free.” In order to please a master who was both generous and persuasive, he may have made certain concessions, representing his life and his beliefs in ways he knew would be well-received.”
Other accounts tell of Abdul Rahman ibn Ibrahim Sori, a West African Muslim nobleman and ruler of the city of Timbo, now located in Guinea. Abdul Rahman had studied the Islamic sciences and could speak 4 different African languages, in addition to Arabic. He was the colonel of an army and was on a military campaign when he and his men were ambushed. Abdul Rahman and 50 other men were captured and sold to a British slave ship captain.
Abdul Rahman was brought to Natchez, Mississippi where he labored on the cotton plantation of Thomas Foster for more than thirty-eight years. Some claim that Abdul Rahman converted to Christianity when he married his wife, Isabella, another of Foster’s slaves. They had five sons and four daughters.
While selling produce in the market, Abdul Rahman ran into an old friend, Dr. Coates Cox. Abdul Rahman and his father had aided Dr. Cox during his travels in Africa. Dr. Cox tried to purchase Abdul Rahman from Thomas Foster, but was unsuccessful. Two decades later, Dr. Cox’s son, with the assistance of Andrew Marschalk, a local newspaper publisher, launched a campaign to liberate Abdul Rahman.
In 1826, Abdul Rahman wrote a letter in Arabic to his family. Marschalk forwarded the letter to the U. S. Consulate in Morocco. The Arabic handwriting caused others to believe that Abdul Rahman was from Morocco. The letter actually contained scriptures from the Qur’an which Abdul Rahman memorized and wrote down. Despite these mistakes, the Sultan of Morocco took interest in Abdul Rahman and offered funds to liberate Abdul Rahman and pay for his passage to Africa. In 1828, the Adams Administration gave Marschalk permission to secure Abdul Rahman’s freedom.
Abdul Rahman wanted to free his wife and children. He collected funds to liberate Isabella. They then traveled North; meeting with abolitionist groups to raise money to purchase their children from Foster. They were unable raise sufficient funds to liberate their entire family. Abdul Rahman was able to liberate two of his children and their families, before he immigrated to Liberia in Africa, but he never saw his hometown again.
Although the American system of slavery crushed the religious practices of African-American Muslims in the past, current research is shedding new light on this interesting topic.
