Today, regionally and globally, there is the preoccupation with integration, migration and mobility of labour, cross-border workers and ways in which all of that and more can be facilitated while addressing issues of sovereignty and identity, participation and inclusion. Yet, during the 1920s to the 1950s there were clear examples of community groups forging ties across the waters and creating facilitative mechanisms for coming together for dialogue.   Today, we also value immersion or experiential learning and student/youth exchange programmes.  Yet, during this period there were clear examples of youth exchanges taking place among niche communities. 

Today, the concept of civil society is a popular notion. It is often seen as a “third sector”; sometimes it operate as a continuum from the state and the economy or it can function as an intermediary between the state and the economy. For political theorists, this notion of civil society reinforces the democratic nature of states.  Civil society movements are driven by moral, political and social issues. What provides impetus for these organisations are a shared interest or a shared cause – an organisation of self and interests. In this context, it is possible to see the emergence of civil society as a manifestation of social change within the colony and a claiming of space by the Muslims demanding recognition of presence in the colony and thus, increasing their bargaining power within society and with the colonial government. As we shall see, the urge to belong, to be part of something bigger, also propelled the Islamic movements of the 1920s and beyond. 

Introduction of Islam

Islam entered the Caribbean through two streams; the African slaves and the Asian immigrants, that is, Indian and Indonesian (Javanese).  This paper is predominantly concerned with the Indian stream.  Labourers from India began arriving into Trinidad, British Guiana and Jamaica in 1845 and Suriname from 1873, and continued until 1917 in the British and Dutch West Indies.    By 1917, some 419,349 indentured immigrants had arrived in British Guiana, Suriname and Trinidad.

Of the indentured immigrants imported an estimated eighty per cent of the migrants were Hindus, fifteen per cent were Muslims and the rest were tribal, Christians, Sikhs and others.[1]  Of the Muslims that arrived, the majority were Sunni Muslims believed to be of the Hanafi school of thought.  During the course of the nineteenth century the new immigrants began claiming their space through the establishment of villages which became the mecca for religious and cultural reconstitution including built symbols - masajid.   This suggests that the social capital which formed as a result of migration and settlement constituted a frame that generated cultural symbols and norms that supported social relations and bonds among various actors. 

They hankered after the “old” and used the certainties of the culture and religion as coping mechanisms to address their insecurities. As they began to see themselves more as settlers although still adrift and defining themselves they became open to contact, contact with the familiar aimed at recovery of identity, a way of not losing touch with their ancestors and homeland.  It is why the local community sought to invite individuals, missionaries, from outside to energise the faith.  This ambivalence - the creation of parallel or niche communities and institutions to encompass the totality of daily life, the incremental integration within the host society – predefined their level of absorption within the host society. 

Religion and culture, often takes on a nurturing and resistance resonance, especially for people who are reconstructing codes of behaviour.  The Indians of the diaspora provide an excellent example of how religion can act as a cohesive force in a struggle to carve a space in a hostile environment, where persuasion and/or inducements to convert to Christianity were common. Marxists locate religion in the sphere of ideology which is “the systemic distortion of social reality which legitimises the social order of the dominant classes”.  This leads to a perspective of religion as a “prototypical ideology which necessarily serves to mystify adherents as it contributes to the reproduction of the class structure”.[2]  

Karl Marx sees society as the economic sector though family (and tribe) were important building blocks. Thus, the state represented public interests while civil society was seen as private interests. Antonio Gramsci, Italian political theorist, on the other hand, believed that civil society is not simply a sphere of individual needs but of organisations.  In this vision, civil society becomes a space where class hegemony resides and thus, a social elite emerges.  Within this hegemony knowledge (secular and religious) became a prized commodity. Religious knowledge, in the initial stages, revolved around generally remembered fragments of a few men that led to knowledge replication and an epistemological justification rather than “how and why of what we know” or put another way, the inner workings of the faith. Consequently, what emerged was faith saturated religious organisations which were structurally dominated by learned men.  But to be realistic, there was no way of knowing.  The community lacked education, and the colonial education that some received focused on the cultural and technological accomplishments of the colonial powers. 

Civil society organisations played a critical role in structuring and defining social relations. Within the Indo-Muslim community, several institutions were established to address the multiple identities of the Muslim community over time.  So, for instance, there were religious, charitable, and “high” culture civil society organisations within the community. This, in part, suggests the availability of economic resources or better economic positioning of resources that could be mobilised for organisational movements around common goals.  It also suggests that threats to civil rights prompted or facilitated and enabled the formation or strengthening of organisational development.

Despite the diversity of civil society organisations that supported social life at the micro-level or fulfilled the distributional functions there were some that sought to give “voice” to the concerns of the communities and manoeuvred into a negotiating position with official bodies to amplify that voice and produce a public good.  During the opening years of the twentieth century, with a few exceptions, the focus was on consolidating their position through pressure groups and then challenging the state through lobbying the existing colonial government for a broadening of civil and economic rights.  Examples of these “demand side” organisations include the East Indian National Association (EINA), East Indian National Congress (EINC) of Trinidad; East Indian Association of British Guiana; Suriname Immigration Association known as Bharat Uday (Rising Hindustan); and East Indian Association of Jamaica (EIAJ) and East Indian National Union (EINU) of Jamaica. The challenge was that they were lobbying in a political economy defined by fear of difference and the attainment of equal status of a minority group.  The words of E.F.L. Wood, Parliamentary-Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies is instructive as it is insightful.  In his Report following his visit to the British West Indian Colonies in 1921- 1922 he noted that Trinidad was “the only community lacking ‘any homogeneous public opinion. Socially it is divided into all kinds of groups which have few relations with the other’^[1].  So any attempt to organise the Muslim community into an island-wide community:     

This suggests special interest groups would find the prospect of lobbying for a public good a high cost product. Trinidad society had yet to accept that the Indians had come to stay; so their early lobbying attempts were taking place in an essentially hostile atmosphere and so, it is not surprising that they were not successful. The demand for recognition of their presence through rights and entitlements that accompany settlement required the input of resources – knowledge and intuitive intelligence, time and sustained effort – for it to be successful.  Eventually, they would achieve the outcomes desired in the late 1940s at a time when Trinidad was experiencing optimism and hope – World War II was over and the austerity measures associated with the war was fading – and the country was moving down the road towards self-government.

Friendly Societies formed the launching pad of localised Islamic group nationalism in Trinidad.  This was illustrated by Islamic Guardian Association (IGA) in 1906 in Princes Town (south Trinidad).  They filled a distributive function within the society by providing financial assistance to members on occasion of unemployment, sickness, old age (over fifty), death and funeral expenses, widows, orphans and insurance against fire for tools of the trade. These associations demonstrate the forces of exploration within the community - the overture of compromise (emulation, validation and difference).  In fact, the immigrant community had taken the time and effort to learn the ways of their society despite the hesitancy of the receiving society in accepting the migrants.

The establishment of literary and debating associations by the Indian community was manifestation of them colonising their own space and creating parallel “high culture” organisations.  The clubs although “organised along western parliamentary lines” demonstrated “the Indians, aware of the increasing westernising influence among their community, and feeling their culture threatened sought to preserve their identity”.^[3]  The words of T. M. Kelshall, member of the Legislative Council, are of particular interest in the assertion of the value of the Literary Clubs: 

 They assembled week by week to give speech to their thoughts. They had debates and essays, and they got together and endeavoured to learn how to speak and write correctly which was a very commendable undertaking.^[4]

The religious symbols which manifested itself through the construction of masajid provided a social dimension and function, that is, they expressed in a physical way the encoded language of the adherents of the faith.  They also strengthened the bonds of solidarity and reinforced differences. By the end of indenture, Guiana and Trinidad had a number of masajid.  In Guiana, the first masjid appeared in 1883, by 1903 there were twenty-nine and by 1917 there were 46.  In Trinidad, masajid in Tacarigua (1850), Iere Village (1866) and Prince of Wales Street, San Fernando (1894) were among some of the first known “Mohamedan house of worship”. ^[1]  In Suriname, the established jamaat (congregation) system set the stage for small mosques to be built across the country.  There is some dispute about where the first masjid was built; some allege it was behind the Wolfenbuttel while others claim that it was at Plantation Marienburg. In 1931, the land on the Keizarstraat (Paramaribo) was purchased and the first mosque, a wooden rectangular building with minarets, mosque was built under the guidance of Baas Ibrahim.

The situation in Jamaica was quite different.  For almost a century, Muslim immigrants performed prayers individually and in congregations without a formal house of worship or a masjid according to Sultana Afroz, a Jamaican historian. The lack of appropriate opportunities to build masajid and the idea that the whole world is a mosque for prostration without exception may have been the reason for the absence of masjids during indenture.[2]  The first masjid, Masjid Ar-Rahman, was built in Spanish Town in 1957 by Muhammad Khan, a Muslim immigrant worker who had come to Jamaica from Uttar Pradesh in 1915 at the age of 15 while Westmoreland's Masjid Hussein was built by Muhammad Golaub, who immigrated with his father at the age of seven. The indentured Muslims laid the foundation of the eight other masajid established in Jamaica since the 1960s.

While these architectural religious symbols eventually came to represent the material technologies and the human and economic resources of a community, it more importantly represented cultural attitudes, values and motivations of a people. Abrahim Khan notes that "the social dimension of symbols is less on solidarity that they bring about and more on 'the kind of people they produce by the education they provide.”^[3] The extent that this true is based upon the idea that Islam is a way of life informing thought and action, structures and behaviour of its adherents that resonates through the generations.

Religion through its organisations has been the one responsible for providing spiritual and to a great extent social welfare for its followers.  The Muslim community, particularly in Trinidad, established welfare/charitable, service and “high culture” organisations and they were eventually able to transition to forming faith saturated organisations.  Through jamaats and masajid and associations namely Friendly Societies, religious beliefs and religious practices added value at the micro-level that is, to individual’s well-being and functioning.  Religious organisations play an active role in shaping beliefs and many of them invest resources – time, effort - in advocating certain kinds of messages while censoring others.  This organisational and ideological conflict, created friction and fractures within established religious organisations.  When alternative ideas arise in organised religious institutions, there is often defection rather than compromise. Defection can be costly vis à vis resources (knowledge, human and financial), assets. This, in turn, may lead to the governance of religious organisations being costly.  With rise of the competing religious organisations there may also arise a "hierarchy" or denominations of religions within religions. 

In Trinidad, jamaats and masajid generally functioned at the micro level fulfilling a supply role while the religions groups alternate between micro and meso roles.  Religious organisations were first established through localised friendly societies and were generally endogenously formed bodies. As mentioned earlier, the IGA was the first known Islamic religious organisation to be established; registering its existence under the Friendly Societies Ordinance on November 5, 1913.  It continued to operate until circa 1938.[1]  In January 1925, a group of Muslims that included ex-indentured and descendants of such met at Crescent Hall, St. Joseph with the intention to organise the Muslim community into a group. This led to the formation of the TIA, a non-sectarian body. The importance of state recognition for providing organisations with credibility and legitimacy was particularly important as the Muslims were seeking to colonise their space.  The body was incorporated by Act No. 39 of 1931 and they sought generally to address the “supply side” of religious activities namely propagation of Islam, establishment of maktabs, mosque and school-building projects.  Despite that, there was also an attempt to address the “demand side” by agitating for the recognition of Muslim marriage and divorce, and ecclesiastical grants for school building.  This spoke to the continuity in the quest for social change and demands for civil rights through an umbrella Muslim body and a legally incorporated entity.  

Conversely, British Guiana’s development of religious organisations was driven by a mix of exogenous and endogenous forces.  Within the Muslim community the formation of civil society organisations were driven by a group of young and active Muslims such as Young Men’s Muslim Literary Society, Islamic Association, etc.[2] Conversely, the Sad’r Anjuman-i-Islam was established in 1936/1937 not by resident Muslims, but by a visiting missionary from Bombay, India - Sayed Shamshuddin Nizmuddin Al Hoseini Qaderi^[3] who, also visited Trinidad in 1936 and who belonged to the Sunnat-wal-Jamaat school of thought (Hanafi). In Suriname, however, the earliest Islamic organisation was the Anjuman Hidayat Islam and was home-grown. 

As we shall see, the Muslim community and religious institutions would invariably have to respond to and come to terms with organsiational interests, ideological differences and external influences while simultaneously defining their role, nationally.  The extent to which this third sector is able to respond to structural, procedural and human interactions influenced by internal organisational attributes, cultural, social and political phenomenon contributes to defining the value, relevance and longevity of the organisation.

Trinidad Islam, which was open to influences from the Indian subcontinent, came to be affected by the new trends within Indian Islam.  Thus, with each entry of a missionary new ideas were introduced that had to be moderated within the socio-cultural and environmental context of the society. Alternatively, each missionary entrant may have reinforced existing ideological perspectives and fostered practices in line with that belief.  It this created within the community some level of friction as the community tried to repair being adrift with imposed religious definition and belonging.   At the same time the community openness to new ideas was a need for validation and quest for knowledge aimed at energising the community.   

Moulvi Haji Sufi Shah Mohammed Hassan Hanfi Qaderi or “Lal Darhi”, as he was known among the people, arrived in Trinidad in 1914.  As a follower of the puritanical school he emphasised a “back to original Islam” philosophy symbolised by outward manifestations of the faith. Despite these edicts and the unpragmatic nature of such Lal Darhi was tremendously popular among the local population.  Despite that, his presence caused friction within the Muslim community leading Syed Abdul Aziz to “explode the baseless dogmas [of Lal Darhi] while at a public meeting in Tunupuna under the Presidency of Subratee Meah, and a fatwa (formal legal judgment) of kufr (unbelief, infidelity) was pronounced on Pir Hassan.”[1] He departed from Trinidad in 1918 having realised that sections of the Muslim community had turned on him.

Soon thereafter, a committee comprising eminent persons such as Haji Ruknudeen Meah, Abdul Ghany and Rahamut among others was formed sometime between 1918 and 1920, for the purpose of finding a suitable Muslim missionary from India and inviting him to Trinidad.  To this end, the group contacted The Muslim League, Woking, England[2], a group representing the Ahmaddiya movement. A later report claimed that the committee contacted Al Haj Khawaja Kamal-ud-Din, Imam of the Shah Jehan Mosque, Woking, Surrey, England and Maulana Mohammed Ali of the Ahmaddiya Buildings, Lahore, India in late 1919.[3]  Either way, the thrust of local community was to foster links with external agencies for knowledge development and faith rejuvenation. The group sent Moulvi Fazal Karim Khan Durrani, a native of Punjab, India and a scholar of modern and Oriental (Arabic and Sanskrit) languages and an Ahmadi Muslim.[4]  He arrived in Trinidad in 1920 and began missionary work almost immediately. Despite the contact with Ahmadiyya based institutions, the local committee had expected a Sunni (Hanafi) schooled missionary and as such, Durrani, an Ahmadi, was a disappointment to them.[5]  Nevertheless, they honoured their promise and supported him financially.[6]  During the course of his visit, 1920-1922, he was able to influence a young man named Ameer Ali of Siparia and subsequently arrange for him to attend the Ahmaddiya institute - Anjuman Ishaat-i-Islam Institute - in Lahore, India (present day Pakistan) in 1923.  Following the departure of Durrani and the Ali, there was an attempt to assert the legitimacy of the Muslim community through consolidation that led to the establishment of TIA and then state recognition.

Coinciding with the government’s recognition of TIA as an incorporated body in 1931 was the return of Ameer Ali, a youth from south Trinidad who had received theological training at Anjuman Ishaat-i-Islam, Lahore, India (now Pakistan). He was now a certified Muslim and a haji, having performed the pilgrimage to Mecca. These credentials assured that he would be warmly welcomed on his return home.  He was shortly thereafter appointed Mufti of TIA.   The community had quickly forgotten his transgression in their quest to honour achievement. Knowledge – religious or secular – was a prized commodity and Ameer Ali held that commodity; it offered him status and mobility within a migrant and settlement community that was seeking to assert its confidence by colonising its space.

Having secured his position Ameer Ali involved himself in preaching Islam in conformity with new thought and scientific discoveries^[7], thus introducing the modernism of Indian Islam to Trinidad.^[8]  From Ali’s speeches delivered throughout the colony it was deduced that he was an Ahmadi and there were calls for him to declare his Islamic perspective. Ali iterated several times that he had not taken the pledge of the Anjuman Ishaat-i-Islam of Lahore, however his claims were ignored.^[9]  For the Sunni Muslims there is only one path, the message purported by Ali was soon censored and there was defection from TIA by a group of Muslims who were strong advocates of the Hanafi Sunni tradition. This institutional parting was not without cost as the contestations of wills and jockeying for position was played out publicly. The extent to which this eroded confidence from within is unknown but one would imagine that it did and it forced the community into taking sides or standing at the side. Certainly, TIA actively campaigned against the incorporation of the new organisation, ASJA, claiming that there was no need for another organ, since they, TIA “represent the entire Muslims of this Colony” and that ASJA were “irresponsible mischief-makers...causing disunity and disruption in the Muslim community”.^[10]  This set the stage for “great .... verbal and written skirmishes between the two opposing factions”.^[11]  Despite the raging conflict, the battle for turf, the leaders of the two factions united on the “demand side” issues such as the Muslim Marriage and Divorce Ordinance, 1935 – productive efficiency. In the same year (1935), ASJA was incorporated by Ordinance No 24 of 1935.  Interestingly, listed in one of ASJA’s brochures from 1945 was Al Haj Maulana Shah Mohammed Hassan Hanafi Qaderi of Gaya City, India as a founder along with Haji Ruknudeen Sahib, Qazi (judge) of Trinidad and Tobago. This quashes the generally held view that ASJA was solely a home-grown organisation thereby altering the collective memory of adherents.  

Moulvi Nasir Ahmad, a missionary from Lahore, India (present day Pakistan) arrived in June 1935, on the invitation of ASJA who brought him to thwart the influence of Ameer Ali.  At a function to mark his arrival in Port-of-Spain (Trinidad), a few Muslims now alert to the sectarian differences within the faith, inquired about his religious leanings to which he replied that he was a Muslim.^[12]  His contract was terminated in June 1937 and shortly thereafter he left for India.  He subsequently returned   to Trinidad in March 1939 and continued his missionary work. During this period he and others formed the Tabligh-ul-Islam that was eventually responsible for the establishment of a Muslim school in San Juan. Following Ahmad’s death in 1942 a leadership vacuum was created and this group eventually was subsumed under TIA. This incorporation resulted in discord to the extent that there were a series of litigations and injunctions. Once again, a contestation is played out on the public stage demonstrating the competing spheres of religious and civic authority.  Eventually, after almost three years, the two factions resolved to formally part company.  A new religious organisation, Trinidad Muslim League (TML) was formed in 1947 (the same day as the Partition of India and Pakistan) and incorporated in 1950.  The Muslim community now had three major religious associations - TIA, ASJA, and TML; the latter two arising out of broken links with TIA. 

Meantime in British Guiana as in Suriname there was also division, rivalry and organsiational politics at play.  In British Guiana, from 1937 to 1946, there was a constant change in the composition of the executive council of Sad’r Anjuman-E-Islam of British Guiana and The Islamic Association (TIA) as well as a split in the Queenstown Jama Masjid (QJM) that led to series of stalemates, legal consultations and finally, a parting of ways between QJM and Sad’r.   A change in leadership in Sad’r affected policies that were reflective of a more rational thinking as well as the recognition that more can be gained from unity and so, in 1949 Sad’r and TIA amalgamated to form the United Sad’r Islamic Anjuman of British Guiana.  In Suriname, the Muslim community became bitterly divided.  According to Chickrie between 1925 and 1935 the Muslims tended to compete rather than complement each other and were divided into Sunnis, Ahmadis, Hindustani and Indonesian.  The infiltration of the reformists onto the Suriname landscape effected divisions and regrouping, thereby altering the balance of power among the Hindustani Muslims in Suriname.

It is possible to hypothesize from the above that the fission and fracture within the Muslim community impacted upon organisational identity, institutional context and alignment as well as balance of power and strength.  It thus meant that there was contestation for membership and participation, positioning and placement, and unity. Further, the salience and resonance of the message - the ability to influence community public opinion – remained critical.  As such, as these organisations vied for legitimacy and influence they pursued their own particular interest and as well as the community’s interest by establishing schools which was pursued within the broader national interest in education.