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Muslims in the Caribbean: Ethnic sojourners and citizens

MUSLIMS IN THE CARIBBEAN region represent distinctive styles of minority and diaspora experiences. While they have a clear identity in terms of faith, their actual communal identity is frequently not based primarily on their religious identity..... although there are Muslims in the Caribbean region, in the most commonly understood usage of terms, there may not be "Muslim minorities" or "Muslims diaspora" there..... there has been no "pan-Muslim" identification or activity in the region as a whole.  While some scholars might speak of a "Black Atlantic" ....... it is not possible to identify anything that might be called a "Caribbean Muslim" identity.  Similarly, while some scholars might speak of "African Islam" or "Malaysian Islam" as religiocultural traditions, it is not possible to speak of "Caribbean Islam". (John O. Voll writing in "Muslim minorities in the West: visible and invisible")
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Between the early 1500s and the 1860s. West African Muslims from Senegal, Gambia, Mali, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Benin, and Nigeria were shipped to the New World. They probably represented from 10 to 15 per cent of the 12 to 15 million Africans swept away by the transatlantic slave trade. In the United States, their proportion may have been higher since, in contrast to the rest of the Americas, people from the Senegambia area - heavily Muslim - were the second largest group deported to the North American shores. Thus, from one to two million practitioners of Islam were forced to make their life all over the Americas and the Caribbean.

"The history of Islam and Muslim people in the Caribbean stretches back over one thousand years, predating  European contact by over six centuries. New researches are revealing evidence leading to the presence of Muslims in the ancient Americas long before the voyages of Columbus in the fifteenth century. Muslims were probably one of the most important contact people between the two worlds with the exchange of knowledge, agricultural products, livestock and other commercial items. A number of sculptures, oral traditions, eyewitness reports, artifacts, and inscriptions have been sighted to confirm this.

A report in “Before Columbus by Cyrus Gordan describes coins found in the southern Caribbean region off the coast of Venezuela. Two of these coins are Arabic of the eighth century AD. The author infers that a Moorish ship perhaps from Spain or North Africa seems to have crossed the Atlantic around 800 AD. In his book Mutirj, az-Zahab, in the year 956 AD, wrote about a young man of Cordoba in Spain named Kashkash lbne Aswad who crossed the Atlantic Ocean and returned in the year 889 AD.

A narration by Aboo Bakr b’Umar al Qutiyya relates the story of lbne Farrukh who landed in February 999 AD in Gando (Great Canary), visited King Guanariga and continued his journey westwards till he found islands he called Capraria and Phitana ash-Shareef al-Idreesi (1097-1155 AD) the famous Arab geographer reported in his extensive work “The geography of al ldreesi”, in the twelfth century, on the journey of a group of North African seaman who reached the Americas. al-ldreesi recorded that after captivity for three days a translator came speaking the Arabic language and translated for the King and questioned them about their mission. ‘This astonishing historical report clearly confirms the fact that the contact between the two worlds had been so involved that the native people could speak Arabic!

In October 1929, a map in parchment was discovered in the library of Serallo in the city of Istanbul made in Muharram 919 AH (March 1513 AD). This map represented the western zone of the world. It comprised the Atlantic Ocean with America and the western rim of the world. The other parts of the world, which undoubtedly the map also included, have been lost.

Despite the numerous voyages taken by the Muslims of Spain and North Africa, their contact remained limited and fairly secretive. The most significant wave of Muslim explorers and traders came from the West African Islamic Empire of Mali. When Mansa Moosaa, the world-renowned ruler of Mali, was enroute to Makkah during his famous pilgrimage in 1324 AD, he informed the scholars of Cairo (Egypt) that his predecessor had undertaken two expeditions (the first with two hundred ships and the second with two thousand ships) into the Atlantic Ocean in order to discover its limits. This is reported by al’Umari in his “Masaalikul? Absaar Mamaalikul-Amsaar”.

The renowned American historian and linguist, Leo Weiner of Harvard University in 1920 wrote a controversial but well documented work entitled, “Africa and the Discovery of America”. He proved in it that Columbus was well aware of the Mandinka presence and that the West Indian Muslims had not only spread throughout the Caribbean, Central South America, but they reached Canada and were trading and intermarrying with the Iroquois and Algonquin Indian nations!

Numerous cultural evidences of Mandinka presence has been established in Brazil, Peru, Panama, Nicaragua, Honduras, Mexico, Mississippi, and Arizona. In the Daily Clarion of Belize on November 5, 1946, P. V. Ramos in an article entitled, “History of the Caribs” wrote,

“When Christopher Columbus discovered the West Indies around the year 1493 AD he found there a race of white people (i.e. half breeds) with woolly hair whom he called ‘Caribs’. They were seafaring hunters and tillers of soil, peaceful and united. They hated aggression. Their religion was Mohammedanism (Islam) and their language Arabic.” This reveals another part of the pre-Columbian African hereditary legacy left with the ‘Carib’ people from whose name we derive the word ‘Caribbean’."  taken from here.

Mainstream Islam has deep roots in the African-American experience, roots that reach back to the history of slavery and early 20th-century black Sunni communities in the United States.  How has the issue of race in the United States affected the practices and the community experiences of black Sunni Muslims who traditionally see Islam as a color and race-blind religion?

Malcolm X’s Hajj in 1964 and Warith Deen Mohammed’s [picture] transformation of the Nation of Islam into an orthodox community in 1975 are two of the more recent visible signs of the importance of mainstream Islam in the African-American experience.  African Americans comprise about 42% of the Muslim population in the United States, which conservatively is somewhere between four to six million; and Sunni African-American Muslims are the predominant community in the United States today.  Yet, the involvement of black Americans with mainstream Islam is not a recent phenomenon.


Between March 26 and April 7, 2010 Nazim Baksh, a Guyanese-born award-winning Canadian Journalist, accompanied Dr. Umar Faruq Abd’Allah, an American Islamic scholar and author, on a historic fact-finding trip to the Caribbean.  Their first stop was the twin-island nation state of Trinidad and Tobago where they held discussions with some of the country’s leading Muslims scholars, Imams, activists and academics.  Dr. Umar was also interviewed on Trinidad's Islamic Broadcasting Network [IBN].  The subject matter was wide ranging, the interview is presented to you in nine parts.

PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad - The Nur-e-Islam masjid, a sprawling green and white building running along a side street in a busy, crowded town on the outskirts of the capital, has approximately 5,000 members and is probably the biggest mosque in the country. It may not be for long.

“There are bigger ones being built,” said Nur-e-Islam Imam Sheraz Ali. Seated behind his desk, his large, commanding presence made his small office look even smaller. He didn’t seem to mind his mosque losing its size supremacy. His voice had a hint of glee.

This small island state of a little more than one million people has 126 mosques and counting, according to one of the administrators of trinimuslims.com, a web site that keeps a tally. The country’s Caribbean neighbour Guyana, with a population of a little more than 700,000, sees “two to three” new mosques a year, said a representative of the Central Islamic Organization of Guyana.

The pace of construction is evidence of the growing influence and visibility of Caribbean Muslims in recent years, a visibility that is both the cause and result of a slew of new converts from various walks of life.


Black crescent: the experience and legacy of African Muslims in the Americas

Gomez, Michael A. Black Crescent: The Experience and Legacy of African Muslims in the Americas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 385 pp.

This book, Black Crescent: The Experience and Legacy of Africa Muslims in the Americas, is a "social history of the experiences of African muslims and their descendants throughout the Americas, including the Caribbean" (p. i). Michael Gomez takes on an ambitious task in relating the historical connections of Islam in the lives of people of African descent from early Africa to the western hemisphere up to the twentieth century. The book is divided into two sections with the "first discussing African Muslims in the Americas through periods of enslavement." The second part examines, "Islam's development in the United States." In doing so, the author examines the Quran and African Americans "acceptance of Muhammad" (p. ix).

In examining Muslim Africans in the Caribbean, Brazil, Latin America, and North America, Gomez explains how slavery and politics affected them. He provides evidence to show slave owners sometimes preferred Muslims to expatriates from West Africa. Despite the significance of Islam in relation to slavery, it failed to become dominant among slaves in the Caribbean and Brazil; although in earlier years, it proliferated in Trinidad. Muslims in Trinidad who identified with West Africans acquired "commercial gains, prosperity, and elevated status."

"Servants of Allah opens a new door on the African Diaspora and provides readers with even more insight into Islam, as well as enslaved Africans. Diouf's study greatly enhances current literature on the Diaspora."
--Jason Zappe, Copley News Service Dec '98

"This historical study is ground-breaking not only in its theme but also its approach, which can be described as pan-Africanist to the extent that it relates the histories of these deported Muslims to the political upheavals of medieval Africa...; forges links between the varied sites of their dispersal from the 16th to the 19th century...; and examines the issue of return to Africa and the lineage (or the absence thereof) of this first American Islam."
--Sylvie Kandé, QBR Jan/Feb '99




COOLIES: HOW BRITAIN REINVENTED SLAVERY

The slave trade was officially abolished throughout the British Empire in 1807. This documentary reveals one of Britain's darkest secrets: a form of slavery that continued well into the 20th century - the story of Indian indentured labour.

Coolies: How Britain Reinvented Slavery tells the astonishing and controversial story of the systematic recruitment and migration of over a million Indians to all corners of the Empire. It is a chapter in colonial history that implicates figures at the very highest level of the British establishment and has defined the demographic shape of the modern world.

Combining archive footage and historical evidence the programme includes interviews with Gandhi's great-grandaughter, Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie, about Gandhi's campaign to end indentured labour and David Dabydeen - author and academic - whose great-grandfather was an indentured labourer in British Guyana.

Coolies: How Britain Reinvented Slavery traces family stories through epic voyages across South America, the South Pacific and Africa, as descendants investigate their past and trace the last surviving witnesses.


Roti - Caribbean Food

Roti Everyone loves roti! It is the fast food of the Caribbean, and you can find Roti restaurants the world over.

Roti

People always think of jerk chicken when it comes to West Indian food, but Roti is one of the most popular foods in the Caribbean. Roti was brought to the islands by the East Indian contract labourers, as early as 1840. Although Roti is East Indian in origin, it has been localised as a Caribbean dish.
  Roti - Caribbean food
Roti is hugely popular in Trinidad, where just under half of the population consider themselves to be of East Indian background. Today Caribbean/East Indian dishes are quite different from traditional East Indian.

For those who don’t know, a Roti is a flour pancake or wrap, similar to, but lighter than a tortilla, and filled with various foods, including curried chicken, goat, shrimp, channa (chick-peas). West Indian roti are mainly made from wheat flour, salt, and water. Jerk and Creole sauces are alternatives to curry. The word 'roti' in the West Indies also refers to a dish of stewed or curried ingredients wrapped in a 'roti skin'. In Trinidad and Tobago various rotis are served. Popular variations include chicken, conch, beef and vegetable. There are different types of Roti including Dhalpouri, Dosti, Bus-up-shut (Paratha ) and Sada roti.

Sada Roti: is similar to naan and cooked on a tava. This type is very popular in Trinidad as a breakfast option.

Paratha Roti: Roti made with butter, usually ghee, also cooked on a tava. Oil is rubbed on both sides, then it is fried, giving a crisp outside. When it almost finished cooking, the chef will to mash the roti while it is on the tava, causing it to crumble. It is also called 'Buss-Up-Shut' in Trinidad because it resembles a 'burst up shirt'.

Dosti Roti: A roti where two layers are rolled out together and cooked on the tava. It is also rubbed with oil while cooking. It is called dosti roti because the word dosti means friendship in Hindi. This type of roti is eaten in Guyana with a special halva to celebrate the birth of a child.

Dhalpuri: Popular in Trinidad, this roti has a stuffing of ground yellow split peas, cumin (geera), garlic, and pepper. The split peas are boiled and ground. The cumin is toasted until black and also ground. The stuffing is pushed into the roti dough, and sealed, then rolled flat.

Bake: Bakes are similar to roti, and popular in St Lucia. Shark and bake, also a popular Trinidadian snack. Dough is rolled out and cut into shapes or rolled into small rounds. These can be baked in an oven, but they are usually fried in oil. They are sometimes called frybake. Bake are usually paired with a fryup for breakfast or dinner, or with stewed saltfish.

Roti is a great dish for any occasion, as well as being quick and healthy.

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