ABSTRACT:

The Muslim community in the post-indenture Caribbean witnessed several changes that affected the character of its practices.  As a way of institutionalizing the faith, the community had established masajid (mosques), schools and other organisations.  As these physical manifestations and legal entities were being inserted into the local space, foreign missionaries who visited imposed their brand of Islam on the local landscape. The tension which arose resulted in the splintering of the Muslim community. Each strain, Sunnism and Ahmaddiyaism, vied for supremacy – territoriality - by supporting missionary visits from India and later Pakistan, and embarking upon da’wah (invitation to...).  As these streams of Islam collided or solidified, organisations, either at the community or national levels, were established.

As part of forging the ummah (community) Muslim leaders established links with South American Islamic bodies, principally those of British Guiana and Suriname.  This development of Islamic consciousness and cooperation culminated with a regional conference in 1950 in Trinidad that involved Muslims from Trinidad, British Guiana, Suriname and Barbados. This conference was the highlight of Islamic consciousness in the Caribbean and preceded the departure of two eminent Islamic scholars, Maulana Abdul Aleem Siddiqui and Dr. Fazl-ur Rahaman Ansari.

This paper, therefore, takes a look at the above issues and rethinks them in the context of interconnected networks and sometimes, through the lens of the local-global nexus.  It views it as a noble attempt by the Muslims to assert the ummah beyond national boundaries and a forerunner to other efforts in the later twentieth century.   

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.

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.

"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