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Dec 22, 2015 · The most visible role of Islam in the America of the Founding Fathers was perhaps in the words and actions of the founders themselves, who deliberately sought to include Islam as they...
May 31, 2017 · One of them, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, considered getting sworn in privately using a copy of the Qur'an from the library of one of America’s Founding Fathers.
- Denise A. Spellberg
- Visible Manifestations of Faith
- Fasting and Dietary Requirements
- Distinguished by Their Dress
- Curiosity and Literacy
- Writing For Fellow Muslims
- Writing For Freedom
- Challenging Stereotypes
- The Blues
- A Forgotten History
Part of the Muslims’ conspicuousness was due to their continued observance, whenever possible, of the most noticeable tenets of their religion. Prayer, the second pillar of Islam, was one of these visible manifestations of faith noted by enslaved and enslavers alike. In his 1837 autobiography, Charles Ball, who escaped slavery, related in great det...
There is no doubt that Islam’s fourth pillar, fasting, was exceedingly hard for people underfed and overworked. Nevertheless, Bilali and his large family used to fast during Ramadan. And so did his friend Salih Bilali. Abducted in Mali when he was about 14, 60 years later he was still “a strict Mahometan; [he] abstains from spirituous liquors, and ...
In addition to respecting the tenets of Islam, Muslims distinguished themselves, when possible, by the way they dressed. In Georgia, some women wore veils while men sported Turkish fez or white turbans. An 1859 article described how, each morning, Omar ibn Said nailed the end of a long strip of white cotton to a tree and, holding the other end, wra...
Besides being visible, Muslims generated much curiosity because of their literacy, an Islamic requirement because believers need to read the Quran. This literacy was acquired in schools and, for the most educated, in local or foreign institutions of higher learning. This particularity set them apart from the non-Muslim Africans as well as many illi...
Today, manuscripts, from Brazil and Panama to the Bahamas, Trinidad and Haiti still exist. Written by anonymous Muslims and a few known ones, they cover Quranic chapters, prayers, talismans, invocations, and admonitions for the Muslims to remain faithful to Islam. Several are linked to the 1835 Muslim uprising in Bahia. In about 1823 Muhammad Kaba ...
Ayuba Suleyman Diallo made the most of his literacy. A trader and Quranic teacher from the Islamic State of Bundu in Senegal, he was abducted in 1730 in Gambia and sold to captain Stephen Pike of the Arabella. Diallo told him his father would pay for his freedom and he was allowed to dispatch an acquaintance to his hometown. But the Arabella left b...
If his literacy didn’t free Omar ibn Said, it largely improved his situation. After he ran away in 1810 from an “evil man … an infidel who did not fear Allah”, Omar was captured as he prayed in a church and thrown in jail as a runaway. With pieces of coal, he covered the walls with pleas, in Arabic, to be released. The brother of a North Carolina g...
The imprint of enslaved African Muslims can still be seen today. Arabic terminology survives in the Gullah language of South Carolina, in Trinidadian and Peruvian songs, in the Caribbean saraka, and in a variety of religions such as Candomble, Umbanda and Macumba in Brazil, Vodun in Haiti, and Regla Lucumi and Palo Mayombe in Cuba. Moreover, a sign...
Over time, the story and even the presence of African Muslims in the Americas faded from memory. But since the tragedy of 9/11, there has been a growing interest in this forgotten history, a stunning discovery to most. African American Muslims used it to claim an ancient lineage and immigrant communities to show that Islam, far from being foreign, ...
- Sylviane A Diouf
Portrait of Yarrow Mamout (Muhammad Yaro) by Charles Willson Peale. It was not until the slave trade that the first significant population of Muslims was forcibly and violently brought to North America from Africa.
Many historians claim that the earliest Muslims came from the Senegambian region of Africa in the early 14th century. It is believed they were Moors, expelled from Spain, who made their way to...
Historians estimate that between 10 and 20 percent of the slaves who came from West Africa were Muslim. Thomas Jefferson, to take a noted figure in American history, purchased a translation of the Qurʾan in 1765, more than a decade before he drafted the Declaration of Independence.
Upon its arrival, Islam became entrenched in American discourses on race and civilization because literate and noble African Muslims, brought to America as slaves, had problematized popular stereotypes of Muslims and black Africans.
