Islam and the Caribbean American Muslim Pt 1 of 2

Описание: It was early in the 18th century that Islam was first introduced in the Caribbean and the South America by African Slaves. On the abolition of Slavery, the British, Dutch and French overlords, brought indentured immigrant laborers from India, and Indonesia, Morocco, and Algeria respectively, to replace the freed African slaves on their various plantations in the West Indies and Guyana.

The first batch of Muslims from Africa belonged to the Mandingo and Fulani tribes of West Africa. They were very devout Muslims and in spite of the harsh and inhuman conditions under which they were forced to work, they practiced their religion as best as they could under the circumstances.

It was a great tragedy, however, that in spite of their best efforts, these poor African Muslim slaves could not pass on their religion to their children. Their children were brutally taken away from their parents and given over to the custody of others who baptised them in their faith. The inhuman disintegration of the family structure of the Muslim slaves was the best weapon of the European masters in ensuring that the offspring of their slaves would be robbed of their Islamic heritage.

On May 5th 1838, the first boats with indentured East Indians on board -- SS Hesperus and SS Whitby -- arrived in Guyana. The Fatel Razak arrived in Trinidad on May 30th 1845 with the second batch of Muslims in the Caribbean. They were the indentured laborers from India, Indonesia, and French North Africa, to replace the slaves on the plantations. Their conditions were very similar to that of the enslaved Africans, and they only enjoyed a limited amount of liberty. The British and European overlords had made it a policy that only illiterate labor should have been sent to those parts, but in their greedy haste to bring quick replacements for the freed slaves, they unwittingly sent some literate and intelligent people among the illiterate laborers.

As can be well imagined, the indentured immigrants in each territory suffered many hardships and deprivations, but whether they had come from India, Indonesia, Morocco, or Algeria, they possessed one great asset in common, that is their complete faith in the truth of Islam, as the true religion extended by God for mankind, and as believers that "There is no other deity except Almighty God (Allah)," and in the divine messenger-ship of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (U.W.B.P.), they had a religion worthy to live by and to die for.