Resistance in Bondage: The History of Black Muslim Slaves in the Americas livestream with Shaykh Abdullah Hakim Quick.
Black Muslim History – Resistance In Bondage
AI: Summary ©
The Atlantic Ocean is a conflict between Muslims and African migrants, with the Atlantic being a black conflict and the West being white. The history of slavery in Europe, including the rise of agricultural crops and the use of sugar and sugar derivatives, is discussed, along with the negative impact of the "monster" movement on people's political views and political beliefs. The segment also touches on the history of the resistance movement and the use of markings and leggings to identify black people.
AI: Summary ©
Bismillah R Rahman r Rahim al hamdu Lillahi Rabbil alameen wa salatu salam ala nabina Muhammad wa ala it was heavy in your mind as salaam alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh Welcome back to this third installment of this series in black history month we're examining black Muslims in history and and you know talking about an array of topics. And I'm joined, of course by my special guests the steam scholar, Dr. Schiff. I'm done like him quick side project. And we have another great session for today. And we're trying to again move along this kind of history chronologically, as at least as we see it. And we're now looking into Islam's interaction, or I should say, the western world's
interaction with the first real Muslim migrants or you know, peoples who came over. And we're looking at the Atlantic slave trade, and the first contact really with Islam in North America. Now, when we talk about the Atlantic slave trade, and the, you know, this genocide, really of many Africans, peoples, oftentimes, I guess as Muslims, we don't really look at it from the scope of an atrocity that happened to Muslims. We think about the Atlantic slave trade is something that happened to African or black people that were brought over stolen from their homelands, brought over to many places around the world, the Caribbean, places in South America, and obviously, in North
America as well. But as Muslims, we don't really grieve this as something that would have happened to Muslims, because there were a large percentage of the Muslims who were taken from Africa, actually, we're Muslim, and they had a long history of thriving Islam within their cultures. So why do you think that's the case? Why don't we as Muslims, first of all, grieve the incident of the Atlantic slave trade with the undertone of thinking that hey, these were actually Muslims that were taken from their homes the same way we would, for example, grieve other Muslims who have been you know, in other atrocities, similar manner, he Masato sola, sola, but when we look at the Atlantic
slave trade, and you know, the whole issue of the transport of human beings from Africa to the Americas,
again, we're stuck with a notion or a discourse, which was set by the European scholars. And unfortunately, they wrote Islam out of history. And we find that from, you know, saying the dark ages in Europe, you know, which was the golden age of Islam, and so that this this mentality of opposition, wanting to write the Islam out of the history, or to demonize Muslims give them a negative role in history, it has affected scholarship. So therefore,
people associated Islam, with slavery. And, you know, we understood that the first Muslims who entered Africa were actually refugees. And that, you know, the whole issue of slavery was not an issue for a long period of time, although slavery was a worldwide institution. Similarly, a wrong notion of Arabs in West Africa, trading slaves to the Europeans, is also a wrong notion, because there were no Arabs in West Africa, especially down on the coastlines and whatnot. So that could not have happened
in the way that it was projected. So basically, we get this wrong image, in a sort of blots out, you know, the real role of Muslims and the personality of Muslims. And you know, what happens? So it's important again, when we go back to real research, you know, to say what is true, and this is not at all of the slaves were Muslims, but to recognize, and it's very clear now, in the African history, it's an all the universities, they recognize that somewhere around 15, to 30%, of the slaves, and political prisoners, taken to the Americans were Muslims. So this is not the way it was in the past. If you studied history, in the 18th century, 19th century, up until the 20th century, middle of the
20th century, in the Western world, you would think that all of the slaves brought to the Americas were non Muslims. But that has changed radically, fortunately, with research, and with people speaking out. And now it's becoming part of the discourse. But it's really important, not only for the general public, but for Muslims in particular, to be aware of this fact, because sometimes Muslims tend to read only Islamic books are things that they think have to do with Islam. And then when they look at the spread of Islam, they may think that Islam did not go south of the Sahara. I've actually seen maps to show the Muslim world north of the Sahara, not recognizing that south of
the Sahara were huge Islamic empires, which played a big role in the history of Africa, Muslim world and the rest of the world. And it's interesting because I think a lot of people who would
associate themselves as Afro centric. So people that do have this study or affinity affinity towards Africa, they also write out Islam from Africa.
Perhaps they have this negative connotation of the Arab quote unquote slave trade and the persecution of black and African peoples at that time. Can you clarify that? Because I think on both sides, people are trying to either eliminate Islam from Africa, as in there was no Islam in Africa, or vice versa. They're trying to take away Africans from Islam, as an Africans did not make any contributions to Islam to talk about the reality of that particular notion that people try and disassociate. Islam from Africa, as if there were no Muslims within Africa to begin with. Yeah, well, you know, the first thing we have to recognize is that, you know, from the early days of the
foundation of Islam, even before the Muslims went to Medina from Mecca, they went into Africa. So from that early time, there were African Muslims, and the continent itself, was intimately connected to the message of Islam. And that's the way it's always been huge Muslim populations on the African continent. Some people would say, me, the majority of African people are Muslims. Definitely, if you include West Africa, which is above Central Africa, and you would see that the majority are Muslims. So it's important for us again, to come out of that Eurocentric approach, which is centered in Europe, but but to try to look at it from a more objective way, you know, taking in what happened in
Africa, what happened to the Muslims, one of the distortions that happens is that people try to, they tried to equate at the Atlantic slave trade, with slavery that happened on the east coast of Africa. Now we have to recognize and we accept the fact that there were Muslims who deviated from the original message of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him because he liberated the slaves. And there's no record of Muslims, slave raiding, you know, in the early generations of Islam.
But some of the kings and empires that came later, copying other nations of the world, got involved in slavery, because it was a worldwide institution, Islam was phasing it out. The reality was, and historians will say that up until the 17th 18th century, you could say that 75% of the people in the world were actually slaves. And this is shocking, because slavery,
feudalism, where you have the feudal European Lord and the serfs, right? That's form of slavery. When the Romans and slave the the Slavic people,
and the Germans, that was slavery, the word slave comes from Slav like Slavic people, right? Chinese had slaves, Indians had slaves, even the First Nations people in the Americas had slaves. Because in the ancient world, you were either free or you were subjugated, in one way or another. So there's different forms, you know, that slavery took. And
but the difference was that the Atlantic slave trade, specifically wanted to get darker complexion people. And the viciousness of it and the numbers of the people was so great. And the effect on the people has never been seen in the in the history of humanity. Some scholars tried to equate the two. And it's very clear to show that they're not the same. Yeah. Because in the Atlantic slave trade, I can see the the, the, the descendants of the slaves very clearly, millions of slaves taken into the Americas, you see their descendants in Brazil,
in the Caribbean, in the United States, you can clearly see Afro american people of the Americas.
If Arab slave trade, which was basically from the east coast of Africa, and some going across the Sahara. If it was the same, where'd all the black people go? You can't say Sudan, because that is the land of the blacks. You can't say Egypt because they're already Africans. If you look at Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Kuwait, Iraq, you know, Syria, where all the black people, they're not there, because the numbers were nowhere near the size of the numbers going into the Americas. And there was a form which did not come until somewhere around the 18th century when the man is first fighting with the Swahili is on the east coast of Africa. They defeated the Portuguese, but they saw that the
Portuguese had a trade and slaves so they got involved. So the Americans did get involved, but it was only 150 year period, and the numbers are nowhere the numbers that actually went into the Americas now
What exactly happened during the Atlantic slave trade? We spoke a little bit about this particular phenomenon. But let me break it down for us, you know, where did these people come from? And how were they delivered over to the new world? Right? Okay. First, we have to understand that when Columbus and the early Spanish and Portuguese came across, and they reached the Americas, cause Columbus was lost. He thought he was in India. Yeah. And he bumped into a new world. But it wasn't a new world for the world. Because 75 million people were living there, you know, and many for over 10,000 years. So he bumped into a huge world. And the early colonists basically stayed along the
coastlines, East Coast of the United States, and some of the Caribbean islands, and then the east coast of Brazil, Guyana, you know, and that part of South America.
And what they recognized is that the fertile land in that region could be exploited in order to raise crops to grow crops. That would be of great commercial value, like cotton,
tobacco, sugarcane, right, a number of crops, these three in particular, you see, they revolutionized Europe, the cotton given the people clothing, tobacco became an addiction. sugarcane is sugar, that's your sweets everywhere, and Europe did not have sweets before like this. So they went crazy with it. So therefore, people wanted to grow cane, they wanted to grow cotton, they wanted to go tobacco. And this tropical area, in the southern part of the United States in the Caribbean, and Brazil. It needed people who could work for little or no money, also had great skills, and who could be subjugated. They originally tried to subjugate the native people
and the Amerindians in the Caribbean. But it didn't work because that's their land. And when they captured the native people, they would either just sit down and not, you know, die, or they would escape and run away. And when they went into the forest, that was the land, you couldn't get to them, so you couldn't catch them. So that was a waste of time. They the rich colonists looked at poor Europeans, because there was class amongst the Europeans. So it was the aristocrats and the poor people who were leaving Europe, because of the plagues and the famines. They tried to enslave poor European people, that wouldn't work either. Because they were different than the natives. And
they could, you know, gain money and become rich. They refused. So they look to Africa.
in West Africa, and Central Africa, you have people who are dark complexion. So they're easy to identify.
They have thriving societies, huge societies. And lastly, West Africa.
They know how to grow these crops, they can live in tropical climate, that that's their climate. So they're the perfect people if you can get them across. And so they started to trade on the coastline. And first they found African nations that were warring against each other. And it was the way of the world at that time.
That political prisoners or prisoners of war would be integrated into the society so they would become slaves. And instead of killing anybody, everybody, they would make you a slave, meaning you're going to work for them, or you're going to be interviewed or integrated into their society. And so the Europeans first set up colonies, forts, and they would literally purchase these prisoners of war, and then take them across the Atlantic, and then they intermarried and they created a mulatto class. They built up their forts. And then when they had enough strength, they rated themselves for slaves. And
many of the Empires resisted the Europeans. There were Muslims also, who resisted the famous Shaykh Nasir Dean, this is 1673 in what is now Mauritania he resistant clearly, also the Imam the the or the alchemy of food tutorial, and this is around 1789. He threatened the governor of St. Louis. This is your area of Senegal and that region threatened them don't deal with don't take any Muslims or any people out of here. So Muslims tried to resist, other great nations tried to resist a shanty Europa. There are many great nations, but because of trickery in playing one against another divide and conquer, and also technology, having the weapons communications, they were able to set up these
ports and then to begin to fund
Millions of people across the Atlantic. And so what they call the Middle Passage, and that is the terrible transportation of people on these boats, many of the people jumped off the boat into the ocean, many people died, there are a million, some say could even possibly 20 million people literally died just died in the US. This is a holocaust. And the effect on Africa, we're still feeling the effect up until today. It was literally drained of people, economies were changed. empires were broken down. People are being carried across and brought the huge Portuguese colony in Brazil. And then the Spanish will coming into the Caribbean and Central America. And then the
British and the French, and Dutch also coming into the United States and into some of the colonies. So all of the Europeans saw this as a way to make money fast. Because literally, you encapture the people, they have no rights, they're slaves. So they work for zero.
So you have no output that you just need to buy them. And then you feed them, you know, very weakly when they die, and they used to die young age, that you just get rid of them and get some war. So they literally did this and built up their plantations until
it became what they call this vicious triangle. And that is between Africa, to the Americas, and then to Europe. And especially see what the British they say, you know, Liverpool, and some of the big cities were literally built with the blood of slaves. And so this is a terrible
phase in history. But one of the worst aspects of the slavery is that
for a period of time, in the early days, there were some Africans who were free.
And they lived in the colonies as well. And some of them even had slaves, they said, but it reached a certain point, like in the 17th century, where they issue the code Noir, which is the black codes, where they said, anybody who is African is a slave, free or not anybody. So they literally enslave all African people of all shapes and colors, and you into slavery into subjugation. And the whole concept of race entered into into the slavery. And what was dangerous about it, it affected our language.
When you say the word black, in the different languages in English, when you say black, it's being changed now, but it meant dirty. It meant negative evil. You know, black magic versus white magic. What's the difference? The Black is the evil one. Yeah. I'm dreaming of a white Christmas. Right? So black men dirty.
You no evil, depressed, negative and white men innocent, pure and holy. Yeah. So you say you're dreaming of a white Christmas and you live in Jamaica? There's no snow, right? They don't mean snow, what they mean is a holy Christmas. So racism comes in because even the slave traders themselves had personalities. And some of them went crazy. How can you do this to other human beings, but if when they subjugated them, and when they justified, they went into the Bible, and they show the story of Noah, Noah Islam that he was drunk, you know, and, you know, his son saw him naked, especially him, saw his nakedness. So he was cursed. And so he would be cursed, you know, the black son, that he
would serve all of the other sons. So they felt that even biblically, that's from the Bible. Yeah, this is a distorted version of what's left at the Bible. Right, right. And so this story of the curse of ham, was put on African people. So that European, European people thought that they are divinely ordained
to enslave African people, and to keep them down. And that type of racism still exists up until today. They're divinely ordained to do this. And so it justified it to them. And then the devil is always in dark clothes. And, you know, so good is White and bright, and dark is, you know, evil. And so this justification happened. And millions of people are brought into the Americas. And for a long time, we were taught that 100% non Muslims because Muslims have to be involved in slavery. But now we are recognizing somewhere between 15 to 30% of the slaves and I tend to a 30% almost one in every three who came across the Atlantic were Muslims and
This, this would have been shocking 40 years ago. But now because of modern research methods, and information coming to the surface, we are learning more and more about Muslims who came across and some of the events that happened. So what happened to those Muslims who came across because obviously, you're talking about, you know, 15 to 30%, more likely on the on the higher end 30% of the slaves who came across? How did these people survive? I mean, how did they slam that aid them? Did they lose it? I mean, you know, there's so many questions, what was the fic? around being a slave at that time? And how did they preserve their Islam what happened, of course, slavery was a
trauma, because anybody who's taken as a slave in Africa, generally felt, well, I have to live with this other society, and I might get married, I might work for this people, and I might eventually be able to earn my freedom and go back home. Right, this is a shock, because you're put on a boat, and you're taken across this ocean, and your name is taken away, your religion is taken away, your identity is taken away, a new, you know, way of life has given to you, you virtually have no chance to go back. So this is something completely different than before. And it is said that the first slaves were taken by the Portuguese because the Portuguese and the Spanish were the first to come
into the Americas, and
around 1518 or so. But around 1522, there were slaves were taken from what is now Senegal. And these people are what they call Wolf and the wolf of the Senegalese are very strong people. And they are Muslims. And so the wolf were brought into Dominican Republic, they call Hispaniola, which is Dominican Republic, Haiti, brought into that region.
And then Puerto Rico and Panama. And they rebelled. Major rebellions right from the beginning, okay, to the point where the Portuguese leadership said, No more Muslim slaves, too much to do, like, don't take any more because it's within our lifestyle, that when you see evil, you got to change.
You cannot submit to other people like this.
And if people are trying to force Christianity on us, and say, we already have these stories, we have the Quran, which gives the true story of Jesus and Mary, the true story of Noah, the true story of creation. So that Christian, the Christian propaganda, the distorted version of Christianity, because has nothing to do with Jesus peace be upon him. But that distorted ham based version wouldn't work on Muslims. Because we have the true story of Noah, we already knew what they were taught. Yeah, we know. Yeah. So that didn't work. And we had prayer, even more than the Christians. We had fasting.
You know, we read the holy book, we have all the morality, so that wouldn't work on us. And that's discontinued on in the Portuguese colonies and the Spanish colonies. In Jamaica. There were great rebellions that happened and the Spanish called the slaves, ceremonies. And from that comes the word Maroon. Okay. And there was a maroon rebellion. You know, in Jamaica itself. Many of the Maroons, were
Muslims, somewhere a shanty, and Yoruba. The Cimarron is content. It's a wild horse, right? You can't control the horse. So that's what the Spanish called. And interestingly enough, there was another rebellion in Mexico. This Gaspar rebellion, and there were black Africans taken to Mexico, and they rebelled. And they won against the Spanish there is a town in Mexico now, which was a free town up until today. It's the town of black people in Mexico.
These are called Maroon rebellions. And so this resistance, Muslims were one of the groups that led this resistance. In the slavery period. It's not the only group. They were Yoda was the Ashanti, a very strong people, this, quote, amantii, the suciu there's so many different nations, who are very strong, as well, and who rebelled and resist resistance slavery. But Muslims, in particular, you know, made a very big contribution to the resistance and how was Islam taken away from them? Because obviously, at that time, like you said, the distorted version of Christianity was used to justify, at least in the minds of the Europeans and the Christians of that time, the enslavement of other
people. How did people slowly stop practicing Islam? Because I mean, obviously now the descendants of people who perhaps gain from that time don't maybe recognize that they once had a slime in their legacy. What happened to Islam? How did it slowly diminish from there, their understanding, what we recognize is that one of the
worst forms of evil that was perpetrated during this period was to strip a human being of his or her name, culture identity, you are literally stealing the humanity in the sense from that person. And so the slavery was so vicious that people were put onto plantations. And they were given other names. They were not allowed to use their African names, their Islamic names, they were not allowed to pray. They were not allowed to speak their language.
A distorted version of Christianity was imposed upon them. And so you know, at first it didn't work, the people sort of they resisted in different ways. They would say they were Christian, and then practice there's the Islam or Europa to themselves.
They would poison the Masters food they would destroy, you know, his machinery, they would, some of them would just run away. They would make rebellions, they would try to resist. But the evil and the the, you know, negative way of subjugation of people was so powerful, that they literally tortured people and sometimes to death in front of the other slaves. Because they prayed, because they fasted, or because they wanted to be Muslim, or whatever their religion was, they wouldn't take on the name. And they would separate families. So this is another evil. And marriage was not allowed. And some people don't recognize the fact that marriage was not allowed in America, up until 1865.
for black people, it was prohibited. Sometimes they let you jump over the broomstick, yeah.
But they can take away the mother or the children or the father at any point. And that's literally what they did. They separated the families separated the children. And then he said, You are now negros. And * is this generic word, pejorative word is like say you're black as Negros, *, and in Spanish. So literally your color, now, you're not a nation, you're not a religion, you have no lineage. And if the slave masters name was Johnson, then all of the slaves take the name Johnson. If his name was Williams, then all of the slave take the name we have, that is the reason why African Americans in all parts of the Americas have been stripped of their names. And they will have
English names, French names, Spanish names, Dutch names, based upon the colony, or the plantation that they lived. So this was a systematic way of literally, you know, stripping the humanity, you know, dehumanizing them, until they're like a beast of burden. And so they literally, you know, try to do this, but the people resist
and struggled against this dehumanization. And amongst them, obviously, there were notables. I mean, there were scholars, even Islamic scholars that were brought over as slaves. Can you talk about some of the notable characters? There's a lot of people that I know about, I've heard about that. Still resist it to the very end and actually brought Islam over to the Americas with them? Yeah, actually, when you look at what happened. And again, scholars had to piece things together now. Because especially in the Spanish colonies, they would destroy all literature, except for their own. So scholars had a piece of information together, and a number of eyewitness reports, a number of
documents written in Arabic language.
And another a number of different
traces. You could find, like, for instance, when they call the slaves, Mohammed 10s, muhammet. When they use this word, Muhammad, that was the middle aged name for Mohammed. That's the crusading times. I was one time I remember, I was in the Bahamas and NASA. And I went to the, to the archives, and I spoke to the deleting scholar librarian, and I asked her, do you have any writing in Arabic from the slaves? And she said, No, but we do have Amharic. That's the Ethiopian language. So I said, Okay, can I see the Amharic so she brought documents, which were Arabic documents written in the MongoDB script of West Africa, really? And it was the sort of follow up and NASS and quilombola.
*. Yeah, she thought it was Amharic. Right, because she didn't know the script of the Moroccan script, right, which is what the West Africans wrote in. And literally this slave was seeking refuge in a law from the from the devil.
Then she brought out this information on one of the islands and it said in the island of exuma
Which is an island now in the Bahamas. The majority of the slaves were followers of Muhammad. And it literally said the word the majority of which meant the majority of the slaves on that island were Muslims. So you can piece it together. Also Mandingo when they use the word Mandingo, this is a Mandingo slave, it generally referred to the men de mandinka Muslims, again coming from West Africa, Senegal, Gambia, you know that region there is mandinka. You can also see in the names, like for instance, the name, Abu Bakar. in West Africa, they say Boubacar
right, and then that name turns into Booker.
So you see, like Booker T, Washington, right, right, right. This name Booker is coming with tracing it through to Abu Bakar.
We also found, for instance, on the coast of the United States, that there was a solid bill Ali and Bill Ali, Mohammed, famous Muslim leaders were big families. And so the, you know, the bill Ali family, especially in the Apollo islands off the coast of Georgia,
they were no slave masters named Bailey. They took that name bill Ali, and they said Baylor, and then they said Bailey, so anybody named Bailey,
who lived in the Carolinas or Georgia was more than likely from this bill alley family. Okay, we can trace it now. And it's interesting because Frederick Douglass, who was a famous African American abolitionist, his mother was a Bailey.
So literally, you can piece you can start to take the names, you'll get a poster of a runaway slave. And then you can see the Muslim name.
And you can start piecing things together. Arabic documents come to the surface.
We even have now whole code ends written from memory of a slave, really, the writing of the Maliki scholars because they were basically Maliki in their jurisprudence. The reseller of Abizaid, okay, domani, written by slaves, my hand by hand. And so they were literally circulating these documents amongst themselves and information is coming to the surface, especially in Brazil, and the Caribbean. And we have some parts of the United States as well documentation written, and so there are certain names of individuals that come to the surface. There's a few of them, I can give you a few of the famous ones. For instance, you have IU, Eben Sulaiman, okay. And are you been Sulaiman?
Of course they call them Joe, Ben Solomon. Okay. BUTCHER, right. He was born in 1700. In Bundu, that's Eastern Senegal, okay. And he was enslaved and taken to Maryland, he was a scholar.
And he literally, when he was enslaved in Maryland, he would pray five times a day. And he would write, you know, in Arabic, so the slave master realized that this person is not going to be a good field hat. So let me use him as an accountant, and to keep the records because he's really good with writing. And his Arabic, you know, got to somebody in the government. And surprisingly enough, the American government had a treaty with the Sultan of Morocco,
who had made a treaty with George Washington, and the first country to recognize the United States was Morocco. And within the treaty, it said any more, which meant Muslim, you know, from North Africa, but meaning Muslim anymore, who was taken as a slave should be immediately released. So when the American government solid, this man was literate in Arabic, and a scholar, they said, No, we're supposed to release him. So they released a new urban Sulaiman and he visited Washington and he visited London, England. He wrote the whole quote, and from his memory, and he returned to West Africa, another famous
West African scholar, leader,
his name was up there are men of the rough man, even Ibrahim and he is called Prince Prince among slaves. Right, the fortunate slave right. And this there was a book written by Terry alpha, do you know about him and is also a docu drama, right. That was done. He was born in Timbo, educated in Timbuktu. This is in what is now Guinea. And in 1762, he was enslaved in Mississippi. And he came into Mississippi and when he looked at the plantation, he said, This is ridiculous. We have our kingdoms are 10 times the size of this, but and he was a prince and and the poor slave master, who got control of him, couldn't believe that he was actually
And Amir or Prince. So you just beat him down. And so I'm gonna call you Prince.
And we made him a slave. He tried to run away he couldn't get away. It's it's, it's it's a really emotional story. Yes. Finally, his writing was noticed by a newspaper producer. And he informed somebody in the government when they recognize he was literate. They had him freed, because that's the treaty, right? And he eventually made it home. There's also the story of Yato Muhammad, who was born in the 1700s, and he died at the age of 128 70 years as a slave. Yara Mohamad see his face, he still has like no, like light coming out of his face. He's like the patriarch of African Muslim slaves in the United States. And you have the story of Omar Urban's say it
was a great scholar, he wrote so many of his documents in Arabic, his autobiography, his documents are in museums in the United States. Now, you can literally read his autobiography written in the Arabic language. You have Mohammed Kaaba, who was from a place called buka, which is in Guinea using the malinka people. And he was studying to be a judge.
And he was captured at 20 years old, and he was deported to Jamaica. You also have Abubakar Siddiqa, who was a scholar studied in Timbuktu, which was a great center of learning university or University of St. Cody. So he studied there, he was captured and brought to, you know, Jamaica, and some of his writings are actually available today. It's amazing his story, because, you know, he says that, you know, I come from a family of scholars and we raise our children meticulously and mannerisms and, you know, but I have been captured. And I just, you know, he said, you know, follow the unwritten law, you know, I just give my my life to Allah subhanaw taala. And he was part of a group of Muslim
scholars and slaves in Kingston, Jamaica, who were writing to other slaves in the countryside of Jamaica. And there was a med magistrate who came from England, Robert Madden was his name.
And he was overseeing the dddd change from slavery to indentured labor, because slavery was being abolished in the British colonies. And they were bringing in indentured laborers from India and Java.
So this was his job. He had served in Syria, so he knew some Arabic And he knew Muslims. Okay, so he,
he came amongst these slaves, and he heard Arabic. So he gathered them all together. And he said to them, La ilaha illAllah. And he said, they all started saying the whole Quran that he said, quiet, who are you?
And they said, were Muslims. Then he recognized that there was a group of them in Kingston, Jamaica, and they were literally writing to the countryside. And it is around 1812. There's a document called watseka
which was being circulated in the countryside of Jamaica.
And literally, it caused the rebellion. Now, we are trying to trace this watseka, to a document made by a great scholar in West Africa, was named check with mengden folio. And he wrote a document called watseka. Urban foodie Illa, Allah Sudan. This is the treatise of Eben the son of foodie den folio to the people of Sudan, meaning the black people, the black regions, because there was Western Sudan and Eastern Sudan.
This document called people to resistance in those days, and so this what deca was being sent around in Jamaica, boom, slave rebellion.
You have this popping up all over the place in 1835.
And this is an amazing story. There was slaves taken from Nigeria from the coast of Nigeria,
Yoruba, hausa
Fulani, but especially the Yoruba, and amongst these slaves were scholars, and they succeeded in the area called Bahia and the Salvatore region of Brazil. They succeeded in opening up a territory, and they were governing the terrible territory with Sharia law. And they had an Amir and they literally, you know, had it to the point where the Portuguese gave many of them boats and said, Go back to Africa. I can't deal with we can't handle you people anymore. Right. And so you know what I found out, I went I was in Nigeria, doing lectures and I was taken
The Oba
This is like two years ago the Oba of the Yoruba, which is the leading figure of the yoruba religion. And it turns out he's a Muslim.
And I visited his palace in Lagos. And I mentioned to about the slaves in Brazil. And he said, No, we have a Brazilian mosques in Lagos. We have masjids in Lagos, Nigeria, built by Brazilian slaves, who returned to Nigeria. And we still have the community now and we celebrate one who had gone to Brazil revolted, and then come back, come back, and you can pray in the masjid right now. Wow. It's an amazing story.
And Muslims along with other people, they had forms of resistance. There was even a form of martial arts called Kappa.
And this is where they sort of like dancing around.
Right, you breakdancer but you move like that? You strike right? Yeah. So it's this hidden resistance Muslims were involved in this beginning of Kappa Huerta and the resistance movements in Brazil,
in Suriname, which is Dutch Guyana,
and that you have British Guiana, French Guyana and Dutch Ghana. So in the Dutch pot, there was a big slave revolt. This is another Maroon revolt and a big revolt against the Dutch and the leader of the revolt his name was out of be
like out it'd be like, like, I called him out to be right. And they call them bush blacks. Okay. Right. And his is one of his generals was called Zamzam. Like you drink Zamzam water from Mecca, right, yeah. And they defeated the Dutch and they went into the interior, and the treaty was made. And nobody ever conquered them. And recently, when I was in Guyana, Georgetown, a contingent came from Suriname, and this is a place that we get a chance to visit. They came in, they said, Come to Suriname, we are descendants of the bush blacks. Were coming back in Islam.
So there's hundreds of people returning to Islam going to their roots, and recognizing, you know what they have to give. Another interesting story is Haiti. Haiti is known for the great rebellion of Tucson Lovato. But what is not so known is that the beginnings of the rebellion against the French in Haiti, which is Hispaniola, you got Dominican Republic and Haiti. So this is the French side. It began on the plantations. And two of the great leaders in the plantation revolts was one comecon, Dell, and another name Bookman.
And these were called Mara boo.
And that's sort of a Senegalese way of saying it's really more robit from the Barbie tune, right, which goes back to the great Morabito movement, when they say it in Senegal, it means like a roving scholar, itinerant cleric. And so these Malibu's began the resistance on the plantation. And it was the great general to sock Lovato organized the resistance, and defeated the French and it was the first African group in the Western world to win their independence, and resisted all forms of debt being punished up until now, because of this resistance, but a lot of people don't realize that it was Muslims were deeply involved with the Haitian Revolution, and you say, resistance. I mean, these
are former captured slave peoples who are fighting with what I mean, they don't even really have like weapons or anything. And they're fighting against, you know, the quote, unquote, advanced European weaponry and stuff like that. So I mean, their revolt in and of itself is really miraculous, because they were working against all odds. That's right. But what a lot of people don't recognize is that many of the slaves are coming from highly organized societies. And so therefore, like in the case of Abdul Rahman, Ibn Ibrahim, you know, from from the blue area, from Timbo, he actually he was an Amir. He was captured after a battle. So they literally new battle formations,
everything and they will organize and they brought a lot of that resistance, that ability. They're an ambush people these No, no, these are serious fighters. Yeah. And it came out in Haiti, with this great rebellion. You also have an interesting story of a woman. Her name was old, Lizzie gray, okay. And
she was Muslim and well known, and they forced her to accept Christianity.
And so, you know, the missionary is like to make fun of Muslims. So they say, can you tell us something about Christ? And this is what Lizzie gray said. She said, Christ built the first church in Mecca, and his grave was there. Now you have to realize they're talking in riddles. Yes. So she actually met Medina, right? Because the knowledge is all pieced together.
So who's the Christ? Who is first gravers in like, Medina, his grave is that she's talking about the Prophet Muhammad. That was Jesus to her. Right? Then you have the case of other men
who was a missionary and we still have this document. The missionary
says, I want you to write the Lord's Prayer in Arabic. He's making fun of him not right. Yeah. So he said, Okay. And then he wrote the Lord's Prayer. And the document says, This is the Lord's Prayer, written at my request, by the to the free slave by prince who was accepted Christianity. This is written in Arabic. Now the Lord's Prayer, as we know, says, Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name to the end, which in Arabic should say, Rob buena, Allah de for summer, something like that. When you look at the document, it says, lord's prayer in Arabic, and you read the document, it says Bismillah R Rahman r Rahim, Al hamdu Lillahi Rabbil aalameen. He wrote Al Fatiha, which is the
opening chapter of the Quran.
That's resistance right that was the Lord's Prayer in his opinion. So that is resistance now do that the slave master the missionary So you see, I made fun of him. So up until the day of judgment, you will see his resistance, you know, which is which is there in the documents. Another interesting story of the freedmen, dingoes mandinka of Trinidad now mandinka people in West Africa, very strong nation. And that's why whenever somebody starts rebellion or if he's too muscular, they say you're Mandingo right and it becomes like a wild but I always thought it would refer to like the fighting slaves right? So you say you a while back does they say these NBA guys slam dunking LeBron James
Mandingo, right? What it actually refers to is the mandate people are mandinka. And they are the people who actually traded in early times, spread Islam across West Africa. We even have proof of mandinka coming across the Atlantic before Columbus, from the time of the great Mali Empire, when Mansa Musa went, you know, to Mecca, but his his predecessor, Abu Bakar, came across the Atlantic with 2000 ships. So these mandinka people made it into the Americas. before Columbus, we have records of it, they even reached up into the United States. And so
the slave masters would recognize them. And so whenever you see the word Mandingo being used, more than likely it was a Muslim.
And so they were Mandingo, Muslims, you know who in the island of Trinidad.
They formed, they they freed themselves from slavery. And some of them actually, you know, join the British regiments, because there is, you know, the British were the first, you know, to end slavery and to, you know, give people ways of menu mission, where you could actually buy your freedom, right. So they literally bought their freedom early. And they formed the Society of Muslims outside of Port of Spain, in Trinidad. And they were so successful in their growing of crops, that Trinidad was reported to have had, you know, a great famine, and they were literally feeding the people of, you know, Trinidad, you know, back in this early time, 1700s, you know, feeding the people, and they
used to go to the boats, and any Muslims that they would see, they would buy them, you know, freeze them, and then, you know, take them there. And so this was a major area. And it's interesting, because, you know, it is Trinidad of all the places in the Caribbean region, is where,
in the 70s 80s and 90s. And up until now, to a certain extent, the fastest rate of people coming into Islam, predominantly African trinidadians is actually is from Trinidad, it's the fastest rate in the whole of the Americas. They had probably a higher proportion than even the United States anywhere else. Because there's a strong tradition within their culture. The culture of Afro trinidadians is a very strong tradition from the Mandingo people. And you can literally see the ruins of masjids. You know, Eunice Spath was was a famous Muslim. He had a community in Port of Spain. There's traces of his Masjid there in Port of Spain.
We we you know, last year we had a big celebration for Yunus back there in Trinidad. So it means Afro trinidadians can literally see the connection in their roots, which traces are right back, you know, to their Islam, and all the way back to the earliest law.
And so you find this in a number of places there in the in the Caribbean.
And in the United States, you know, some amazing stories of the Muslims. I think a lot of this puts into context. The point that we're trying to get across with this series and celebrating the achievements, I mean, this idea of resistance, even in the face of such adversity is really I mean, a point of celebration. Like that's something notable that we should be, you know, celebrating the fact that these people, although they were put in that situation, they were able to fight back and that spirit of resistance still is something that today as Muslims, we still should embody in the face of adversity. So, thank you everyone for watching. This is another great session. I hope you
all were able to benefit in sha Allah, please do spread this knowledge with your friends and family inshallah, stay tuned for the last session coming up after this one, which is going to be something a little bit more relevant to today's society in Sharla. So please do stay tuned for that as well as like a little hidden for watching and secondly head and forsake Abdullah for sharing this beautiful message with us. Hopefully, we'll see you all next time. Assalamu alaykum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh