Conversion and Orientalism
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Diouf highlights the perseverance of Muslim African slaves as they fought against forced Christian conversations by colonial powers. Although many Muslim Africans continued to practice Islam in secrecy, many colonial powers punished and tormented Muslim African slaves because they contested Christian conversion which often resulted in consequences including abuse and even deportation. Diouf discusses contrasting discussions by colonial states to convert Muslim African slaves.
On one hand, colonizing states, such as the French Caribbean, enforced Christian conversation on Muslim Africans as an “endeavor to turn them into good Catholics” (Diouf 73). It progresses the idea of the Occident control on the Orient, where the culture, in this case, religion, of the Orient (Muslim Africans) is viewed as inferior, backward or barbaric, and in this case ‘stupid’. The resistance to conversion that many Muslim Africans fought against was justified as stupidity for not properly understanding the Christian religion, emphasizing the Occidental idea of cultural superiority. Orientalist ideology also influenced the notion that a forced conversion to Christianity would lead to the experience of a ‘good life’ by African Muslim slaves. It progresses the idea that the occident is a saviour and helper for the ‘backward’ orient. The difference between the treatment of non-Christian Europeans, and non-Christian African slaves also inherently reflects oriental ideologies. It maintained how the West conceptualized the East, specifically objecting their “illegal” religions, perceiving them as backward and fundamentally wrong. This distinctly contracted with the perception of non-Christian Europeans whose religious identity was not as harshly contested. The disparity reveals that forced Christian conversion onto Muslim Africans was not always necessarily related to religion, but bore broadly to colonial oriental control.
The resilience that Muslim African slaves exhibited throughout their fight against Christian conversion produces a sort of counter-narrative to orientalism by challenging the perception of Muslim Africans (an oriental subject) as passive and submissive. Their decision to present as Christian on the outside while continuing to practice Islam exemplifies their resistance strength, and desire to preserve their religion, an imperative part of their cultural identity.