Resistance through faith and the limit of biographies
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** What reasons does Diouf put forward for the survival of Muslim practices amongst enslaved West Africans in America?**
Muslim practices persisted in the New World while other indigenous African religions did not seem to. Enslaved Africans from non-Muslim religions mixed their native religions with useful aspects of Christianity as there was maybe more room in their religion to incorporate Christian additions. Many Muslims saw Christianity and Islam as fundamentally different and were firm in these theological differences like not accepting the Christian trinity and that Jesus was the son of God. Defying forced conversion was a very dangerous feat. During the forced conversions across the New World (except in the West Indies where Protestantism was the colonial religion. Protestant slaveholders did not participate in forced conversions because Protestant values of freedom and equality contradicted slavery and they were worried enslaved Africans would revolt if they converted). However, many Muslims were openly defiant. Many Muslims had already defended their faith and risked their lives in West Africa during the 16th to 19th century military conflicts and were strong-willed in defiance against this oppressive act. For this reason, Christian priests and missionaries did not prefer Muslims for forced conversions. In fact, Muslim Africans were so persistent in their practice of their faith and resistance that a large Muslim community in Bahia, Brazil led a revolt against slave owners in 1835.
However, defiance was extremely difficult and dangerous for African Muslims, especially when slaveholders would have to pay for each non-Christian slave they owned. But life was challenging nonetheless, the average lifespan of enslaved Africans only being 15 years old. Enslaved Africans had all agency taken away from them. They had no choice in deciding their future, their religion, their location, separating from their loved ones, their language they had to learn based on where they were placed, if they were placed in a plantation or a domestic household, etc. In Canada for example, there was especially a lot of loss as enslaved Africans lived in isolation in domestic families without any community and hope for another person speaking the same language as you. Without any familiarity and all this loss of agency, it makes sense why so many defied (openly or in secret) to practice their faith. Their faith brought them solace and familiarity in a time of incredible deprivation. Many Muslims could still manage to practice 4 out of the 5 pillars of Islam. The Shahada was the safest bet as it could be whispered to yourself in secret. Fasting was another connection to faith and culture while taking agency back from the forced starvations they would have to endure and choosing themselves to abstain from food and water. Zakaat and voluntary sadaqa (in the form of rice and other foods they had access to) was also a way of defying and giving to others while not having much themselves, another invisible and safe form of observing their faith, and perhaps it was a reminder of not only of their faith but their moral high ground against slave owners and Christian missionaries. Since Hajj was not accessible, a practice called shaw’t was done by some that imitated circulating around the Kaaba where men and women would sing, clap, and dance—a practice that still persists in some American Muslim traditions. Like the Moriscos during the Spanish Inquisition, many Muslim Africans also had to practice Taqqiyah and hide their true faith and convert on the outside for their safety.
** Why is an exclusive focus on biography misleading, and what other forms of history-writing need to supplement it? **
GhaneaBassiri says that restricting the narrative to just biographies can lead to many misunderstandings. Individual biographies only form a fraction of the history and it cannot be extrapolated to form the larger narrative for all American, Muslim, and African stories. I think the tendency to paint everyone with the same brush in a single time and place can be very limiting because people are never a monolith and generalizations can have risky implications. GhaneaBassiri also says that limiting your source to just biographies can reduce these stories to “quaint stories of a “fortunate slave” or a “prince among slaves”” (page, 16). Likewise, looking at the author of the biography is crucial. For example, a white supremacist wrote a biography on Umar Ibn Said that labeled his features white and oriental instead of black and commended him for them, saying he was an “Arabian Prince”, a “specimen of white beauty”, and “his hair was straight. His features and form were as perfect as those of an Apollo Belvidere…he was no ordinary person, and was certainly not a negro” (page 19). This author’s account of Umar Ibn Said was extremely racist and engaged in a term that GhaneaBassiri calls “de-negroification” where he disassociated his blackness and any negative stereotypes and dehumanizing conceptions of black people at that time. The author painted Umar Ibn Said as an exception not belonging to the rest of the narrative of Muslim Africans enslaved at that time. GhaneaBassiri also calls this identity of not belonging a “liminal entity”. If we just take biographies for face value and do not consider the context of the author and his racist biases, it can limit the scope of understanding not only Umar Ibn Said’s individual narrative but it is very limiting to the narrative of all enslaved Muslim Africans at that time that the author is saying is unlike Umar Ibn Said.
