What Black America Must Know About the Role of Islam in Slave Rebellions

From Malcolm X to Safiya Bukhari, Islam in Black America has been renowned for the spirit of resistance it has imbued into its followers against racism.  What Black America must know is that figures such as Malcolm X who stood firmly against racism were not an anomaly but rather history shows that  Islam among African adherents actualized powerful resistance against white supremacy. This article focuses on the formidable role that Islam has played in slave rebellions.

It is imperative to educate the Black community about their heritage and culture. Black Americans should learn about how Islam has historically aided Black people against injustice. Nowhere is this illustrated more than in the central role Muslims played in rebellions on slave ships and plantations. The first time the word Jihad was used in the Americas was in reference to slave revolts. This means that from the very beginning Islam in the West was associated with the fight against racial oppression.

Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin (formerly H. Rap Brown) said that when the first African resisted slavery, he presented another alternative to slavery. This sounds elementary, but it is pregnant with wisdom about the possibility created by resistance. By resisting the most overt expression of oppressive rule, it simultaneously rendered resistance to any other lesser forms of oppression possible. What African-Americans should know about the role of Islam in such opposition is that it gave purpose and discipline. It turned liberation from an idea and a longing to an organized resistance.

What Black America Must Know About the Role of Islam in the Bahia rebellion

Historian João José Reis called the Bahia slave revolt “the most effective urban slave rebellion ever to occur on the American continent.”^[1] In 1835, enslaved African Muslims launched an attack on the coastal city of Brazil in the northeastern sugarcane plantation called Bahia. Significantly, the revolt took place on what they believed was Laylat ul Qadir, the ‘Night of Power.’ The anniversary of when the Quran was first revealed to Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. They were fasting as it was the month of Ramadan. On this occasion, the worshipper spends all night reading the Quran, engaging in dhikr (litanies for the remembrance and praise of Allah), and tarawih (extended late-night prayers). The revolt was an extension of their worship. It was led by Muslim scholars who were versed in the shariah (Islamic law) and comprehended the significance of violently ridding slavery from their lives. These were African born Muslims from present-day Nigeria, then Yorubaland. Their erudition signified the intellectual culture from whence they came. The rebellion itself exhibited praxis, which is a hallmark of what would become the Black Muslim Tradition. Knowledge and worship were to go hand-in-hand with action.^[2]

One of the revolutionaries, Pacifico Licutan also called “the sultan,” kept referring to himself as Bilal (RA) during his interrogation.^[3] Bilal had been a slave in Arabia during pre-Islamic times but was liberated by the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. He would become an exemplary warrior and companion of the Prophet’s ﷺ and the first muezzin. The relevancy is evident to those who see this uprising as the new formation of a New World Muslim tradition. Bilal went from slave to free with the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ in Arabia, and this revolt was inspired by that prophetic mission.

In black Africa, Arabic was not just the language of liturgy and literacy but its function as a trans-tribal script enabled cognitive unity to take place across ethnic boundaries, which proved useful for resistance in the New World. This is evident when looking at the Muslim slave rebellions versus other revolts where the Muslim role was not as prominent. The presence of Muslim scholars ensured the religious integrity of these revolutions, which they saw as an extension of their humanity.

When the uprising in Brazil was thwarted it was revealed just how industrious and ingenious the revolutionaries were. They had created African Islamic networks that connected the plantation with the motherland. Muslim merchants and sailors likely smuggled them books into the country, making their way into the hands of the enslaved. These Muslim slaves established Quranic schools that nurtured their Islam and appetite for liberation. This accomplishment required cooperation between individuals and groups that maybe would not have gotten along under normal circumstances. On a deeper level, it required a collective consciousness that was politically unified. ‘Politically’ here means that most everyone agreed on liberation and what must be done to achieve it.

What Black America Must Know About the role of Islam in the Haitian Rebellion

The Bahia revolt had been inspired by the Haitian revolution about fourteen years earlier. They wore necklaces bearing the image of Dessalines. Fugitive slaves in Jamaica built independent communities in the hills and mountains. The Maroon Leader in Haiti, François Mackanda, would carry out raids on the French Corps. He would often use symbolism to speak about fate. One day I stood in front of a gathering with three glasses of water and three handkerchiefs: one yellow, one white, and one black. He pulled the yellow handkerchief out of the glass and said that this represents the first inhabitants of the island. He then pulled out the white and said this one represents the present inhabitants of the island. Lastly, he pulled out the black handkerchief and said this represents the future masters of the island.^[4]

Macandal was the most famous Maroon revolutionary. Born in Guinea and most likely a Mandingo, he was of noble pedigree. His family were prominent marabouts. Marabouts in Africa are Muslim mystics who are said to have access to the unseen realm. The belief that he could predict the future is part of what made this a revolution based on revelation. He made amulets, which the French called Macandal.

As mentioned, Macandal believed that the Maroon revolution would lead to the creation of a West African Islamic colony. Other slaves, whether Muslim or not, had confidence in him and Boukman, another Haitian Muslim mystic leader. These men had military experience combined with West African Islamic mysticism.

He was a field hand on Haiti’s sugar plantation. He lost his hand while working on the sugar mill and was transferred to a job working with cattle. His longing for freedom led him to become a runaway, and he remained a fugitive for eighteen years. During his escape, he launched attacks killing French. He taught other slaves how to make the poison. He developed a guild of guerrillas who killed French and slaves deemed useless or cooperating with slaveholders to damage the property of the colony and their intelligence. He was so effective at executing that in the eighteen-century Saint Domingue called poison Macandal.^[5]

An essential aspect of their efficacy was their command of the written word. In fact, when the French Colonel charged with fighting the Haitian Maroons inference the impact of their African Islamic education:

“During the wars, I was obliged to do so against the blacks, we often found written papers in the bags or macoutes of the few Negroes we killed…Nobody understood those writings. It was Arabic.”^[6]

What Black America Must Know About the role of Islam in Maroon Rebellions

This was the society that the revolutionaries in the West Indies sought to replicate. In 1807 there were 8,307 Hausa, Nago (Yoruba), and Ewe that landed in Bahia. Bahia was a central importer of Africans from these regions at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It is not too much of a stretch to say that they were attempting to colonize a European colony under Africa. The connection that these slave revolt had with Africa was so secure that historian Enrico Dal Lago indicates that they “followed a similar pattern to the jihad that characterized Sokoto expansion, almost to the point of being a transatlantic extension of the latter in the Americas.”^[7]

The Maroon Wars that took place in Jamaica also demonstrate the Islamic motivation behind revolutions. Historian Afroz Sultana has speculated with the sound basis that the Africans in the Maroon war were mujahideen. The communities that these Muslims established in the hills and mountains were Islamic communities set up by Muslim scholars and laymen.^[8] In 1728 the Maroons carried out military campaigns against their slavers. These attacks were enormously costly for the colony of Jamaica as similar rebellions proved for other colonies. Colonies were investments. A tremendous amount of resources from financial to institutional went into making sure they were a success. Anything that threatened the prosperity of the empire had to be addressed. Muslims were confrontational from the beginning. Islam demands that Muslims be free to fulfill their maximum requirements to their Lord. This is why jihad and freedom are a means to this end.^[9]

How the Role of Islam in Slave Rebellions Challenges Black Orientalism

We do not say that only Muslims were revolutionary or that all Muslims were extremists. There were plenty of non-Muslims, Christian, and “traditional African” practitioners who stood up against racial oppression. All of the slave rebellions illustrate the necessity to build a coalition across boundaries. However, unlike Voodoo, Candomblé, Santeria, and Umbanda, which also have origins and roots in Africa, Islam was not only an extension of the Old World but has survived acculturation and enervation. Islam is less porous and demands that its adherents be sovereign. This is what drives black liberation movements and is why Islam has continued to influence black political thought while the others have been almost forgotten.

 Jihad here is not being redefined but expanded. Its essence which is to fight injustice is affirmed here but in a non-classical way. The slave revolts of Bahia, Brazil, the Maroons of Jamaica and Haiti were revolutions by revelation. They were explicitly Islamic, which sought to create trans-Atlantic Muslim communities where their African Islamic identity could be affirmed. We can describe these militant struggles for freedom as part of the jihad that would go on to characterize Muslim resistance to racism in the Western hemisphere. The word jihad means ‘to strive.’ It is a spiritual and physical struggle against injustice. These uprisings reveal that Muslims in the New World considered it their religious mandate to fight enslavement.

These actions show the withdrawal of the consent of the oppressed required for the system to maintain itself. The system secures this consent through intimidation, mis-education (indoctrination into the values and logic of their world), economic deprivation, political marginalization, and cultural sabotage. Islam is the most viable agent of change because it is not produced by the very system that it is fighting.

  Why The White Power Structure Fears Islam

The historian Sylvain Diouf said that Muslims brought with them from Africa education, discipline, and defiance. The revolts which threatened Europe’s empires provoked measures taken against the African Muslims specifically. On May 11, 1526, Spain passed the first in several anti-Muslim legislation. The cédula was a royal edict that forbade the Wolof (who were Muslim) from Senegal and the Muslim tribes from Guinea. The historian Diouf points out that the reason the Wolof were mentioned by name is that they led the first slave revolt in the Americas. 1522, they rose up against slave owners on the sugar plantation of Christopher Columbus’ son-Admiral Don Diego Colon. This was in what is today called the Dominican Republic. Wolof revolted in Puerto Rico, Columbia, and Panama. The Wolof had developed a reputation. Six years after the first edict, the monarchy issued another. In this edict, they were described as “arrogant, disobedient, rebellious and incorrigible.” This is a direct result of Islam itself, which would have caused them to see their captures as unbelievers. Their oppression was magnified by the forced conversions they were to undergo.^[10]

In total, the Spanish issued five pieces of anti-Muslim legislation within the first several decades of settling the New World. In addition to their fear of African Muslim uprisings, the colonists had a suspicion that the Muslims would proselytize to the native Indians. The Wolof Maroons likely sought solidarity with the Indian population who had every reason and precisely a common goal in religious freedom to oppose the Spanish. The encomienda was the name given to the institution of slavery imposed on the Indians under Spanish rule. In this system, the Indians were made to work on plantations, and in the silver and gold mines and in exchange, the Spaniards would “supervise” the material and spiritual needs of the Indians. By “spiritual” needs, they meant conversion to Christianity.

The Pope issued a decree mandating that all slaves be forcibly baptized. And so they were. However, this did not prove enough to stomp out traditional religious practices. What the natives did is what Africans also did, and that disguises their native traditions in the language of their colonizer or native images. The codices of the Nahuatl became methods of pseudo conversion for years until the Spanish discovered and burned them. The Inquisition Tribunal would punish with death; anyone found guilty of “sorcery.” The slave owners considered all African and Native American religions to be sorcery. Since Islam was brought here from Africa, it, too, was considered a traditional African religion.^[11]

Sylvaine Diouf, in her book, Servants of Allah, points out that the Wolof were experienced cavalry warriors. This was the method of warfare used by the Spanish. In Hispaniola, when the Spanish horsemen charged the Wolof revolutionaries, they did not flinch. They used a battle tactic they brought from Africa. They opened their ranks so the Spaniards could pass, then closed and attacked them within while regrouping to deal with the countercharge. By the 1540s, the Wolof had created their own cavalry with horses they stole.  In a letter to the Spanish King, it stressed how these African Muslims were skilled with horse and lance.^[12]

Throughout the New World these slave revolts showed consistency and continuity, from Africa to the Americas. The repetition of their Islamic African identity required tenacity and reflected a rejection of the world order that they were being forced into. Jihad, as a struggle against the vicissitudes of slavery, would symbolize the distinct character of Islam in the West: that of a justice movement. Today, there is a growing disillusionment about the available channels/mediums for change. This stems from having completely embraced the idealism of the system.

The Muslim slaves of Brazil, Haiti, and Jamaica drew towards the notion of freedom by verse (ayat) of the Holy Quran: “Oppression is worse than slaughter.”^[13] Existentially, this prioritizes freedom over being merely alive and liberation over the loss. Even within the slave society of the European settler-colonies, slaves acquired menial ‘luxuries’ and ‘statuses.’ The revolutionaries understood that these accruements were not real gains when existentially they were captive. In fact, the ‘gains’ reinforced the system of oppression by placating them. Islam was a liberating force that freed the mind, which motivated the body, and it was done collectively. These are the virtues that are necessary to bring about actual freedom: A strong sense of identity that is not shaped by the values of the oppressor, a strong sense of obligation and duty to one’s Lord and their people, and losing our fear of death. True liberation is merited by these traits alone.^[14]

Ponder the significance of the first time the word jihad shows up in the Americas, it’s tied to slave revolts. It means that Islam did not enter the New World passively. With all the criticism about religion justifying oppression, there can be no doubt that Islam incited Black people to fight back. For enslaved Africans, Islam made fighting against their enslavement a holy war. By giving them a language to demonize slavery and to see themselves as righteous. That matters. It means Islam in the Americas taught submission to Allah, not the White Man.

^[1] João José Reis, Slave Rebellion in Brazil: The Muslim Uprising of 1835 in Bahia (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), xiii.

^[2] João José Reis, “Slave Resistance in Brazil: Bahia, 1807–1835,” Luso-Brazilian Review 25, no. 1 (1988): 111–44.

^[3] Roger Bastide, The African Religions of Brazil: Toward a Sociology of the Interpenetration of Civilizations (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978).

^[4] Sylviane A. Diouf, Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas (New York: NYU Press, 1998), 151.

^[5] Ibid.

^[6]C. Malenfant, Des colonies, et particulièrement de celle de Saint-Domingue: Mémoire historique et politique (Paris: Audibert, 1814), quoted in Joanne M. Braxton and Maria I. Diedrich, Monuments of the Black Atlantic: Slavery and Memory (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2004), 81.

^[7] Moses E. Ochonu, “Caliphate Expansion and Sociopolitical Change in Nineteenth-Century Lower Benue Hinterlands,” Journal of West African History 1, no. 1 (2015): 133–78, https://doi.org/10.14321/jwestafrihist.1.1.0133.

^[8] Afroz Sultana, “From Moors to Marronage: The Islamic Heritage of the Maroons in Jamaica,” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 19, no. 2 (1999): 161–79, https://doi.org/10.1080/13602009908716434.

^[9] Charles R. Foy, Ports of Slavery, Ports of Freedom: How Slaves Used Northern Seaports’ Maritime Industry to Escape and Create Trans-Atlantic Identities, 1713–1783 (PhD diss., Rutgers University–New Brunswick, 2008).

^[10] Diouf, Servants of Allah, 145–46.

^[11] David E. Stannard, American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 60-90.

^[12] Diouf, 148.

^[13] The Holy Quran (2:191).

^[14] The freedom that is meant herein Islamic and Black Muslim discourse is not a freedom from rules, restrictions, or hierarchy. It is a freedom from anything that obstructs the human being from fulfilling their purpose for existing. More will be written about this, but for now, it suffices to say that this concept of freedom rejects the Enlightenment or humanist ideas about the subject.