U.S.: Creating history to claim the West for Islam

Sylviane A. Diouf, a research scholar at the Schomberg Center for Research on Black Culture and an award-winning author of Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas, discussed the backgrounds of slaves who were brought to America between 1560 and 1860. At least 100,000 were Muslims, political and religious leaders in their communities, as well as traders, students, Koranic teachers, judges and, in many cases, more educated than their American masters. As slaves, they were prohibited from reading and writing and had no ink or paper. Instead they used wood tablets and organic plant juices or stones to write with. Some wrote, in Arabic, verses of the Koran they knew by heart, so as not to forget how to write. Arabic was also used by slaves to plot revolts in Guyana, Rio de Janeiro and Santo Domingo because the language was not understood by slave owners. Manuscripts in Arabic of maps and blueprints for revolts were found here as well as in Jamaica and Trinidad.

Somebody kept really good records, you know. If these "Muslim slaves" used wood tablets and "stones" to write, from where did the "manuscripts" come? I hate to nitpick, but words mean things.

This is part of the Islamic agenda to claim the New World for Islam. Just imagine, 100,000 of the slaves who came to the New World had what it takes to set up the New World branch of the caliphate. Now, how can this be true in the absence of any residue of Islamic practice amongst Caribbean blacks? Obviously, it can't. However, sometimes repeating a lie often enough will establish it as "fact"; at least, that's what the Soviet propagandists thought and acted on.

The Caribbean has a rich history of traditional African religion. Orisha, by its many names is strong and thriving throughout the Caribbean and South America today. Call it Shango, Santeria, Candomble, Rada, or whatever you want to, Orisha survived the Middle Passage and is alive and well. Yoruba and Twi are the languages which have survived and make themselves known in Caribbean English.

Had there been an Islamic tradition amongst the African slaves who peopled the New World, that too would have survived in terms of language and worship practice. That it did not points to its absence. One might argue that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence; however, in this case, it very well might be so given the tenacity of African slaves regarding their religious traditions. If in Grenada and TT in 2004 one can find Orisha who sing Yoruba chants to the deities, even though the meanings of the words may be unknown, one cannot find any historically Islamic body of African ancestry with a similar retention of language and worship.

Today, there is instead is a well organized effort to create a history for Islam where none exists. Hence the assertion of an approximate percentage or number of "Islamic slaves" and their categorization as "political and religious leaders" of Islam. Once Islamists succeed at this goal, it is but a short step to stating that these "Islamic slaves" -- supposedly more educated than their slave masters -- had claimed the New World for Islam. The catch is that Islamics believe that once a territory has been claimed for Islam it forever belongs to that ideology and must be reclaimed should people of the Jewish or Christian or other faith inhabit the land.

Thus, this "discovery" of an ancient Islamic foothold in the New World is seen as part of a strategy to establish just cause for jihad against all the West.That this strategy has been accompanied by terrorist tactics is evident from the events that occurred in TT where Yasin Abu Bakr, who believes these fables, has declared his intention to recover and restore the Islamic identity of Caribbean blacks and create an Islamic country within TT itself.

Hopefully, the West is looking on at what Islamization and Arabization really means for the history and culture of any peoples. Lest we doubt, we need to pay heed to the words of TT-born Nobel Laureate Vidiadhar S. Naipaul who compares Islam's disastrous impact on the world with colonialism, stating that

Islam ... had both enslaved and attempted to wipe out other cultures."It has had a calamitous effect on converted peoples. To be converted you have to destroy your past, destroy your history. You have to stamp on it, you have to say 'my ancestral culture does not exist, it doesn't matter'."

Sir Vidia claimed what he called "this abolition of the self demanded by Muslims was worse than the similar colonial abolition of identity. It is much, much worse in fact... You cannot just say you came out of nothing."

He argued that Pakistan was the living proof of the damage Islam could wreak.

"The story of Pakistan is a terror story actually. It started with a poet who thought that Muslims were so highly evolved that they should have a special place in India for themselves.

"This wish to sift countries of unnecessary and irrelevant populations is terrible and this is exactly what happened in Pakistan."

If Pakistan is insufficient an object lesson, then we need only look at Sudan and Nigeria where Islamization and Arabization produce genocide.