Book Review: Servants of Allah

Servants of Allah, African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas
by Sylviane A. Diouf

This book reads like a PhD paper, not that I've read many of those. Diouf builds step by step to a conclusion that there were a significant number of Muslims brought from Africa to the New World and that they had a profound impact on the society around them, even if they were not successful in handing down their faith to the generation that followed them.

She espouses to a view that stories that highlight their influence have been suppressed both deliberately and by self-imposed censorship by the Muslims themselves, in an attempt to gain their freedom or greater responsibilities.

The most interesting facet of the book to me was the chapter in which she focused on the literacy of many well-educated Muslims who became slaves, often after being captured in religous wars and then sold to slavetraders. Some of them were able to rewrite the Koran from memory on whatever scraps of paper they could obtain.

They even used their Arabic literacy to write notes that could not be read by their owners in order to plan at least one uprising and to communicate within a network of Muslims both in the Americas and still back in Africa.

I would not recommend this book to the faint of heart as it is very detailed and academic. It is an enlightening read as she considers the origins of names and words that suggest Muslim influence, and how that carries forward into the continued religious practices of those in the Caribbean.

It does not tie-in any lessons that can be learned for modern times; it is only a look at the past that many of us have probably spent very little time contemplating. It is useful in trying to imagine how one's own faith would hold up if you were enslaved in a country hostile to your religous beliefs and likely cut-off from your family members.

Well... what else did you expect me to do on the plane today?