Customer Reviews

African Muslims in Antebellum America: Transatlantic Stories and Spiritual Struggles

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Austin's book brings to light an under-examined aspect of African Islam's role in early North America. The short biographical stories of African Muslims have never failed to capture students' imaginations in my classes. A good read and an excellent addition to reading lists for American and African-American History surveys.

The book is certainly an excellent source of knowledge about a unique facet of the transatlantic slave trade that is frequently overlooked and marginalized. This account, describing the lives of dozens of African Muslims in North America and elsewhere in the New World should serve as a catalyst for further study into the roots of the Muslim American experience. The less than perfect score is due less to the author's compilation, and more to the dearth of extant sources available for analysis. A more in depth study into the lives of existing Muslim communities in places like British Guyana and in Trinidad would likely yield a more comprehensive picture. The account is excellent, but it is by no means definitive, and much research remains to be conducted and codified.

This is one of those books whose contents might be a total surprise. While it is known that fragments of Africana culture survived the terrible Middle Passage to America, surely nothing of organised religion? Indeed, were not the European slavers successful in eradicating almost any trace of a pre-existing culture?

But, wonder! A few slaves were Muslim, and managed to preserve this after a fashion in colonial America, whereas the Christianity for most came from the slavers.

Perhaps a simple look at a map and history might make this not a surprise. Islam had moved into central and west Africa by the 1600s. Those areas, after all, are continguous to Arabia. And given that by 1000, Islam had reached across North Africa, by another 500 years, it had penetrated south past the Sahara. By contrast, in those years, there were negligible numbers of Christians in Africa. Such existed mainly in the Portuguese colonies of what are nowadays Angola and Mozambique.

From what partial records survive, the author has done remarkable job of reconstructing something that has languished in the shadows for centuries.

It is about time that someone documented with accuracy the origins of some of the earliest Muslims in America. My congratulations to the author, Allan D. Austin.

This is a great book that every black man and woman must read. The struggle of African Slaves enslaved in the Americas must be taught. We owe a great debt to them so we must not let there legacy be forgotten. There legacy will be alive as long as we teach our children about who they were and what was their culture, religion and heritage they once had.
Let the truth be heard to all those who can hear.

There is nothing 'unusual' about the fact that some of the slaves who came here from Africa were muslims who were highly educated and cultured men. This book makes it very difficult to put all African Slaves into the catagory of uncivillized heathens

This book is nine chapters of mostly biographical information of muslims from west africa who got caught in the north american slave trade. The first two chapters are an overview the muslims and historical accounts. Chapters 3-9 concentrate on the lives of some of the most well known muslims and what others wrote about them.

The reason why I didn't give this book five stars is because of the author's use of Ar-Rahman as if it is Ibrahim 'adurraHmaan's last name. In the muslim faith, it is blasphemous to refer to a person as Ar-RaHmaan or any of the other names of allah (god). This may seem like a small issue to most, but it is a very serious issue because the author is showing his ignorance of Islam and spreading ignorance among the readers who know little or nothing about Islam. The readers of this book will see the casual use of ar-Rahman and think that it's ok to use it for short 'adurraHmaan. Since the author has a Ph.D, I think he should have had knowledgeble muslims read through his book before publication.