King Zumbi and the Male Movement in Brazil

Abstract

Three great regions of America deserve a Muslim's attedon because of
their Islamic past: Brazil in South America; the Caribbean, which scarcely has
been explored in this tespect; and the United States. Over 12 percent of the
United States' population, and even more in the Caribbean, is of African origin,
whereas Brazil has a similar or greater proportion of African descent.
The enslavement and transportation of Africans to the New World continued
for another three or four centuries after the region's indigenous Indian
populations had either been killed off or driven into the plains and wooc1s.
While knowledge of the original African Muslims in Notth America is vague
ly acknowledged, teseatch is still required on the West Indies. Brazil's case,
however, is clearer due to its proud history of the Palmares republic, which
almost achieved its freedom in the seventeenth century, and the clearly Islamic
nineteenth-century Male movement. As a postscript, the Canudos move
ment in 1897 also contained some Islamic features.
In the Spanish colonies, the decline of the indigenous Indian populations
began quickly. To offset this development, Bartolome de Las Casas (1474-
1566), Bishop of Chiapas, Mexico, suggested the importation of enslaved
Africans to the new colonies, whete they could then be converted to Christianity.
Few persons have exercised such a baneful effect on society as this
man, who is often called the "Apostle of the Indies." However, othes knew
him as the "Enslaver of Africans," especially the Muslims, who he called
"Moots." These facts of African slavery apply to almost all of the Atlantic
coast of the Americas, from Maryland and Virginia to Argentina, as well as
to some countries along the Pacific coast such as Ecuador and Peru. If this
aspect of Muslim history and the Islamic heritage is to be preserved for human
history, we need to devote more study to it.
This tragedy began in the sixteenth century and, after mote than four hundred
years, its effects are still apparent. If those Africans caught and sold into
slavery were educated, as many of them were, they were generally Muslims
and wrote in Arabic. Thus, many educated and literate slaves kept the records
for their sometimes illiterate plantation masters, who often could not read or
make any mathematical calculations, let alone handle formal bookkeeping.
In 1532, the first permanent European settlement was established in Brazil,
a country which since that date has never been wholly cut off from West
Africa: even today trade is carried on with the Guinea coast. Yoruba influence
from Nigeria and Benin has been almost as pervasive in some regions of ...