Enslaved African Muslims Helped Build America

01In the year 1807, a wealthy scholar was captured in West Africa, brought to the United States, and sold into slavery.

02His name was Omar ibn Saeed.

03He was 37 years old at the time, and he spent the rest of his life enslaved.

04Saeed was one of many enslaved Muslims in early U.S.

05history.

06Up to 40% of Africans captured and brought to the U.S.

07were from mostly Muslim countries in West Africa.

08Saeed's story might have been forgotten, but he wrote about it in a book called The Life of Omar ibn Saeed.

09The U.S.

10Library of Congress recently received the book, which was written in Arabic.

11The book is one of only a few personal stories written by a slave in America.

12It is also one of the first intimate reports of the early history of Muslims in the United States.

13The book challenges the idea that the U.S.

14is a Christian nation, says Zaheer Ali.

15He is a historian at the Brooklyn Historical Society in New York.

16Ali adds, The book opens us up to the understanding that people who were not Christian helped build the United States.

17Most enslaved African Muslims did not leave written records.

18But we can learn about their lives from public evidence and the memories of their families.

19How long Muslim slaves practiced their faith is unknown.

20Some became Christians.

21Others acted as if they did to better deal with their captors.

22But there is evidence that some remained Muslim.

23Zaheer Ali points to burial places off the U.S.

24state of Georgia.

25Some markers of enslaved people have Islamic signs.

26Also there are some churches, Christian religious buildings, that face east, the direction Muslims face when they pray.

27In addition, some family members say they remember their ancestors using Islamic rugs and prayer beads.

28Sylviane Diouf is a writer and historian of the African diaspora, or Movement from Homeland.

29She says enslaved Muslims also influenced American culture.

30Diouf says slave work songs used beats like those used in Quran recitation and the Islamic call to prayer.

31She points to the song Levy Camp Holler.

32It helped give birth to the musical style called the blues.

33And Zaheer Ali says the banjo and guitar could have come from a traditional West African musical instrument.

34But the most lasting evidence of Muslims in the United States may be a movement among modern African Americans to join the Islamic faith.

35Black Muslims continue to make up the biggest part of the Muslim community in the U.S.

36Ali concludes, I'm Katie Weaver.

37I'm Katie Weaver.

38I'm Katie Weaver.

39I'm Katie Weaver.

40I'm Katie Weaver.