Muslims in America & the Caribbean - years before Columbus is an interesting article giving a historical overview of some of the early contacts between Muslims and the people of the Caribbean.
While Muslim Situation in the Caribbean from the Muslim World League Journal and Muslims in the Caribbean by Larry Luxner summarize the current condition of Muslims and Islamic institutions on the Caribbean islands.
4 comments:
sadly, when I hear Muslims in the Carribean, the first thing i think of is gitmo :-(
There is a stone located in western Colorado on a remote canyon ledge, overlooking a broad valley with a stream.
Barry Fell has translated the markings, which in his view are in Arabic Ogam, as:
Top: God is strong. Strong to help his right hand.
Front: The Koran is the unique achievement of the prophet pious and tender.
http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf032/sf032p01.htm
note, ogam is an ancient irish script used well before columbus (7th century). the words are arabic but written in the ogam script.
i will be posting more similar stuff if you dont mind, since you might be interested.
"not many people are aware of the Native American contact with Islam that began over one thousand years ago by some of the early Muslim travelers who visited us. Some of these Muslim travelers ended up living among our people....
The last Cherokee chief who had a Muslim name was Ramadhan Ibn Wati of the Cherokees in 1866.
Cities across the United States and Canada bear names that are of Indian and Islamic derivation. Have you ever wondered what the name Tallahassee means? It means that He Allah will deliver you sometime in the future."
(for more details check out http://www.islamworld.net/rim.html)
Ramadhan Ibn Wati's son, son Saladin Watie served on Southern Cherokee delegation to Washington, D.C. to sign a new treaty with the United States at the end of Civil War. He died mysteriously at the age of twenty-one.
Sequoyah, the Cherokee Native-American leader of the nineteenth century, is best known for inventing Cherokee Syllabary in 1821.
As the leader of Western Cherokee, Sequoyah was a peace-loving man who strived to make his people literate, and made substantial effort to unite them. He retained his customary turban and long clothing, typical of Muslims, while on official mission to Washington, D.C. for treaty negotiations. He was the subject of lectures by Samuel Lorenzo Knapp. His famous portrait was done in 1828 by Charles Bird King in Washington, D.C. Suquoyah was not alone in wearing Muslim dress. More than a dozen Native-American leaders of other tribes, including Chippewa, Creek, Iowa, Kansas, Miami, Potawatomi, Sauk & Fox, Seminole, Shawnee, Sioux, Winnebago, and Yuchi, wore the Muslim head dress. Some of them wore distinctly Arab head dress. Their famous portraits published between 1835 and 1870 confirm this fact.
[google his picture, you'll see he's wearing a muslim turban.]
Sequoyah created the syllables for the cherokee language based on the arabic language and other muslim languages influenced by arabic.
http://www.cyberistan.org/islamic/sequoyah1.htm
Thanks silencer...
I may even put some of this material in regular entries...
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