Our Islamic Roots (Part 1)
by Valerie Dixon B.Ed, MBA

It is said that the more things change, the more things remain the same. I was in First Form (Grade 7) when I first heard of the Maroons, and I sat transfixed when the story of how they fought the British for 80 years (1655-1739) and finally won the Maroon Wars, was told to me. I felt exceptionally good when the white English form teacher explained that the Maroons were the only people to have beaten the British in battle. Then she had to spoil the story. She told me that their leader Cudjoe, a fine Black warrior, bowed down and kissed the feet of Colonel John Guthrie at the signing of the Peace Treaty. I was shattered - why would anyone be so subservient, especially at a time when they should be standing proud and tall? I received no answer that made sense to me. The question remained in my heart.

While at school, I studied History right up to the Sixth Form level. I learnt a lot about the Incas, Aztecs, Mayans, the Slave Trade, European History and about Peter the Great of Russia 'who opened his window to the West.' As far as I can recall, I learnt that Africans were considered as being only two-thirds human, they were subservient and practiced obeah and myalism and that the majority of the Africans who came to Jamaica came from West and Central Africa.

I was the Chairman of the Manchester Cultural Development Committee (MCDC) at the time when I met Dr. Sultana Afroz. She is from Bangladesh and has been in Jamaica for the past 17 years. She is a lecturer in the Department of History at the University of the West Indies (UWI) and is currently doing extensive research on the Maroons and other aspects of Jamaican history. I asked her what peaked her interest in Maroon History and she told me that while visiting in Portland, she heard some people greet each other with the words AS SALAAMU ALAIKUM which translates in English as - Peace be onto you. She, being a Muslim, was curious to know how these Jamaicans came to be speaking in Arabic and she was told that they were Maroons.

Before divulging further aspects of our Islamic heritage, I need to quote from Sahakian's Due Diligence Tips. Tip number 12 says: "There is nothing more dangerous or difficult than bringing about change. There are always people who benefit from maintaining the status quo. They will see what they have to loose, and will fight to keep it. While there are always people who will benefit from change, it is hard for them to know, or see how they will benefit from change. Even then, people will fight harder to keep something they have, than they will fight to obtain something they don't have." The majority of Jamaicans, who are Black, don't have high self-esteem. They have very little reason to feel good about themselves, their fellow Jamaicans, or their environment. They treat these areas of their lives with little or no respect.

So when Dr. Afroz quoted to me from Phillip Curtin's book - The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census and also from Sylviane A Diouf's book - Servants of Allah: African Muslims enslaved in the Americas; where they both said that approximately 56% of the Africans who came to Jamaica came from the Muslim dominated areas of West and Central Africa, I didn't know whether to laugh in disbelief, scorn or glee. Diouf, a scholar from Senegal, wrote "Therefore, if counted as a whole on a religious basis, rather than on an ethnic one, the Muslims were probably more numerous in the Americas than any other group among the arriving Africans." However, one must bear in mind that truth, like beauty, just 'is'. She also gave me her paper entitled "From Moors to Maroonage - The Islamic Heritage of the Maroons" to read and I literally went into shock. It gave me the answer to the question that had plagued me from First Form (Grade 7). Cudjoe did not kiss Colonel Guthrie's feet. Cudjoe was a Muslim, so he prostrated himself on the ground, which is the way Muslims pray even to this very day. Cudjoe was giving thanks to Allah (God) for giving his people the victory. The Europeans who reported the 'feet kissing' were only observers who came to witness the signing of the Peace Treaty and were obviously ignorant to the ways of Islam. Yet every word they reported has been taken as if coming from the Bible. No history book in my school had ever shown me a picture of 'prostration', much less to explain it.

I invited Dr. Afroz to present this paper at a two-day symposium put on by MCDC in collaboration with the Northern Caribbean University. Dr. Afroz was resplendent in her delivery to a jam-packed audience made up of students of all levels, government officials and highly placed civil servants, persons from JCDC and a group of Muslims. There was a Kodak moment that no one was prepared for - when it was their prayer time, the Muslims filed orderly out of the auditorium and unfurled their prayer mats in the direction of the East and bowed down (prostration) and said their prayers on the grounds of a Christian institution. Jamaica is indeed a unique and blessed country. Where else in the world, especially at a time like now, could something like this ever happen?

Dr. Afroz and I began our search for Islam in Jamaica, and after following many leads, we were led to Maidstone, a district in North West Manchester. Eureka! There was Islam. We also found a district called Medina, which is close to Maidstone. Medina is the second most important city in the lives of Muslims, Mecca being the first. The Prophet Mohammed lived and carried out his spiritual mission in Medina and it is his final resting place. Islam was obviously so strong in this region of Manchester, that neither the British nor Christianity could completely wipe it out. It must be pointed out that the first ever written Constitution, called Wathiqa meaning 'The Document' was given to mankind by Prophet Mohamed from Medina. In this same region in Manchester, is a property called Timbuktu. When Jamaicans want to disparage each other, one tells the other - yu a idiat a mus a Timbuktu yu come fram. Timbuktu was far from being a 'idiat place'. Timbuktu was a Muslim place of higher learning (a university) established in the 10th century and is situated in Mali, the former Sudanic Kingdom, a country in Central Africa. Contrary to popular belief, a university is a Muslim concept. In his book Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill writes "When the crusaders entered the city (Jerusalem), centuries later, not a Muslim man, woman, or child was spared. But the Christians did accept one Muslim idea --the place of learning, the university." Timbuktu is still in our subconscious.

NEW JAMAICAN Vol.1