Library of Congress “Forced worship stinks in God’s nostrils”: Enslaved Muslims in American ColoniesRoger Williams believed religious conversion had to be informed, heartfelt, willing, and genuine. According to him, forced worship was an affront to God. Or as he wrote, "forced worship stinks in God's nostrils." Williams was adamant that commanding people’s faith—a violation of soul liberty—was a serious sin. He warned that the mandatory religious conversion of colonized peoples like the Narraganset natives was counterproductive and offensive. This included the mandatory conversion of enslaved people. Many examples show that he believed while the body could be subject to another person's will, the soul could not. Today, it is difficult to reconcile the way he defended a person's soul freedom while accepting the denial of their other rights. Roger Williams’s philosophy of religious freedom affects the story of early American Muslims because the first Muslims in the Americas did not arrive as immigrants from the Middle East, but as enslaved people from West and North Africa. Islam and the African Slavery TradeMuslim-majority regions in Africa, like the territories of the Fulani people throughout the Sahara and along the Niger River, were willing and unwilling participants in the transatlantic slave trade. The geography of the slave trade, with slave forts established on the West African coast, coincided with the geography of Islam in Africa. Fulani territory, the remnants of the Mali Empire, and the peoples that inhabited the lands along the Gambia River were historically Muslim populations. Islam is still the majority faith of many West and North African countries today. Muslim slave-traders in Africa often sold non-Muslim Africans, typically war captives, into slavery within the Islamic slave network. However, with the introduction of European slavers on the African coast throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, enslaved Africans were increasingly being sold into the transatlantic trade. Unlike African slavers, Europeans often made no distinction between Muslims and non-Muslims, and kidnapped free African Muslims to be enslaved. This process resulted in introducing the first practicing Muslims to the Americas. Islam and Slavery in the AmericasOnce in the Americas, enslaved Muslims had limited freedom to practice their religion . In fact, depending on their destination, they likely had no opportunity at all. Spanish Catholics practiced mass baptisms of their slaves, typically upon arrival without religious instruction or even sharing a language. Other religious practices were not tolerated, as both Islam and native African religions were considered heathenish. In English colonies, there was debate over whether the enslaved could be baptized at all. Forced conversion was less common in English colonies than in Spanish ones, but Africans were certainly pressured to convert to Christianity to better assimilate and achieve a slightly more favorable social standing, though they would remain enslaved. Both Spanish Catholic and English Protestant models of conversion would have been repugnant to Roger Williams. Muslim Africans who kept their religion could only practice in secret, were denied access to a local religious community or institution and were faced with constant pressure to abandon Islam. Africans who converted to Christianity were often forced to do so without a genuine change of faith or did so without understanding many important tenants of Christianity because they were denied proper instruction. It is impossible to determine the number of Muslims that were enslaved in America, either in total or at a given point. The religion of enslaved people was rarely documented, and most slave owners were not attentive to the cultural practices of the enslaved. Singular anecdotes and biographies, though, do reveal the lives of a few enslaved Muslims in American history. One of the most famous accounts is the brief autobiography of Omar ibn-Said, a West African man who was literate and educated in Arabic and wrote his autobiography in that language. Muslims in early America were never able to build institutions or strong communities, as they were bound by the chains of slavery. However, individual accounts, like that of ibn-Said, provide a glimpse into the lives of these religious minorities living in a new land and within a society that did not understand them. Most enslaved Muslims were unable to educate their children in their faith. Slavery as an institution destroyed African and, later, African American family units and separated parents from their children, making it difficult to pass on the traditions of a minority faith. Additionally, it was extraordinarily unlikely that Muslim parents had access to Arabic texts or copies of the Qur’an to educate their children. The second generation of African Muslims was unlikely to be as faithful or educated in Islamic theology and tradition as their parents, and conversion to Christianity was either forced or used as a tool to find social acceptance. Hypocracy in AmericaEven though Roger Williams founded Providence based on ideas of religious freedom and spiritual equality, ideas that are included in the Bill of Rights today, the first groups of Muslims in America typically had no access to those freedoms. Although he was very familiar with the faith and had known Muslims in England, Williams probably did not personally know any Muslims in America. Yet, according to his philosophies they have had the same rights to religion—the same soul liberty—as any other faith.
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Last updated: November 17, 2023