Muslims of the Caribbean

Speaker 0 00:00:00 There is a country that has a relatively small Muslim minority at only 7%, and yet a Muslim is its president. The country is Guyana, a small Caribbean country in the north of Latin America, another country in the region. Trinidad and Tobago witnessed an attempted coup in the 1990, led by a Muslim leader Yasin Abu. These attention catching examples point to the vitality and relevance of Islam, the Caribbean. But the presence of Muslims in the Caribbean is much more than politics. In fact, politics constitutes a minor manifestation of Muslim faith, cultures, histories, and legacies in the region. Welcome to episode eight of Islam on the Edges Channel of the Madan Podcast, a project by the Eman Center for Global Islamic Studies at George Mason University in Virginia. In this special episode I host Dr. Ahan and Dr. Kenneth Treat Wood. The episode discusses the coming of Islam to the Caribbean Muslim diversity, ethno linguistic differences, material and cultural production, major historical developments, Muslim politics and knowledge production. Speaker 0 00:01:15 Muslims of the Caribbean are a growing community due to the continued conversion to Islam in the region. This wide ranging episode serves as a broad introduction into this Muslim community's rich history, legacy, and present. I'm joined by two wonderful scholars. Dr. Ali is director of the Global Islamic Studies Center and Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature, and the Department of Afro-American African Studies at the University of Michigan. Ann Arbor, her book Far from Mecca Globalizing the Muslims Caribbean, published by Rutgers University Press in 2020 is the first academic monograph on the comparative literature, music and histories of enslaved African Muslims and indentured South Asian Indian Muslims in the Caribbean. Dr. Han's Academic and Creative Writing also appears in publications including G L Q, the Caribbean Review of Gender studies Caribbean Quarterly, the Journal of West Indian Literature, pre Caribbean writing in gu. Speaker 0 00:02:23 Her interviews on Caribbean and US Islam and Muslim culture have appeared on an in national public radio, the Washington Post Religion News, American Muslim today, the Police Project, the Black Agenda Report, SAP Square and Chicago's Radio, Islam. My other guest is Dr. Kenneth Chitwood. He's a senior research fellow with a Muslim philanthropy initiative, m p i, an initiative of Lake Institute on Faith and Giving, and the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University, Purdue University Indianapolis. He's also conducting research on the intersections of ethnography and journalism with the University of Southern California Center for Religion and Civic Cultures Engaged Spirituality Project. He's the author of the Religion News Association best nonfiction book, the Muslims of Latin America and the Caribbean, published by Reer in 2021. I hope you'll enjoy listening to this episode. And here we are with Professor Ali and Professor Kenwood Ali. Ken, welcome to our podcast. Speaker 1 00:03:33 Thank you Armen for having us. Speaker 2 00:03:36 Yeah, indeed here. Speaker 0 00:03:37 Absolutely. So we're going to immediately go into our conversation, the topic, uh, about Muslims and Islam in the Caribbean. So let's start with the basics, assuming that many of our listeners would have some knowledge about the Caribbean, but would like to know a little bit more about it. So tell us a bit, uh, about how Islam came to this region. What are the main drivers of Islam in the region? The influences, how it came, how it spread, what time periods are we talking about here? Speaker 1 00:04:08 So this is a really long story and I think Ken and I can split it up. Ken, would you like to start us off with the motors and Maurisco? Speaker 2 00:04:15 Yeah, sure. I mean, I tend to, um, most of us have talked about, uh, the development of the Muslim community or the history of Islam in the, in the region according to a few different historical periods. And the first of them, uh, starts with the initial European encounter with the, uh, Americas through Spanish, uh, explorers and colonizers. And they were heavily influenced by the Spanish Peninsula history, which had included conflict between Catholic Crown, uh, and Muslim and, and Jewish dynasties and kingdoms that were still existing on the peninsula at the time. And they were only able to complete the, the reconquest, uh, from the Catholic Powers perspective, uh, of the Iberian Peninsula in 1492. The same year, of course, as all US school children tend to know to this day that Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Um, and uh, when he arrived, he brought with them not only Muslims, possibly on the manifest in the ships that arrived, but then also, uh, especially in the minds of the Spanish soldiers who came to try to conquest the Americas or the Spanish Catholic crown, uh, often calling the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean and the wider Americas los or the Moors as they had called their enemies back in in Spain. Speaker 2 00:05:36 And so that, that kind of starts the, the encounter between Isam and the Americas at the same time that Europe also runs into and then begins to colonize, uh, the Americas. And those two historical moments, I think are intimately linked and yet not so often talked about as they could. Speaker 1 00:05:52 And then we can continue on with the transatlantic slave trade in which historians like Sylvia and the youth estimate that there might have been as much as 10% of enslaved Africans who might have been Muslims, which makes sense given that, you know, the slave trading regions of West Africa like Senegal, Mali, uh, Guinea and so forth, were majority already majority Muslim regions of the world. And there, there are records of them, you know, of people enslaved on plantations in the Caribbean and in the United States, um, people who have Muslim names. And one of the things I study is some of the texts that some of these edu some educated men left behind. So, um, texts that are combined, oh, autobiographies and theological treatises that were written by enslaved, mostly Sufi, west African scholars in the United States and in the Caribbean. Uh, probably the most well known instance of those is the American, uh, the man who was in gay, uh, enslaved in the United States. Speaker 1 00:06:57 Omar <inaudible>, his texts are owned now by the Library of Congress. Most of them, uh, his autobiography is, and there's a recent really interesting opera about him, which I haven't had the chance to say, but I think it's playing in LA now. I've heard a couple of the, you know, the Li Librettos and stuff, and it's really just very interesting to hear, um, you know, Koranic Surs and so on translated to the, um, opera form Hmm. While telling a's story. That's interesting. Right, right. While telling a story about slavery. And then, so after that, uh, important thing to note is that although there were very many of these people, and you know, for example, the instigated the largest urban slave rebellion in the Americas in Bay, Brazil in the 19th century, they didn't leave direct descendants, you know, who like Muslim community descendants as one could imagine because of the exigencies. And Speaker 0 00:07:50 These are Muslims rebellion they're talking about was a Muslim rebellion. Speaker 1 00:07:53 Yes. It was spearheaded by, um, ha uh, nago Yoba Muslims, um, majority Muslims, uh, rebellion in Baji Brazil. Speaker 0 00:08:03 So the, the languages in which these words that you refer to were written, was it uhhuh in Arabic or some other languages? Speaker 1 00:08:10 That's a really great question. So they were mostly all written in ajai, which is essentially, uh, combination of, um, people's native languages, for example, ha or <inaudible>, but written in Arabic script Speaker 0 00:08:22 Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And this, this is the case of many Muslim communities around the world that historically they mm-hmm. <affirmative> wrote their own language in Arabic script. Speaker 1 00:08:31 Yes, Speaker 0 00:08:31 Yes. We have such, um, tradition. The Balkans too. Speaker 1 00:08:35 Yes. Same thing. Um, but you know, of course there are, there are someran verses which are rendered entirely in Arabic, but it's a difficult translation job, right? Yeah. Because you have to know 19th century versions, you have to know not just classical Arabic, but you have to know 19th century versions. For the most part. It's 19th century, um, texts that we have records of. You have to know 19th century versions of like wallah <unk> of housing and so on. So you have to be multilingual, not just in the contemporary forms, but in the 19th century Speaker 2 00:09:00 Historically. Speaker 0 00:09:01 Exactly, yes. Yeah. So you both have indicated that there is this European colonialism coming from the British, from Spanish colonizers, and that in many ways influenced, uh, these communities. So how did the English and Hispanic Caribbean, uh, emerge and, and how can we understand this diversity among the Muslims in the Caribbean too? Cause some are English speaking, others are Spanish speaking. And so if you, if if each of you could talk a little bit about this difference division, if you will, similarities, differences and, and distinctive characteristics that these communities might have. Speaker 2 00:09:39 Yeah, I mean, one of my favorite things, uh, that I appreciate, there's many things I appreciate about, uh, Ali's book far from Mecca, have this great section at the end where, you know, you pro the comparison between the Anglophone and the Caribbean, uh, which I appreciate being someone who specializes in the Hispanico Caribbean. Uh, but yeah, I mean, the fragmentation of the Caribbean along linguistic and, and other lines as we know it today, uh, is obviously as, as you referenced, derived from a colonial past, uh, and, and an ongoing, uh, neo-colonial present. Right? And, and so you have an emergence of different and sometimes conflicting intellectual traditions and cultural political identifications that, uh, still dictate politics in the, in the region, uh, and and exchange in the region. Uh, but the Hispanic Caribbean as, as many might assume, is linked to the imaginary of Latin America on, on a wider scale through shared language and, and cultural connections, while at the same time physically forming part of the geographic region of the Caribbean. Speaker 2 00:10:40 And so it exists at the juncture of two competing cultural contexts, the non-Hispanic Caribbean on the one side and Latin America on the other, uh, which can sometimes expose it to sidelining and misunderstanding in both. And I think with the wealth of scholarship on the Anglophone Caribbean in comparison to Hispanic Caribbean, what we get is an opportunity, uh, to, as, as John Elliot wrote in the empires of the Atlantic world, to play an accordion, uh, at times pushing them together, the Anglophone and Hispanic Caribbean to put them conversation, seeing similarities, and then other times pulling them apart, uh, to be able to highlight differences and paying attention to the overlap between the empires, addressing them on their own terms, but also looking at how, uh, there are major structural differences in similarities in terms of geography, politics, economy, language and development. I, it's opportunity to, to compare of those colonial legacies, colonial trajectories in both context. Speaker 1 00:11:35 The, in the Anglophone Caribbean post transatlantic slave trade is one that occurs to indenture Indian laborers. Um, so, you know, colonial inden in, uh, indenture in the British colonies starts after the end of chattel slavery in 1838. Um, and lasts until 1917, not just actually in the British Caribbean, by which I mean Guyana, Trinidad, Jamaica, some of the smaller islands, but also Indian indentured laborers went to places like Guadalupe and Martinique, for the most part in the Anglophone Caribbean. There are from Northern India, from places like Bija, UTA, little bit Punjab and somewhere. And whereas now, um, Afghanistan, so maybe about, again, 10% of those people too were Muslims, which, um, you know, makes sense, uh, with the demographics of, you know, colonial India. The majority of the rest, of course, were Hindus. So they ended up in the Caribbean too, working on these sugar plantations after the end of shadow slavery. Speaker 1 00:12:34 Some of them were Muslim. That is actually my community. I was born in Guyana, and I'm Inese and Muslim too. So they are the ones who, you know, came into the 20th century as people, as the people who were known to be Muslims in the Caribbean, and particularly in the Anglo Caribbean, which means that Islam has been thought of as an Indian religion in many parts of the Caribbean. Interesting. Yes. Until the 1990s, which is 1990, uh, coup against the Trinidadian government by, um, IAM Ya Abubakar and the Muslim in Trinidad, which was an, is a majority, uh, black Trinidadian Muslim organization. And I think that is when Islam first became legible to people in the Anglophone Caribbean as not just an Indian religion, but a religion that encompasses, um, black Caribbean people. They were reverts. Yeah. Um, and, you know, the populations of c of of, you know, converts and reverses have only grown in the Caribbean since then. And I think Ken can talk to that too, in the Hispanic own Caribbean. Speaker 0 00:13:40 Yeah. I'm glad you mentioned 1990, and I know you and I talked about it in the book talk earlier, but in the previous episode of my podcast, I talked with Iam Khali Griggs mm-hmm. <affirmative>, who was a member of the Islamic Party in North America, many of whom actually migrated to the Caribbean. He doesn't believe there is direct connection between that and, you know, ya and the coup. But there, there is an interesting conversation there. So mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, it's a plugin for the previous episode for the listeners to, to go back to it, but also to you to know that there is that conversation that I had with him, which I think you would find interesting too. Thank you. So, um, Ken, back to you. We wanted say something. Speaker 2 00:14:20 Yeah, I think it's been fun that we're kinda bouncing into these historical periods and kinda connecting these these more later ones. And I think the difference here is the Hispanic film Caribbean was not as impacted by indenture because of these differing colonial trajectories and, and networks that existed. And where the more contemporary story of Muslim communities in the Hispanic Caribbean picks up, whether that be Cuba or Puerto Rico, or the Dominican Republic, is with Arab immigration in the 19th, late 19th and early 20th century. Um, and you see that really pick up mid-century with the Naba and, and the fallout, uh, from, from the multiple conflicts that existed there. So a lot of Palestinian immigration into the Hispanic Caribbean, elsewhere in Latin America, you have a lot of people coming from, from Lebanon as well, and, and Egypt and other places and arriving. And again, majority of them were Christians. Speaker 2 00:15:12 Uh, a minority were Muslim, uh, but they were able to establish some of the communities that exist still today and have created an infrastructure within the Hispanic Caribbean. Uh, and so the majority of assumption about Muslims in the Hispanic own Caribbean will be that they're Arab Muslims. And even if there are reverts and those who have converted Islam from the local population, uh, there's still, you know, a lot of people will ask them, oh, have you gone Arab now? Have you become Arab? You know, like, is that what you've done? Have you betrayed your culture? You know, these types of questions because of that assumption. Uh, but most of the time I, various people would not even know, uh, that there's a Muslim community in Hispanic phone Caribbean locations. Oftentimes when I tell people I'm working with, uh, the Muslim community in Puerto Rico, they'll go, wow, what? Like, I dunno about that. But then they'll remember, oh, I saw that mosque that one time off of highway two, or whatever my, so it's there. Um, but, uh, yeah, the assumptions are, are relatively low given, again, this lack of kinda larger populations that indenture brought, uh, to the Anglophone Caribbean. Speaker 0 00:16:16 Yeah, that's, that's so fascinating. I think this kinda historical setup that you just did sort of provides a real good segue into other areas of our conversation. So one thing that I wanted to highlight is that Islam is a global culture. Global civilization has displayed tremendous ability over time and in different geographical locations to adapt to many realities to which Muslims moved and where people became Muslims, they usually came to areas where there were preexisting cultures and religions. And so as a result of the interaction between Islam and those preexisting culture and religion, a lot of sync practices emerged. A lot of merging of preexisting cultures with a newly introduced Muslim cultures and practices also flourished. So what are some of the main areas of synchronism among, among Caribbean Muslims, and how are these cratic practices manifested? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Speaker 1 00:17:16 So this is a really interesting question because we are not talking about a region of the world here where, um, Islam enters a place where everything is sort of, there's already a preexisting singular culture where everyone is kind of settled. We're entering a place where everything is in formation, where, you know, many, many people from all over the world are meeting in the context of the colonization of the Americas and everything culture is in formation, in is hybridizing, in synchronizing. All of these many forces are being pulled together at once, and Islam is just one strain of those. So one clear example of Secretism for Muslims in the, uh, Anglophone Caribbean is a holiday called, uh, Jose, which is essentially, um, it's the Mohara celebration of the martyred dame of Hassan and the prophets grandsons. So the way that that translated into the Caribbean is that it was brought by the very few Shia who ended up in the Caribbean as indentured laborers. Speaker 1 00:18:12 There aren't, there isn't really a large Shia community now, they were subsumed into the Sunni the much larger, um, Sunni hy community. But, um, they did, they did give the Caribbean this celebration of, per se, which essentially involves, um, processions of model tombs, the model tombs of Posse and Hasan accompanied by music that involves like a lot of drum music in the streets. And these, uh, these model tombs are carried in a procession toward a mythical carala as symbolized by the sea. So they're marched down to the sea, these model tombs, and then they are drowned in the ocean as a way to symbolize them reaching this extra local, uh, mythical carala. That festival was stamped out in the 18 hundreds, um, the late 18 hundreds by the British who realized that it had become a place where people from all walks of life and all ethnic backgrounds, congregated Afro-Caribbean people in particular became drummers for the festival. Speaker 1 00:19:11 And it was a lot of also Hindu participation. And in a colony that is dangerous, right, where you wanna keep all of the different labor laboring, um, contingents apart at the end of the 19th century, um, an incident happened called the Jose Massacre in Trinidad, where the British first of all legally limited the number of people who could participate in Jose and also, um, stop the processions from being able to enter the major cities of Porter, Spain and San Fernando. But then there was this one incident in the 1880s where they just kind of fired into a crowd of revelers and killed a number of people that became known as the Jose or the Mohara massacre. And, um, it was an endpoint in Trinidad, um, and also to Ga and Guyana and Cerna for the end of, of that festival. And then what was left at the end of that festival then fell prey to a kind of, um, end of the century, end of the 19th century, beginning of the 20th century forces of Islamic purification and revival coming from primarily Sunni communities that saw the syncretic practice as, um, you know, any combination of like Shia pr, Shia practices, bida and, and so forth. Speaker 1 00:20:23 But the festival has been revived to some, uh, extent in Trinidad and Jamaica, but it is nowhere near this like, countrywide phenomenon, syncretic phenomenon that it used to be. Speaker 0 00:20:35 That's, that's absolutely fascinating. Do we have similar examples in the Hispanic Caribbean, Ken? Speaker 2 00:20:42 Yeah. What's interesting, uh, there, I think when we talk about, when we talk about, you know, know cultures coming together and, and, and, and merging with one another, and the Caribbean often being seen as like, uh, a laboratory of hybridization, right? They often, a lot of people have talked about, uh, the Caribbean being this kinda hybrid place par exons or something, uh, which, you know, has some, some problematic angles to it as well. But one of the things we often to think about is the power dynamics and differentials that are at play. Um, and so I think for now among contemporary communities, uh, you don't have, uh, very explicit examples of hybridization. There are some subtle ones and little ones you can point to others in broader areas of, of Latin America, but it's more individual choices and options at the moment. There's not really a development of a, of a broader hybridization that I've been able to witness. Speaker 2 00:21:36 But one of the things that I I, I do look at is festivals of, of the present that have, uh, this kind of hybrid mix of the past as well. And one of 'em is La Santiago Apostol, uh, or the festival of St. James the Apostle, who again is linked to this peninsula conquest history where St. James, the, the supposed brother of Jesus is imagined by Spanish Catholic forces to have arrived and rode ahead of them into battle on a white steed, uh, trampling, uh, Los Moros, the Moors. Uh, and again, they brought that over to the Caribbean and continued to celebrate that festival. And it's still celebrated today in a, in a municipality called Louis, which is just east of sa Juan Puerto Rico, uh, that's predominantly, uh, black Puerto Rican, Afro-Caribbean, uh, community today. And if you asked people, uh, in, in the festival to identify the different characters, there's the, the ceros, the, the Knights, and then there's the, these kinda demon characters in the used to be Los, um, and they're chased away by, by the knights, the Spanish Knights as they're, uh, parading through the street. Speaker 2 00:22:46 And most people there would not identify the ante with Los Moros or, or the Muslims. In fact, the s become a point of pride in the festival and is representative of, of Afro-Caribbean culture, wri large. Um, and, and yet when you look at the little statues of St. James that they, through the streets, uh, there's these little decapitated turban, bearded heads, uh, that, that clearly represent Muslims as they've been slain by, by St. James. Um, and so that, that presence is still there. And it's what I, I often talk about as an absent presence that is being read into and, and Muslims as they interact with that festival, which is a, a very prominent festival within broader Puerto Rican cultural politics, um, you know, they read themselves into it even though they're also read out it. And it's that power differential that says, yeah, this is an example of some type of hybridization being brought over and being reread and recoded, um, and yet now being recoded again. And I think that's what's exciting about the Hispanic Caribbean and, and, and watching it on the ground, is we're seeing these re identifications, these retrans, these hybridization happening in real time. And I think you're gonna see as those communities continue to develop, particularly among reverts, much more of the adaptation into local cultural vernaculars that we've seen elsewhere, perhaps that have existed longer in places like the Anglophone Caribbean or elsewhere within global Islamic landscapes. Speaker 0 00:24:08 Yeah, that is so interesting. It reminds me of my visit to Southern Spain to Andalusia Exactly. Thinking to some, you know, churches and seeing exactly the same images of the Spanish fighters or warriors, basically decapitating and killing and spearing the morals, the Muslims, you know, and, uh, and this is the middle of the church, you know, you see, you have these scenes that are very violent in their depiction, you know, and gory in many ways. That was, uh, quite shocking for me when I first saw it when I visited, uh, Saturn, Spain. And uh, it's so interesting to hear that this kinda cultural and religious production basically has found its way all the way to the Caribbean in those communities, especially in the Hispanic speaking Caribbean. You both have highlighted the hybrid nature of the Caribbean. Uh, Ali, you talked about how this was almost like a perfect laboratory cause there were no preexisting cultures. So you have all of these different things are being put in flux and so on. So outta that hybridization that you talked about, what are some of the primary, mostly artifacts when it comes to cultural and material production? The Caribbean are well known around the world as the region that has this vibrant culture that is very vivid and alive and, and joyful. So how do Muslims participate and partake in that? And what kinda cultural material production are they coming up with? Speaker 1 00:25:37 I can say two things, but you know, I wanna, I wanna clarify something I said a little earlier. You know, like it's not an absence space. There is indigeneity, right? And there are still, of course, indigenous people in the region and in indigenous cultures. It is just that in at least Guyana, which is like one place that you can point to that has a lot of Muslim and also an existing indigenous population, indigenous people tend to live in the interior, like in the Amazonian forest regions. Whereas all of the former colonized tend to live on the fertile coastlands where the plantations were. And they tend to have the political power, you know, it's definitely a situation where indigenous people are excluded from, um, the polity to a large extent. But in terms of the, um, you know, material production and so on, there're, there's, I'm writing an article right now. Speaker 1 00:26:23 So I mentioned that we have the texts, right, like these, these books, these autobiographies that are written by enslaved men, for example, um, I write about one that is written by a gentleman called Abubakar in, in Jamaica. And there are other ones, um, in places. There are other, there's another one in Jamaica. There are ones that we have from Trinidad. There are ones that, ones that we have from Panama, and as I mentioned also the United States. There's that. But I'm also right now writing an article about the transmission of music from pre partition India, religious music from pre partition India to the Caribbean in the form of these ADA religious songs that were brought over by, uh, Urdu speaking Muslim migrants to the Caribbean in the 19th century. And they are not from Muslim migrants to the Caribbean who are explicitly Sufi, but they are derived from the flowering BVI and dio bandi traditions of Islam in that part of the world. Speaker 1 00:27:20 So there's definitely some Sufi influence. Of course, the Casita is an early Arabic poetry form, but it has, it, it's, it takes the form of, in the subcontinent and continental diasporas of these religious devotional songs that are often sung at Milad celebrations, birthday of the prophet celebrations, you know, and that's still true in India, in Pakistan, and it is also true in the Caribbean, of course, as you know, I'm sure you know, those practices like the singing of Casitas and, um, Milad itself are under scrutiny by, um, you know, Salhi Muslims, um, who, you know, think that it is bida innovation, um, and the imposition of culture into religion. But there are very strong forces in the Caribbean of like, let's call it an Indo Iranian Islam that are keeping the tradition of the Casita and Milad, um, alive, even, even as they exist in tension with, um, you know, this kind of, um, revivalist purification of the religion. Speaker 0 00:28:24 So you mentioned that these were the communities that migrated to the Caribbean a while ago, and the, uh, the culture of cas and similar songs in the Pakistani subcontinent continued to evolve mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And, and so it's, it would be interesting that to know, had there been any studies comparing are those casts that came to the Caribbean, you know, it's almost like you now have them frozen in the past. They obviously have their own evolution, but it's a different evolution than the ones, so, so that, that you find in India Pakistan. So do you know anything about that and can tell us more about it? Speaker 1 00:28:59 So as far as I know, there are no studies. There is no book or there is no, you know, to my knowledge, like singular, even essay, academic essay written about Casitas in the Caribbean. That's what I'm trying, I'm trying to do right now, is write an article about it, is write the first article about it. But no, there are not, you know, I've traced some of the casitas to preexisting forms of poetry called Chiari in Pakistan mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, from these 19th century poets. Uh, so, you know, there are individual CITAs that we can trace directly to them, but you're right in thinking about the practice as being larger and, and have, having evolved in the subcontinent, the way too that Indo Caribbean Muslims interact with them is from these song books. The song books are what are frozen in Time and that are really interesting to look at. Speaker 1 00:29:47 Um, because the song books usually have the cas written in Urdu written in English, transliteration of the Urdu, and then in translation of the English, it's like trilingual song books, right? Um, those are the texts that you wanna look at if you wanna look at like, how really are they frozen in time? And, and now, because the vast majority of Indo Caribbean Muslims cannot speak or do they sing from the transliteration, but there is also a practice too of like, there are native like Caribbean casitas that people wrote in the Caribbean, and some of them are in English, so, you know, just in English. So I know it more from the Caribbean side, rather of course in the Continental one, sub continental Speaker 0 00:30:28 One. Yeah. That is so fascinating. You know, I'm reminded of, even in the talk I gave <laugh> yesterday, right? Yes. I talked about the migration of Bosnia Muslims from Bosnia at the end of the 19th century to the Ottoman Empire parts that became Turkey later on. And so you still have today, more than a hundred years later, villages of Bosnia's in Turkey, people who speak Boian language as it was spoken 20 years ago. You know? Interesting. And so it's a, you know, it's a fantastic filled work for anthropologists, certain linguists, all of these disciplines to see, you know, you have a perfect laboratory to look at. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you know, this is how people used to speak hundred 20 years ago because that's the language that they transmitted. And because they were not in the wider environment that the Bosnians were in, which they had to interact in the re linguistic reforms and things like that, the language that they speak, yeah, it's recognizable, be Boian can fully understand, but there's a lot ofs of words and expressions that are completely now that have completely died out, uh, by now. So when you mentioned that it's sort of reminded me of it, you know, and, and so how migration contributes to preserving culture from a certain period of time as opposed to how those cultures continue evolving in their native spaces is really a fascinating, I think, thing to look at. You can, uh, anything you can add to this about this, uh, cultural material production Speaker 2 00:32:01 Yeah. First, uh, so excited about your article Speaker 1 00:32:04 Happens. Speaker 2 00:32:06 Yeah. When it comes together, no, no pressure, but cannot wait. But yeah, as, as an ethnographer, I, I really tended to focus mundane material aspects of life in the context that I've been in. Everything from, there's this story I talk about Palestinian Muslim migrant Salim in, in the intern lands of Puerto Rico, and the mountain is former coffee producing regions. Uh, and his coffee cup for me is a significant Muslim artifact in the Caribbean because he says on the front of his business that if we don't do business, we at least drink a cup of coffee. And that's how people have come to know him. And so, you know, I remember very dizzyingly shakingly talking to him after eight hours, you know, on my, I dunno, 20th cup of coffee. Uh, and realizing, uh, perhaps in some form of trance, uh, that, that this is a key connecting point, uh, for, for, for conversion, for reversion, for, for people who said, yeah, I came in to buy an appliance at a store. Speaker 2 00:33:01 I ended up drinking a lot of coffee, and several years later I converted to Islam, or two months later I converted to Islam. And so those types of things, or the Muslim community and Barbados, who trying to endear themselves to the local community integrate in some way and have a physical form, uh, constructed a, a table that was used by the, the, the local government, uh, as their cabinet table. Um, you know, so, so those types of artifacts are significant, uh, Islamic artifacts to me in some way because they represent, um, you know, migrant communities trying to connect, trying to engage and using mundane items to do so. But then you also see things, uh, like the Honah or, um, as Yasa that this, um, kinda kid who's got his arms bound, he's kinda dirty. He's this symbol, uh, developed, uh, by, uh, a cartoonist, uh, in the 1960s and has become a symbol of, of Palestinian nationalism and, and defiance. Speaker 2 00:33:54 And you go to a lot of different mosques in, in the, from Caribbean, and you'll see it hanging here in the corner or hanging there in the corner. And that's been picked up by local Puerto Rican Muslims who also are, uh, uh, a people without a nation or a country without a nation, right? They identify as a nation, and yet they do not have the, of a nation. Um, and so they've created Puerto Rican, Palestinian, soar and have been able to create new cultural artifacts where they merge the Palestinian and Puerto Rican flags and have made that essential aspect of their Islamic identification as well. And some of them being political activists before they're converting to Islam. And so I, I I, I, I appreciate these more kind of traditional Islamic artifacts that we, we look at, but then also these kind of non-traditional ones to look at these very mundane items that are central to Muslim lives. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> in, in this context. Speaker 1 00:34:45 You know, I think, Ken, you have a whole article there about coffee, um, about the transmission of Kawa from the Gulf region, um, and from the, through the Gulf of Aon to the rest of the Muslim world, and then to now to Puerto Rico. I mean, it is, coffee is totally an artifact of Muslim culture, so it's tea. Speaker 2 00:35:02 Yeah, Speaker 0 00:35:03 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. I, I wasn't familiar with your article, and I need, uh, I need an article, Ken, because I recently actually gave a talk in our local mosque. They, they built a beautiful coffee house within the mosque called Kawa. Of course. Yeah. And so I talked about exactly what you just mentioned, Ali now, and what I'm sure Ken wrote in his article about, you know, the, the role of coffee and Muslim cultures and the contributions, uh, you know, how Muslims basically facilitated a spread of coffee culture around the world. So if nothing else, if Muslims did nothing else in history and just spread this habit of drinking coffee, I think that's enough. You know, it's really, Speaker 2 00:35:42 I raise my coffee, raise her tea. Yeah, that's article. But, uh, yeah, now you've given me a homework assignment. I appreciate. Speaker 0 00:35:54 Let's also talk a little bit about, uh, themus diversity within the Caribbean. So can you give us a little bit of a breakdown in terms of different schools of thought that Muslims belong to in the Caribbean, you know, the Sunni, any others? How are Themus contestations to, you know, lack thereof, all of this in the Caribbean? How does it play out? Is it similar to what we're seeing in the larger, you know, Muslim world, if you will? Or are there any kinda unique developments within that, or are there any, maybe even fusions between these different groups? Um, I don't know anything about it, so I'm just asking anything that comes to mind. Speaker 1 00:36:39 So the sectarian tensions in the Anglophone Caribbean are not quite the same as they are elsewhere in the world. Uh, if you're thinking of the major tension being between Sunni Islam and Shia Islam, that's not true in the Caribbean. There are not enough Shia for that to really be the case. As I mentioned, you know, there were some, but there were mostly subsumed into the, um, Sunni population, just for demographic reasons. After 1979, there's at least one Iranian missionary who made it to Guyana at least, um, and started off like, what, two or three small, small Shia Muslim communities in Guyana at least. But they're haven't, they're not very visible or vocal. Who is the major foil to the majority Sydney Hai population are ahmadi. At the beginning of the 20th century and mid 20th century, a number of missionaries came from, you know, first colonial India and then Pakistan later on, who were members of the Ahmadi Sec that was first propagated by Mirza Guam Ahmed. Speaker 1 00:37:36 And as you know, you probably know that the Amidi Koran is one that has been disseminated far and wide in, and, and, and reached the Caribbean almost before, uh, other ones did. Other translations of the, the Kran did because of just, um, really heavy ac proselytization and missionary work. So as, as a result of that missionizing, um, they are the visible minority, um, Muslim SEC in the Anglophone Caribbean, but they too are divided. And this of course is while they have been declared apostates and non-Muslims by the Pakistani state, um, in the 1970s, uh, in which they originated. But, uh, both sects of Acee, uh, exist to, in the Caribbean, you have the Cardis and then the lahars, you know, they, they still too exist as two different ahdi subsections that are intention with each other, and then intention with the Sunni Speaker 0 00:38:28 Ken. Speaker 2 00:38:28 Yeah. One of the things I often talk about is, especially within the broader American context, uh, so, you know, looking at Latin America and, and, and beyond, you know, the, the global diversity of, of different ideologies, different schools is kinda telescoped into the region. Uh, so in, in, in a kinda a miniature form, if you were to look at a reverse telescope, uh, right, and it kinda comes in and it's smaller communities, which creates different dynamics. So less perhaps sectarian division. And you've even seen this, this Adi and broader Sunni contestation, uh, emerge in the Hispanic Caribbean as the ahadi have moved in with missionaries as of the last 10 years with, with a lot of intention. And in Puerto Rico in the last five years, have grown their community from one, uh, to about 10, you know, tenfold increase in five years. It's not big by any means, but they've already experienced pushback when they tried to have a local radio show and someone came in and tried to pay off the, the radio station to not broadcast the, the, uh, radio program, you know, and so there's, there's already these contestations of, of turf, uh, you know, going, going on as, as well. Speaker 2 00:39:34 But then you also have this broader diversity of global ASAM that, that is present within the Americas. Um, and I think I've been able to encounter, uh, you know, IDI, uh, and from, from immigrants, and then you've, you've got Sufi, different Sufi and, and lineages that exist, uh, across the space. Um, and sometimes within the life of a single revert, I I know of a Puerto Rican Muslims who now, who's now in New York, who started out within the nation of Islam, uh, and then was with the Shia community, and then was Sunni, and now is Sufi. Uh, and so, you know, he's kind of had this trajectory through different, uh, traditions, uh, as well, you know, and kind of brings them all together in his contemporary practice. And I think it's really kinda fascinating to again, see how the global diversity is telescoped into the region, but then it's created different dynamics because of that, that that smaller nature of it. Speaker 2 00:40:27 And then also that it's not as geographically linked as it is in other places. We tend to think of different geographic locations within the global Islamic landscape as tending to one school, or between kind of a contest between two major schools or, or sects, uh, or kind of a few different ones. And in the Caribbean or in the Americas as a whole, you get 'em all together and, and, and it's smaller, um, but you get 'em all together. And so you also see with the reverts some different options being available than perhaps this is what I was born into, um, is, is now kind of this, I'm, I'm shopping around through the different, you know, <inaudible> or I'm, I'm just kind of looking around at different communities and, and, and seeing where I fit, seeing what connects, uh, with me, with my history, with my culture. And, and that's a really interesting dynamic to kind of, again, watch, uh, and, and observe as an ethnographer on the ground through interviews or, or through interactions with folks, uh, at different, uh, mustard around the, the Caribbean. Speaker 0 00:41:25 Yeah. Uh, and something that Ali mentioned earlier about the Muslim rebellion in Brazil, and even though we're focusing on the Caribbean primarily in this, in this, uh, episode, I know, Ken, that you wrote something about Halal food production in Brazil, and Brazil is one of the largest, if not the largest producer of halal beef in the world. So can you tell us just a little bit more about that, because I thought it's too good information. Just pass Passover into kinda connect. Maybe that's the, uh, sort of, um, revenge for the, for the clashing of the Muslim rebellion now, now, Hal Beef ok. <laugh> Speaker 2 00:42:05 Yeahinteresting final, the Final Revolution production. Yeah, it's a great factoid. I always tell people when I do presentations, they'll learn one thing, they'll remember one thing, and it's usually that, um, and it's a great thing to pull out at, uh, I dunno, cocktail parties or meetings with friends, you know, uh, it's a good thing to know. But yeah, by far, Brazil is the largest exporter of meat in the world. I mean, they, they're, they're, they're meat kings in terms of, of that, uh, landscape of trade. Uh, and that is also true with halal meat production by far the largest exporters of halal, uh, beef in the world. And they're even expanding it. They just announced a couple of months ago an expansion of that market and building more production facilities, uh, in, in Brazil because it's been so lucrative selling to Gulf States, but also to Malaysia, to Indonesia, et cetera. Speaker 2 00:42:54 And I, and I think what that highlights are the ways in which we tend to think of, uh, Islam, Muslims, and kinda put it in a religious landscape, kind of, you know, we're looking at all religious things, but as I kind of hinted out with those mundane artifacts earlier, and we were talking about a little earlier about coffee being central, you know, financial networks are, are just as important and very historically significant in the spread of Islam around the world. In the Indian Ocean, through the Sahel, uh, it was often marketers, traders bringing not only goods, but then also Islam with them. Um, and there's been research by people like Shila Marquez, Kevin Funk, Kevin Funks, an ir uh, specialist, and he's got a new book out called Rooted Globalism. And he talks about the halal trade in Brazil and says it's this really interesting mix of not really that religious, and yet obviously defined by the fact that it is a religious product they are producing. Speaker 2 00:43:51 And so these interesting tensions that are created, uh, within the Halal trade, and, and he looks at it from the perspective of IR so that, you know, rooted globalism and global, uh, movements and things like that. But yeah, I think it's, it's one of those hints that this is more than what we traditionally associate with Islam or what the public might traditionally associate with Islam going on here. That there are financial landscapes, there are technological landscapes that are media landscapes that define what is Islam, is how Muslims are in the Caribbean or in, in the wider American hemisphere as well. Speaker 0 00:44:25 So if you go back several decades ago around the world, there was a wave of religious revivals, not only in Islam, but in major religious traditions, but especially in the 1970s eighties, there was this global Islamic revival that took people by surprise because the decades prior to that were very secularizing decades in the Muslim world. So, and so, I wanted to know if there had been echoes of that global Islamic revival of the 1970s, eighties and onward in the Caribbean. And if yes, how did it manifest itself? Speaker 1 00:45:00 One concrete example of the way it happened in the Anglophone Caribbean and in Guiana in particular, is something you and I Iin have discussed before, which is the advent of the Libyan Islamic world called society into the Anglophone Caribbean through the non-aligned movement in this case, specifically s Libya. Uh, so, you know, because Guyana was a non-aligned, um, pseudo socialist country at the time, Libya sent diplomats to Guyana once, and especially once they realized that there were Muslims there in the 1970s. And then in 1977, the primary, uh, Libyan diplomat in Guyana, whose name was Ahmed, brought with him a kind of, I wanna, I wanna say Arab Islam that entered the fray into this already pre-existing discourse of Sunni purification and, you know, what was and wasn't, um, a real Islamic practice and what was actually just an Indian cultural practice and so on. Speaker 1 00:45:58 So he, uh, formed an organization called the Guyana Islamic Trust, which still exists in Guyana, and is the representative of maybe a more conservative brand of wahabi influenced Sunni Islam and had previously existed before in that country. So there is a definite trajectory of the introduction of a different Arab, a form of like Arab Islam that contradicts, you know, the Indo Iranian Islam that indentured laborers brought with them. And then, you know, starting in the eighties and, and throughout the nineties, what happened too was that, you know, young men who wanted to study Islam stopped going to India and Pakistan, which was where they used to go to learn Islam and receive theological training and so on. And they started going to the Arab world that is in part, of course, because of Gulf funding of their studies, and they still go to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and to a lesser extent Egypt. And of course they bring that back with them. Speaker 2 00:46:53 Yeah, yeah. Speaker 0 00:46:54 Ken, Speaker 2 00:46:55 I think three kinda concrete, uh, examples that, uh, come to mind in regards to this. And I think, yeah, there is, there's a significant influence, especially because you start to see a lot of reverts emerge in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s. Of course, they're gonna be very influenced by this as they kinda spread globally through, uh, funding and, and mosques being built, and, uh, those types of things. And there are examples, uh, of, you know, these different chicks or leaders who traveled and were trained, um, in centers of Islamic revival, uh, like the Afro-Caribbean, uh, originally David Donald's, uh, he's, uh, from Granada and he became known as she, uh, started the Islamic Mission of America and the, the Dara Islam movement, which was significant in the, the, um, black Caribbean as they tried to connect black Muslim movements in the States with wider, um, Afro-Caribbean causes and, and concerns, and started to have missionizing efforts going on in the Afro-Caribbean. Speaker 2 00:47:52 So they brought, you know, everything from the perspectives of, they, they brought that into the Caribbean context as well, publishing about it in their local papers, having discourses around it, uh, talking about Cathi as well, and, and all of that. But I, I think one of the interesting kind of later ones, not back in the 1970s eighties when the Islamic was really hitting, but kinda the after effects was watching the competition to build Cuba's first mosque, Turkey and, and Saudi Arabia were competing to fund that mosque that is now built. It was established in, in 2015 as Umk. And, you know, the Saudis went out, uh, and they were able to provide the funding, but, uh, you know, Erdogan went on a massive public relations campaign, traveled to Cuba as he was arriving in Havana, pointed, oh, a mosque would look great up there and had plans to build it off the style of the Quay mosque there, uh, on, on the boss person. Speaker 2 00:48:46 So again, this kind of competition to be the, the, the defacto leaders of the Sunni Muslim world, uh, and to stand in for these like Islamic nations that are also leaders in, in, uh, the, the modern neoliberal order as well was not only occurring in places in the Middle Eastern North Africa as Tur Turkey and Saudi Arabia compete to have that kind of image projected, uh, but also happening in the Caribbean. Uh, and in this instance, uh, Saudi Arabia won out, but Turkey continues to fund meetings of different Latin American and Caribbean Muslim scholars gathering them in Istanbul. Saudi Arabia does the same. And so we continue to see this influence through, through money and through politicking, um, and through the training of imams, et cetera, uh, within the Caribbean and then beyond in the wider Americas. Speaker 0 00:49:32 Yeah. And a follow up question to that then, and based on what both of you had said, and Ali, you mentioned something interesting really about the students going to India, Pakistan to get their theological religious training, and then more recently there is much more move to go and study in the Arab world. So who are the prominent Muslim scholars in the region in the Caribbean, and how about knowledge production? Do they produce religious knowledge in the Caribbean, or do they just import it from other Muslim countries and translate maybe some of those works? Is it indigenous? Is it imported? Who are the main voices more influential and maybe what schools have thought they belong to? I know it's a very broad question, but if you, if each of you could maybe answer it briefly and give us some understanding of that. Speaker 1 00:50:19 I would say the majority of knowledge is imported, or there's this kind of transnational exchange with, um, scholars in places like Saudi Arabia in Egypt, and still also in Pakistan to a lesser extent, where those people are viewed as the authorities and more in touch with, you know, true, true authentic Islam than anyone in the Caribbean could be. And in fact, I would say there was more local knowledge production in the earlier days of colonialism than there is now, just because of the increase in, you know, exchange with these people who are seen as more important authorities because they're from Muslim majority regions of the world. In the earlier 20th century, there was this kind of flowering of local literature and the dissemination of Islam and Islamic theology through like pamphlet all these organizations in Guiana and Trinidad had their own newspapers, pamphlets, little books that they printed. Speaker 1 00:51:12 There was this one Afro Guyanese newspaper, Muslim newspaper called the Clarion. The MDI also wrote a ton of literature and disseminated a ton of literature, um, about Islam. There are tons of those like kind of pamphlet, like 20th century pamphlet that existed that really don't exist anymore. Like people just use the text that Saudi Dawa efforts export to the Caribbean. One scholar that we can point to perhaps is, um, or one or two scholars that we can point to perhaps at least in the past, is this one gentleman, um, Hadji in Sahab who essentially founded Astra, which is the main Trinidadian Sunni organization. And he, he was an indentured laborer who essentially cohered Sunni Islam in Trinidad and is very, very well known. Um, Trinidad also has like, you know, a branch of like Darryl Ifta, but there are lots and lots of competing organizations and factions in the Anglophone Caribbean. And then of course, this tension with this, this, these forces of like external authorities mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So there are no singular, um, scholars in, in that sense, who are most well Speaker 2 00:52:19 Known. Are there any Muslim institutions of high learning Islamic universities or institutions that produce, you know, scholars locally? Speaker 1 00:52:29 Yeah. Not, not, hi, I wouldn't say of like higher learning. There are certainly, um, my dresses, right? Like I attended one, but, um, Islamic universities, no, no, no. That's why they go and study abroad. Speaker 2 00:52:42 Yeah, I, I don't remember the details. Uh, so not very great scholarship at the moment, but there was just recently signed an agreement, um, and this is in one of the recent Latinamerican Caribbean Islamic Studies newsletter editions. Uh, it was just kinda news that they're trying to an Islamic university in Brazil. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I do believe it's a partnership with Saudi Arabia, uh, to be able to train scholars locally, but there's alsoi effort, try and set up some, you know, institutes to train scholars locally as well. Even in Haiti, they were trying to, to build a center to train Haitian Imams locally, um, as well. And that, that, that came from some Trinidadian, some type of, uh, institutions. So again, there are some efforts, but, but they're, they're nascent. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, and, and perhaps to kinda build on this whole pamphlet dissemination and, and discussion of Islamic ideas locally, I think now what's perhaps replaced pamphlets are YouTube and Facebook videos. Speaker 2 00:53:38 Totally right. Uh, right. I mean, there's an exchange and inter Caribbean exchange happening as well. So, uh, a lot of Muslims in Cuba, Puerto Rico will watch Trinidadian, Muslims, uh, you know, to, to deliver their YouTube messages. Or Abdu quick who's up in Canada, he has a, a big web presence and a big influence among certain people. But even, uh, someone like, uh, IIM who's in Orlando working with, you know, Spanish speaking Muslims in the Orlando, Florida area, but he still zooms in YouTubes in Facebook's, in back to mosques in Puerto Rico. Uh, and so I think now you're starting to get some inter Caribbean or wider American exchange through digital translations and, and digital artifacts as well. Yeah. Speaker 0 00:54:23 And there is also, I think Al Phillips, right, who is from that region originally, if I'm not mistaken. Right. And he's globally, globally recognizing globally well known, uh, or am I being mistaken? Speaker 2 00:54:35 I dunno, biography too well, but yeah, I mean, Abdu quick and some others they have perhaps Afro-Caribbean or some type of Caribbean lineage, and they've emerged in kinda a broader kinda global resonance and and recognition. Speaker 1 00:54:50 Yeah. And I think B Beal Phillips, yes. Um, while his origin is Caribbean, um, I don't think his reach is particularly Caribbean and the worlds in which he operates are not particularly Caribbean. Speaker 0 00:55:03 So when it comes to the institutionalization of Islam in many Muslim majority countries, for instance, you have these ministries of religious affairs or ministries for religious endowments, some kind of central authority often. So how is Islam administered and managed in the Caribbean? Are there central authorities or centralized institutions, or are they sectarian or are they even at the more local versions of that? Can you, can you get, tell us more about it? Speaker 1 00:55:33 So these are small places. Um, so yes, there is some centralization of the majority Sunni authorities in Guyana. It's the central Islamic organization of Guyana, the C I O G in Trinidad, it's the Stoat Association asja, uh, which was founded in 1936. Um, and the cio GD origins of a date from those times too, from the 1930s when, you know, indentured laborers and former indentured laborers started to organize themselves into these cohesive bodies. So those, those two groups, you know, they tend to appoint themselves as the spokespeople of all the Muslims in those countries, even though they don't really represent all the Muslims in those countries. But they are the ones who have the relationships with the government. And so they're usually the, the two bodies that the governments of Dan and Trinidad respectively call upon as the Islamic authorities to speak for the Muslims in those countries. Speaker 0 00:56:27 And do they receive any funding from the government? Speaker 1 00:56:30 Yes, they have. Um, at least the CIO g certainly has in the past. Speaker 0 00:56:35 Ken. Speaker 2 00:56:35 Yeah. I think, uh, where you see some of the, the parallels here, like in Cuba, you've got the, the Cuban Islamic League, the Islamic League of Cuba, uh, that's run locally by, um, a river named Pedro Lasso. He's known as, I, he's very, he's a pillar of the, of the Muslim community in, in Cuba. And obviously in Cuba you're gonna have to go through the government. Um, and so, you know, the, the building of the mosque is through the funding of the Saudi Arabia, also with the support of, of the Cuban government to give the permits for that to, to allow for that within the, the broader control of, of the Cuban government, uh, in, in terms of religious expression and religious architecture, uh, in the region. But other than that, in the Hispanic Caribbean, it's, it's much more diffused, much more, um, adc and you've got individual communities banding together to build a moss because they have a critical mass and, and they're not finding funding from elsewhere. They're often funding from within their own community as well, pooling their resources from what they've earned, uh, based on the businesses they started. Uh, you know, one local Palestinian, Puerto Rican, Muslim talks about how he opened the first IHOP franchise, uh, in Puerto Rico. And with that was able to kinda build a wider business. And then they started having gatherings in the back of his garage. Speaker 0 00:57:54 Ramadan, Speaker 2 00:58:02 There's no formal kinda league or organization or institution. Um, and, and again, you see that in the broader America. I think it's really an anglophone Caribbean where you see some of the most institutionalization that has occurred. Speaker 0 00:58:16 So I think both of you have touched on politics in, in this previous answer in some way, the relationship between Islamic organizations and governments. So maybe this would be probably the last, uh, question that I'm going to ask in this episode, and that is to tell us a little bit about Muslim politics within the Caribbean. Are Muslims organized politically? Do they have their own political institutions? Are they maybe subsumed or integrated into larger politics? And, you know, just a basic question. Is there a Muslim politics in the Caribbean? Mm-hmm. Speaker 1 00:58:49 <affirmative>, that's such an interesting question. I mean, I feel like there have been at different times, like you can certainly point to a Muslim politics that is a black Muslim politics in Trinidad in 1990 at the time of the coup. But what happens now in Trinidad, and, and really what's always happened in those places is that religious politics are subsumed into racial politics, which are the most important force in the Anglophone Caribbean in these spaces that are shared equally between the descendants of enslaved Africans and the descendants of Indian indentured laborers. Both Diana and Trinidad have a party that is race based from each group, right? There's an Indian party, there's a black party, they've run against each other and they take turns at winning. And so Muslims, because they are historically in the Anglophone Caribbean, you know, associated with Indians, Muslims tended to be members of the Indian Party in, you know, Ghana, the people's progressive party. And, um, people of African descent who are majority Christian, are members of another party. So they're absorbed interracial politics. Um, once in a while you'll see them, uh, you know, there have been one or two attempts to form like a Muslim interest party, but it never succeeds. They are really, really just kind of absorbed into the racial politics. But it also means too that Islam continues to be framed as a mostly Indian religion. Speaker 2 01:00:08 It is a really interesting question that I, I've thought increasingly more about, uh, in terms of Muslim politics and, and, and how we usually define that and what the, is essentially the kind of broader public perceptions of what Muslim politics look like. Um, I think the, the Caribbean in the broader Americas provide really interesting examples to kinda counter some of those public perceptions and perhaps re reinterpret what, what Muslim politics means. And I think in the broader Americas, you've seen some, some more explicit examples, whether that be in the tribe border area between Argentina, Brazil, and Pati, where Lebanese Muslims and, and local Arab Muslim communities have organized politically in order to push back against assumptions that they are terrorists or that they're running illegal cartels there in this kinda dangerous borderland zone. And John writes a lot about that, or looking at president of Salvador, he's, uh, comes from Muslim background as well. Speaker 2 01:01:01 And so there's been Muslim heads of state, you could say <laugh>. Yeah. Um, in, in, in, in the broader Americas, right. And it comes up in Argentina, Arab Argentina, president, he did not identify as Muslim, and yet he was identified as Muslim by the public. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And when you get to a place like Puerto Rico, um, you know, a lot of the local Palestinians, they've told me, well, yeah, we, we don't really wanna get involved in politics. The less people know about us, the better. We're just trying to fly under the radar here, make some money, you know, be able to exist and do our thing. And even that though, this kinda apolitical stance is a political stance because then when you have local reverts who are seeing within Islam a certain energy and a certain language for their anti-colonial pro-independence sentiments about Puerto Rico leveraging its its power and, and pushing against American Empire, and they're saying, this is Islam, Islam is about liberation, that Islam is about justice and, and Islam is, is our, our language for revolution, uh, here in Puerto Rico, uh, to be able to push back against American imperial power. Speaker 2 01:02:05 And then local Palestinian Muslims are like, okay, let's, let's, let's, let's calm down. Let's, let's not get too excited about this. And then that thus becomes a political discourse between these two racialized, uh, communities. Right. And it's, it's interesting to me how again, Puerto Rican Muslim converts will pull on the discourse of Palestinian independence, Palestinian resistance in order to add fuel to their, their own efforts towards independence or towards, uh, you know, at least some, some degree of ability to, to be self-governing. Um, and, and yet the Palestinians are, are, are less enthusiastic about that in terms of the soar as well. So again, I think the, the dialectics and the dynamics of Muslim politics take on a different tone than perhaps they do elsewhere in the global Islamic Speaker 1 01:02:52 Landscape. Ken reminded me that I should point out that the current head of state of the president is a Muslim Irfa Ali. Speaker 0 01:03:01 Well, this has been a wonderful conversation. I'm sure that our listeners have learned a lot about Islam and Muslims in Caribbean. This is Islam on the Edges channel of the Madan podcaster, George Mason University. I talked to Dr. Ali Ahan and Dr. Kenneth Chitwood about Islam, Muslims in the Caribbean. Thank you so much. Speaker 1 01:03:22 Thank you. Speaker 2 01:03:23 Yeah, lots of fun. Thanks.