“The evidence for the existence of Muslims in early America comes from both sides of the Atlantic. On the African side, the historical research provides a reasonably clear picture of the political and cultural conditions out of which American-bound captives emerged. On the American side, several types of sources give some insight into the presence and activities of Muslims in the New World: the ethnic and cultural makeup of the African regions of origin, the appearance of Muslims names in the ledgers of slaveholders and in the runaway slave advertisements of newspapers, references to Muslim ancestry in interviews with former slave and the descendants of Muslims preferences of certain prototypes of Africans by the slaveholding community, recorded observations of instances of Islamic activity, and profiles of notable Muslim figures. Within the last genre are documents written in Arabic by Muslims themselves, a rare phenomenon.” (Gomez, 1998) Once in bondage in the Americas a clear class distinction arose between Muslim and non-Muslim Africans. To say that one experience was better than the other would be …show more content…
Muslims slaves worked very hard to maintain their religion in the New World. Often forced to convert to Christianity Muslim slaves learned to hide their true religion under the similarities in the two Abrahamic