Editor,
ICDN
I refer to the “Eid Mubarak” supplement in the Guardian (13th May 2021) and the article “Eid before sawine. A historical view of Muslims in Trinidad” by the MAI Institute Islamic History Team.
The Institute said that “Islam accompanied the introduction of African slaves to the country, who were all forced into conversion and the Muslim identity was erased.” They rather added that “the Spanish conquest and ensuing European colonization period…the introduction of slaves from Africa…”
J.M. Roberts in his History of the World (1981) wrote about the Arab conquest and the Arab empires out of the Arabian Peninsula. By 633, Arab armies “invaded Syria and Iraq…and 638 Jerusalem fell into Islam…Mesopotamia…Egypt…by Arab fleet was now created and the absorption of North Africa began…Kabul 664 and by the 8th century they crossed the Hindu Kush to invade Sind which they occupied between 708 and 711…by 732 a hundred years after the death of the Prophet the Arabs army, deep in France.”
He further added that “the Arabs still had great military advantages. Their armies were recruited from hungry fighters to whom the Arabian desert had left small alternative; the spur of overpopulation was behind them. Their assurance in the Prophet’s teaching that death on the battlefield against the infidel would be followed by certain removed to paradise was a huge moral advantage…”
The 145,000 laborers during indentureship can be referred to the book The Making of the Indo-Islamic World c. 700-1800 (2020), by Andre Wike. Slavery and conversion were part of the history of the Indo-Islamic world.
Kamal Persad
Carapichaima
17th May 2021.