Ramadan in America & The Revolutionary Act of Fasting During Slavery
Written with Muhammad Ibn Bashir.
Ramadan is the holiest month in the Islamic calendar — the month in which the Holy Quran was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), and the month in which all Muslims hope to develop consciousness of Allah through fasting. The fast of Ramadan is an obligation on every able-bodied Muslim with exceptions granted to pregnant, menstruating or nursing woman, men and women who are ill or traveling, and children who have yet to hit puberty. It was the superior education of many enslaved Muslims that allowed them to use the stars and moons to calculate the holy month in the Americas and many would sneak off, risking the whip or death, for prayers and meals directly associated with the fast.
Fasting during Ramadan became part and parcel of the perpetual struggle of enslaved Africans to retain their culture in the face of slavery’s brutality and often became one of the many mechanisms of resistance.
Although mainstream media configures Islam as a newfound concept in the Americas, its historical roots run earlier than the Transatlantic Slave Trade and deeper than the current immigrant Muslim population. What is seldom discussed or recognized is the impact that Islamic culture had on the New World and especially the institution of slavery.
