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Islam by country |
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Cuba is a majority Christian nation, with Islam being one of the smallest minority faiths in the country. According to a 2011 Pew Research Center report, there were then 10,000 Muslims in Cuba who constitute less than 0.1% of the population. [1] As of 2012, most of the 10,000 Cuban Muslims were converts to the religion. [2]
At a certain point, there were many Muslim students entering the nation of Cuba interested in studying at Cuba's prestigious schools. The number of students was approximately 1500–2000. That group included students of Pakistani origin, among others. It is known that the dominant population that went to study in Cuba was the Pakistani students, who were about 936 in strength. In 2001, Sheikh Muhammad bin Nassir Al-Aboudy, the Assistant Secretary-General of the Muslim World League (MWL), traveled to Cuba to obtain permission from the Cuban authorities to establish an Islamic organization that would support Cuba's Muslim community. Among the other aims of the proposed organization would be the construction of mosques and the dissemination of Islamic culture among Muslims.
As of July 2015 [update] , the Turkish Religious Affairs Foundation had opened the first prayer room for Cuban Muslims and the first mosque in Cuba was under construction with Turkish funding. [3]
Islam was largely introduced to Cuba during the colonial times (the late sixteenth century to the nineteenth century). [4] This introduction, though, was not from colonists, but from Muslim Western African slaves who arrived in Cuba. Between 1808 and 1848, 49.4% (20,654) of the enslaved Muslim Africans who were captured and brought to the Americas arrived in Cuba, and many more who lack proper documentation have been suggested to have arrived. [5]
The majority of these slaves were Mandingo from Senegambia or, as the British colonists called them, Mohammedanists. Many different groups of Africans arrived in Cuba in the nineteenth century and joined with the Mandingas because of a jihad in Western Africa. [4] Little formal records exist on the impact of Islam on Cuba in the colonial times, but the Registry of the Court of Mixed Commission of Havana does confirm the Muslim African slaves' arrival in Cuba by documented records which included a unique number to each individual, sex, name, age, height, and from which the slaves came. [6]
Also, evidence pointing to African origins of Islam in Cuba comes from the many Islamic names found by scholars, such as Henry Lovejoy, belonging to these slaves, such as Mohammed, Hausa, and Nupe. [7] In 2011, Islam scholars also analyzed the different names found on the records from the Mixed Commission Courts of Havana to identify the names of Muslim and Arabic origin. [5] It's been reported that there was more than 5,000 Muslims in Cuba before 1959 but most (around 80 percent) emigrated after the Cuban Revolution. [8]
Cuban Muslims learned Islam through embassies of Middle Eastern countries as well as through students coming to study in Cuba from Muslim countries. Islam started to spread among Cubans in the 1970s and '80s. Printed and audio-visual Islamic resources are now almost nonexistent in Cuba. Spanish translation of the Quran and other major Islamic books are not available in the country. The Muslim community of Cuba even lacks educated religious cadres. [9]
Islam became gained in popularity while the country endured an economic crisis, and would come to be more organized by the 1990s. Islam was not organized very well in the past because the main worshipers were slaves and they did not have the freedom to make Islam more organized in Cuba. Cuba's government also had problems with accepting Islam as an official religion at first. [10] By the 1990s, the Cuban government was becoming more accepting of public practice. At first, Islam in Cuba was difficult to practice because of the lack of Islam books in Spanish—but with the completion of a mosque in Havana in 2015, it has become easier for people to worship. [11] A lot has changed from the time when Muslims in Cuba could have faced consequences because of the government to having their own mosque with teachers. The change for some Muslim Cubans are difficult because they have always eaten pork and used alcohol. The change for many will be gradual because of lack of formal teaching and imams in the past. Since the Cuban Muslim community is still young many of the Cuban traditions have blended with the new Muslim traditions. With new teachers and a public place to worship more Cubans will be exposed to Islam and the religion will grow. [12]
Cuba houses a mosque named Abdallah Mosque in Old Havana open to everyone for all daily prayers. Elsewhere, Cuba's Muslims usually pray in their homes. Former President Fidel Castro was reported to have promised to build a mosque for his country's Muslims, according to members of the Humanitarian Aid Foundation (IHH) who visited Cuba. [13] In the past, the only prayers performed in public were the Friday Prayers that were conducted in a place known as Casa de los Árabes ("The Arab House") in old Havana. The Arab House belonged to a wealthy Arab immigrant who lived in Cuba during the 1940s, and it was built on Andalusian architectural designs. The House encompasses an Arab museum and restaurant. Qatar donated US$40,000 for the remodeling of the House, but it was only opened for Friday prayers. [14]
There are two Islamic groups in Cuba: the Cuban Islamic Union, which is headed by its president, Imam Yahya Pedro, [9] and Cuban Association for the Diffusion of Islam, which is headed by its president, Abu Duyanah. [15]
Other Sunnis are concentrated in the Malcolm X Center, in the home of the Muslim Hassan Abdul Gafur, in Cerro, in Havana. Hassan Abdul Gafur was the first to form an Islamic organization in Cuba in 1994. [16]
Brazil is a predominantly Christian country with Islam being a minority religion, first brought by African slaves and then by Lebanese and Syrian immigrants. Due to the secular nature of Brazil's constitution, Muslims are free to proselytize and build places of worship in the country. However, Islam isn't independently included in charts and graphics representing religions in Brazil due to its very small size, being grouped in "other religions", which generally represent about 1% of the country's population. The number of Muslims in Brazil, according to the 2010 census, was 35,207 out of a population of approximately 191 million people. This corresponds to 0.018% of the Brazilian population.
Slavery in the Spanish American viceroyalties was an economic and social institution which existed throughout the Spanish Empire including Spain itself. Enslaved Africans were brought over to the continent for their labour, indigenous people were enslaved until the 1543 laws that prohibited it.
Islamic views on slavery represent a complex and multifaceted body of Islamic thought, with various Islamic groups or thinkers espousing views on the matter which have been radically different throughout history. Slavery was a mainstay of life in pre-Islamic Arabia and surrounding lands. The Quran and the hadith address slavery extensively, assuming its existence as part of society but viewing it as an exceptional condition and restricting its scope. Early Islamic dogma forbade enslavement of dhimmis, the free members of Islamic society, including non-Muslims and set out to regulate and improve the conditions of human bondage. Islamic law regarded as legal slaves only those non-Muslims who were imprisoned or bought beyond the borders of Islamic rule, or the sons and daughters of slaves already in captivity. In later classical Islamic law, the topic of slavery is covered at great length.
Islam in the Dominican Republic is a minority religion. Accurate statistics of religious affiliation are difficult to calculate and there is a wide variation concerning the actual numerical amount. Although the majority of the population is Christian, Muslim community is leaded by the Círculo Islámico de República Dominicana. Currently, the Círculo Islámico has an estimation that Muslims number in Dominican Republic is about 3,000 to 4,000, including of a good number of dominicans included.
Panama is a predominantly Christian country, with Islam being a minority religion. Due to the secular nature of Panama's constitution, Muslims are free to proselytize and build places of worship in the country.
Jamaica is a predominantly Christian country, with Islam being a minority religion. Due to the secular nature of Jamaica's constitution, Muslims are free to proselytize and build places of worship in the country.
Islam in Haiti consists of a small minority of Muslims forming less than 1% of the total population, composed of locals and foreign immigrants. A number of mosques and Islamic organizations are present in the country.
Christianity is the most widely professed religion in Cuba, with Catholicism being its largest denomination. A significant share of the Cuban population is either non-religious or practices folk religions.
The history of slavery spans many cultures, nationalities, and religions from ancient times to the present day. Likewise, its victims have come from many different ethnicities and religious groups. The social, economic, and legal positions of slaves have differed vastly in different systems of slavery in different times and places.
Slavery has historically been widespread in Africa. Systems of servitude and slavery were once commonplace in parts of Africa, as they were in much of the rest of the ancient and medieval world. When the trans-Saharan slave trade, Red Sea slave trade, Indian Ocean slave trade and Atlantic slave trade began, many of the pre-existing local African slave systems began supplying captives for slave markets outside Africa. Slavery in contemporary Africa is still practised despite it being illegal.
Slavery in Ethiopia existed for centuries, going as far back as 1495 BC and ending in 1942. There are also sources indicating the export of slaves from the Aksumite Empire. The practice formed an integral part of Ethiopian society. Slaves were traditionally drawn from the Nilotic groups inhabiting Ethiopia's southern hinterland and Oromos. War captives were another source of slaves, though the perception, treatment and duties of these prisoners was markedly different. religious law banned Christian slave masters from taking christians as slaves, slaves were from muslim and other non-christian groups.
John Kimber was the captain of a British slave ship who was tried for murder in 1792, after the abolitionist William Wilberforce accused him of torturing to death an enslaved teenaged girl on the deck of his ship. Kimber was acquitted, but the trial gained much attention in the press. The case established that slave ships' crew could be tried for murder of slaves.
Slavery in Latin America was an economic and social institution that existed in Latin America before the colonial era until its legal abolition in the newly independent states during the 19th century. However, it continued illegally in some regions into the 20th century. Slavery in Latin America began in the pre-colonial period when indigenous civilizations, including the Maya and Aztec, enslaved captives taken in war. After the conquest of Latin America by the Spanish and Portuguese, of the nearly 12 million slaves that were shipped across the Atlantic, over 4 million enslaved Africans were brought to Latin America. Roughly 3.5 million of those slaves were brought to Brazil.
Slavery in Cuba was a portion of the larger Atlantic Slave Trade that primarily supported Spanish plantation owners engaged in the sugarcane trade. It was practised on the island of Cuba from the 16th century until it was abolished by Spanish royal decree on October 7, 1886.
Music of African heritage in Cuba derives from the musical traditions of the many ethnic groups from different parts of West and Central Africa that were brought to Cuba as slaves between the 16th and 19th centuries. Members of some of these groups formed their own ethnic associations or cabildos, in which cultural traditions were conserved, including musical ones. Music of African heritage, along with considerable Iberian (Spanish) musical elements, forms the fulcrum of Cuban music.
The history of slavery in the Muslim world began with institutions inherited from pre-Islamic Arabia.
Cuffee was an escaped slave in Jamaica who led other runaway slaves to form a community of free black people in Jamaica in the island's forested interior, and they raided white plantation owners at the end of the eighteenth century. The name Cuffee is a variation of the Twi Akan name Kofi, which is the name given to a boy born on a Friday.
Slavery has existed in various forms throughout the history of Nigeria, notably during the Atlantic slave trade and Trans-Saharan trade. Slavery is now illegal internationally and in Nigeria. However, legality is often overlooked with different pre-existing cultural traditions, which view certain actions differently. In Nigeria, certain traditions and religious practices have led to "the inevitable overlap between cultural, traditional, and religious practices as well as national legislation in many African states" which has had the power to exert extra-legal control over many lives resulting in modern-day slavery. The most common forms of modern slavery in Nigeria are human trafficking and child labor. Because modern slavery is difficult to recognize, it has been difficult to combat this practice despite international and national efforts.
The Indian Ocean slave trade, sometimes known as the East African slave trade, was multi-directional slave trade and has changed over time. Captured in raids primarily south of the Sahara, predominately black Africans were traded as slaves to the Middle East, Indian Ocean islands, Indian subcontinent, and Java. Beginning in the 16th century, they were traded to the Americas, including Caribbean colonies.
Slavery existed in Morocco since antiquity until the 20th-century. Morocco was a center of the Trans-Saharan slave trade route of enslaved Black Africans from sub-Saharan Africa until the 20th-century, as well as a center of the Barbary slave trade of Europeans captured by the Barbary pirates until the 19th-century. The open slave trade was finally suppressed in Morocco in the 1920s. The haratin and the gnawa have been referred to as descendants of former slaves.
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