THE JIHAD OF SHAYKH USMAN DAN FODIO AND
ITS IMPACT BEYOND THE SOKOTO CALIPHATE - 6

[Background]   [Impact Beyond the Caliphate:Borno]  [Masina ]    [Senegambia ]   [Nile valley ]   [African Diaspora in the Carribean ]   [Factors Facilitating Spread:Conclusion ]  AFRICAN DIASPORA IN THE CARIBBEAN Some of the Africans caught in the heinous European slave trade and ended up in the plantations of the Caribbean Islands happened to be Muslims. Some of them may have been caught up while on transit in search for knowledge or while engaged in jihad, for they arrive their final destinations with Arabic manuscripts, concealed to avoid seizure from the ever suspecting white slave masters. A number of them appear to have come from West Africa; the case of Abubakar who was a scholar of some appreciable learning who eventually got freed and even returned to his native Jenne in Masina, in contemporary Mali, has been well documented. Another case of Muhammad Kaba, (otherwise known by the Christian name they were given in plantations, Robert Peart) who hails from an area east of Timbuktu and who was also a scholar, is also well known. Muslim slaves generally appear to have continued in spirit if not in reality to study and live Islamic life, resisted slavery and to have led what is often referred to as slave riots. It was not unusual for Arabic manuscripts from new arriving slaves to be circulated discreetly among Muslims in the plantations. One such document called the Wathiqah, from all the descriptions, the Wathiqat Ahl Sudan of Shehu Usman, arrived Jamaica in the late 1820’s. This document, written by Shaykh Usman, on the eve of the jihad in Sokoto, was aimed at mobilising the Jama’a for the jihad. It therefore contained the reasons that necessitated jihad in Hausaland and a passionate appeal to Muslims to come out to make hijra and fight jihad. It was indeed, as Bivar described it, a manifesto of the jihad. Some of the injustices and oppressions in the slave plantations must have had some resemblance to the ones addressed to in the Wathiqa, for it got a great reception among the slaves in the Jamaican plantations. It was secretly circulated and though in Arabic its message of jihad got through and was well received. In 1832 the slaves in Manchester, an area in Jamaica, under the leadership of Muhammad Kaba, rose up in jihad against their tyrannical white masters. This jihad triggered similar jihads among slaves in these plantations and for the next few years the whole area became restive. These jihads were known by the white plantation owners as the famous slave riots. Here then is an echo of the jihad of Shaykh Usman Dan Fodio in far away Caribbean. The Wathiqa may not, indeed could not, have been the only document that found its way into the Caribbean. Some of the arriving slaves may well have been in one way or the other part of the Jama’a or extensions thereof. All these factors may have facilitated the impact of the jihad of Shaykh Usman in the West Indies. The impact itself could not have been limited to the uprisings in the plantations. By making Islam a rallying point and symbol of liberation from the shackle of the oppressions of the white man, the impact of Shaykh Usman had helped transform Islam into a liberating force. This posture of Islam in the Americas and the Caribbean has endured to this day and remains one of the most motivating factors for the increasing conversions to Islam among the black Diaspora.