Black Muslims in Canada

Black Muslims in Canada A more accurate version of Canada’s history is coming to light

BY FATIMAH JACKSON-BEST

The year 2019 marked the launching of the findings of the Black Muslim Initiative (https:// blackmusliminitiative.ca), a research project focused on the perspectives of Black Muslims living in Canada.

The Tessellate Institute (http://tessellateinstitute.com) supported this grassroots organization’s endeavor to address anti-Black racism and Islamophobia. The project broke new ground, for it was the first time a systematic review of the published and unpublished literature on Black Muslims in Canada had been conducted. As the lead researcher and as a Black Muslimah, I went into it not knowing what the results would be, but confident that the outcome would significantly amplify our histories and experiences in this country.

More than one year has passed, and the findings’ significance remains undiminished. During this time, Black people around the world have added their voices and experiences to the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, which originated as a hashtag used by activists in the U.S. in 2013 after the murderer of Trayvon Martin, a Black teenager, was acquitted of all charges. In 2020, we have watched it expand as Black people worldwide have used this moment to identify the specific forms of racism that affect us in our respective countries, cities and communities.

The BLM movement is part of a long history of global liberation struggles led by Black communities. Many of our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents joined anti-colonial movements in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. Some were active in North America’s civil rights and anti-segregation struggles.

However, Covid-19 has made this year’s resurgence of BLM even stronger by making the underlying structural inequalities and inequities almost impossible to ignore. We are all seeing in real-time just how fragile our systems are as they grapple with the pandemic. As a result, the inherently flawed, unjust and often violent system that treats Black people as if we are disposable and our communities are expendable can no longer be denied.

Black Canadians are no strangers to systemic and institutional forms of racism, violence and anti-Black racism. Despite efforts to mute this part of its history, Canada enslaved Africans for 200+ years and, later on, enacted segregationist policies that further marginalized Black people. Of course, this dehumanization was enabled by settler colonialism and the genocide of Indigenous people. Today we see these systems’ legacies in the over-policing of Black and Indigenous people, which leads to the over-representation of both groups in prisons as well as their higher rates of death and violence at the hands of police and the state.

Many Black Muslims in Canada also share the experience of anti-Black Islamophobia (Mugabo, D. I. [2016]. Geographies and futurities of being. http://www.academia.edu/31307891). In fact, the term “Anti-Black Islamophobia” — defined as racism enacted by non-Black Muslims and non-Muslims toward Black Muslims and individuals who are perceived as having that identity — was central to the report’s research findings. This is because such racism often erases us from the dominant narratives about Muslim identity, the lack of meaningful inclusion in the public sphere, tokenism, ignorance or denial of the kinds of discrimination we

face and the countless micro-aggressions we confront Canada differ; and that how we idealize and imagine our in religious spaces. communities is being called into question. It pushes us

At its core, anti-Black Islamophobia is deeply dehuto recognize and reckon with the fact that many of us manizing because it ignores the fact that Canada’s first are comfortable believing that Canada’s first Muslims Muslims were among the enslaved Africans brought migrated for social, political or economic reasons, here by European colonizers. Upon their arrival, they instead of being forced into the bellies of slave ships were forcibly Christianized and forbidden to practice and experiencing violence and death through colonial their religious traditions overtly. Many had to hide or power structures. abandon their beliefs just to survive. This knowledge also makes acknowledging and tries like Guinea, and surmises that many of them were

This finding is strengthened by research conducted in Islam to these regions. Black Muslims also joined and even led rebellions, such as the Malê revolt of 1835 in Bahia, Brazil, where a group of Black Muslim slaves and freedmen, inspired by Muslim teachers, rose up against the government.

This truth regarding Canada’s first Muslims disrupts the dominant narratives about Canada and the Muslim presence in this country. In addition to confirming that Canada practiced slavery, this knowledge also forces non-Black Muslims to recognize that African Muslims, resisting systemic racism a must for

BLACK CANADIANS ARE NO STRANGERS TO SYSTEMIC AND us all — both Black and non-Black Muslims. We know that racism in all of its forms disproportionately impacts

INSTITUTIONAL FORMS OF RACISM, Black people. Thus non-Black Muslims

VIOLENCE AND ANTI-BLACK RACISM. should start reflecting on how they can provide meaningful support to move

DESPITE EFFORTS TO MUTE THIS PART ments that seek to eradicate racism

OF ITS HISTORY, CANADA ENSLAVED by turning inward and challenging anti-Blackness in their own commu

AFRICANS FOR 200+ YEARS AND, nities and families. It may be easy for

LATER ON, ENACTED SEGREGATIONIST some to join a protest or read a report on Black Muslims in Canada, but far

POLICIES THAT FURTHER more difficult to hold your families and

MARGINALIZED BLACK PEOPLE. friends accountable for anti-Blackness. And yet these kinds of actions are what

The 2019 research discusses people like Mohamed Similarly, as we learn about how Covid-19 has a Baquaqua, who was born into a Muslim family in Benin more negative impact on Black and low-income people during the 1820s and later sold into slavery in Brazil. and communities, it is also important that Muslims It is reported that he eventually escaped to the northin Canada position ourselves to provide aid and help eastern U.S. before relocating to Haiti and then Canada wherever possible. This is not a time to stand by or, (Turner, R. B. [2003]. Islam in the African-American worse, to be on the wrong side of history. We all must experience. Indiana University Press). Mugabo (2016b) actively work toward justice as if our lives depend on also connects historical evidence, such as late 17th-cenit, because for some of us this is our reality. ih tury baptismal records of enslaved Africans brought Dr. Fatimah Jackson-Best is project manager, Pathways to Care, and a to Quebec from Muslim-majority West African counpublic health researcher and consultant. Muslim (On rocks and hard places: A reflection on antiblackness in organizing against Islamophobia. doi: ISNA Monthly Sustainer –10.5749/jcritethnstud.2.2.0159). A Good Deed Done Regularly!

the U.S., the Caribbean and Latin America, which also You can make an impact with as little as shows that the Black African Muslim men and women brought to work as slaves were the first people to bring $10 per month!

is most needed right now. as opposed to immigrant Muslims, were here first. Moreover their unique history of colonization and www.isna.net • (317) 839-8157 enslavement forces Muslims to confront the reality that we are not all the same; that our histories and routes to Convenient. Secure. Affordable.