Seas Remember

During the transatlantic slave trade, enslaved African Muslims were brought to the Americas, where they became known for uprisings. Charles V of Spain once tried to exclude “slaves suspected of Islamic learnings” from the Americas after the earliest recorded rebellion on Christmas Day, 1522. He blamed their behavior on “radical ideology.” However, the decree was not effective and enslaved African Muslims continued to foment revolution. In Haiti, pre-Revolution maroon leader Francois Macandal organized slaves to make poison, which was used to kill slaveholders and those assisting them. He was so notorious that poison was briefly dubbed “Macandal.”’ During slavery, Islam had a significant presence; the estimate is that fifteen to thirty percent, or as many as 600,000 to 1.2 million, slaves in antebellum America were Muslim. And often, they were the ones being watched the most.

Andrew Lawler writes in Smithsonian Magazine “20 enslaved Muslim Africans used machetes to attack their Christian masters on the island of Hispaniola, then governed by the son of Christopher Columbus. The assailants, condemned to the grinding toil of a Caribbean sugar plantation, killed several Spanish and freed a dozen enslaved Native Americans in what was the first recorded slave revolt in the New World.”

When I read of Bahia’s rebellions, I thought of the rising costs of food, the indignities of hunger, and how economic violence creates ripe conditions for resistance. These enslaved Muslims resisted not just with machetes but with the unyielding conviction that their spiritual and cultural legacies would persevere.

The parallels are inescapable. Rising inflation, the spiraling cost of living—today’s struggles echo theirs, though with new masks. The historical scaffolding remains the same.

To understand Muslims in Brazil is to understand a history of resilience. The Malê Revolt of 1835 in Bahia was the largest slave rebellion in Brazil. Led by African Muslims, the uprising had significant nationwide repercussions. Although short-lived, it led to increased efforts by Brazilian authorities to suppress the African Muslim community. João José Reis’s research into the Malê Revolt of 1835 anchors this history in its rightful place—not as footnotes but as the marrow of Brazil’s past.

In Rio, life announces itself in gesture, in rhythm. It seduces not just with its beauty but its contrasts. The city itself was conspiring to remind me of all that resists easy categorization. Flamengo Beach, with its languid waves and rocky sands, became my office, a place to sit with the histories I had read and the futures I was watching unfold. There is something about sitting in the presence of the vastness of the ocean that recalibrates what seems possible. If Bahia’s Muslims could resist the machinery of slavery and empire, what might we reimagine in the face of our own tyrannies?

The ocean, of course, remembers everything. Flamengo’s tides lapped at my feet as I sat and thought of Bahia, of the journeys that brought Muslims to these shores, of the rebellions that marked their arrival. Water is the ultimate witness, carrying the residue of ships and shackles, prayers and revolts. It was here, between the anxiety over my research and the joy of sunlit stillness, that the threads began to tangle: the historical with the contemporary.

In North America, early forms of surveillance targeting Black Muslims were deeply tied to the suppression of Islam among enslaved Africans. On American plantations, the fear of rebellion—fueled by stories of African Muslim uprisings in Spain’s South American colonies—led to harsh restrictions on religious practices, aiming to break both faith and spirit. Evidence of this can be seen in the Ben Ali diary from Sea Island, Georgia, which chronicles how enslaved African Muslims observed Ramadan under constant watch. Despite the dangers, they gathered for meals and prayers, finding ways to hold onto their faith. However, oppressive laws like Virginia’s Slave Code of 1723, which deemed the assembly of five or more enslaved people illegal, sought to stamp out not just Islam but any form of resistance or community building. Similar laws existed across the South, turning religion into an act of defiance.

This legacy of surveillance expanded in the 20th century, with the FBI scrutinizing Black Muslim organizations like the Moorish Science Temple, accusing them of promoting anti-capitalist and revolutionary ideologies. FBI files, divided by regional offices in cities like Baltimore, Chicago, and Philadelphia, reveal how Black Islam was associated with foreign threats—Marxism, anti-imperialism, and even pro- Japanese sentiment—branding it as un-American.

By the 1960s, Islamophobia became a key weapon in the FBI’s arsenal. Through programs like COINTELPRO, the agency launched aggressive campaigns to undermine the Nation of Islam, Black nationalist movements, and New Left groups. Framing Islam as a threat to national security, the FBI used smear tactics, infiltration, and disruption to silence dissent, cementing surveillance as a tool of oppression against Black Muslims and civil rights leaders alike.

Contemporary discourse on surveillance, and the racialization of Muslims begins on 9/11 but this panoptical, state sanctioned surveillance of Black people did not need a rise in technologies to exist.

Technology does not account for the specific scrutiny that enslaved Black Muslims faced because of their religious identity and disposition for dissent, the resources that the FBI and other government agencies flooded into specifically surveilling Black Muslims, and even more topical discussions about surveillance and Muslims fails to account for Black Muslims, immigrant and Black American alike.

Today, Black Muslims make up an estimated 35–42 percent of all American Muslims. Though Islam is often imagined as a primarily Arab religion in the United States, Black Muslims outnumber both Arab and South Asian Muslims and are the fastest growing demographic of the faith’s domestic population.

The legacy of the Malê Revolt continues to be felt in Bahia today. The Afro-Bahian musical and cultural group Malê Debalê carries a message of social, cultural, and political resistance, highlighting issues such as apartheid, police brutality, and political inequalities in Brazil.

The story of Islam in Brazil continued to unfold with later waves of immigration, primarily from the Middle East and South Asia. These immigrants have contributed to the growth of the Brazilian Muslim population, which is now estimated to be around 200,000, making it the largest Muslim community in Latin America. This is similar to the story of Islam in the United States. The demographic composition of Brazilian Muslims is diverse, reflecting the country’s broader cultural and ethnic diversity. While the exact number of Muslims in Brazil is a subject of debate, ranging from 37,000 to over a million, the community’s presence and influence have been undeniable throughout the nation’s history.

Brazil is now the world’s largest exporter of halal protein, catering to the growing demand from Muslim consumers worldwide. The cultural and culinary integration of Muslims in Brazil is a testament to the country’s diversity and the enduring influence of the Arab and Muslim communities, and similar integrations can be seen across the Americas, in Mexico, the United States, and in Canada. As the Muslim presence in the Americas continues to grow, it will undoubtedly shape this hemisphere’s rich traditions and flavors for generations to come.

When I first landed in Rio de Janeiro, I saw a Muslim family— mother, father, and child—walking in the central part of Rio. Seeing them, veiled and proud, was like encountering a living seam threading the past into the present. Watching them, I saw the quiet revolutions waged in every gesture—the swing of a hijab, the laughter of a child, the gaze that meets the world unflinching.

Diaspora, I’ve learned, is not a fixed identity but a constant becoming. It is as much about what is preserved as what is reconstructed in the gaps. When we can tie together these histories, we can better understand how our stories not only overlap, but can’t exist without one another. Our struggles, much like our histories, are interconnected.