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Abstract
The revisionings proposed by Sultana Afroz regarding the pervasiveness of the African Islamic presence in plantation Jamaica are contested, on grounds of her falsification of demographic data and of contemporary historical sources, non-differentiation in the treatment of historical processes in West Africa, unsubstantiated or inadequate proof of claims, attribution of causality and relatedness to parallel phenomena, questionable etymological assertions, unfamiliarity with African cultural history, and a general tendency to make exaggerated and dogmatic statements.
This article sets out to refute the body of claims put forward by Sultana Afroz in her rewriting of Jamaican history. As is made patent in the conclusion to Afroz' "The Unsung Slaves"1 and in her series of articles, "The Invincibility of Islam in Jamaica",2 one impetus for her challenge to Caribbean historiography is the promotion of Islam. I have no intention of addressing the legitimacy of this motive (since we each harbour partialities), or of discussing the parameters within which religious conviction is an appropriate tool of historical interpretation. However, what I propose to address are the inaccuracies of data and faults of argumentation that bedevil her revisioning. There are glaring disjunctures between the sweeping claims advanced and the paucity of the evidence proffered, while logic is defied by extravagance of assertion, leaps in assumptions, and glib transitions from probability to dogmatism. Discrepant logic is further evidenced through the attribution of causation to the conjuncture or correlation of event, behaviour or custom. Afroz' application of doubtful logic to the production of questionable historiography is contained in her newspaper series, "The Invincibility of Islam in Jamaica", as well as several substantial articles: "The Unsung Slaves"; "From Moors to Marronage: The Islamic Heritage of the Maroons"; "The Manifestation of Tawid: The Muslim Heritage of the Maroons in Jamaica"; and "The Jihad of 1831-1832: The Misunderstood Baptist Rebellion in Jamaica".3
The launching pad for her argument is an inflation of the number of enslaved Muslims in Jamaica, a polemic direction that becomes noticeable from her 1999 treatise onwards. To build this case, she first distorts comments made by some nineteenth-century commentators. For example, in "The Jihad" (231], Afroz quotes comments by Bridges4 on the continuing loyalty to Islam among Christianized Muslims in Jamaica, a useful testimony for her thesis, but...