Book Review Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 3

Book Review - Essay Example African Muslims that were enslaved and shipped to the land constituted a significant number and they were educated, civilized and had a strong moral foundation in the tenets of Islamic Religion. Because of their distinction as educated and capable of analyzing their own predicament their resistance to slavery was somewhat fiercer. Apart from this central theme that runs through the length and breadth of the Diouf’s work the book gives us the story of the slaves in their homeland, the astonishing struggles of the Muslim slaves to keep their faith and their rich contribution to the fabric of American life. According to the author the Islamic faith of the African slaves gave mooring to their harsh life, away from the home land and motivated them to resist forcefully the tyranny of slavery. Diouf draws convincing evidence of the heroic struggle of the enslaved Muslims by strewing her works from revealing quotes that the reader is brought to admire the faith of the Muslim Africans in their Diaspora. Spanish royal edict of 1543 ordained, â€Å"in a new land like this one where (the Catholic) faith is only recently being sowed, it is necessary not to allow to spread there the sect of Mahomet or any other.† The royal command is motivated more by military consideration than by reasons of faith. The Spanish feared that the native Indian might learn the horsemanship from the Muslim Africans and this would destroy the Spanish military advantage. In spite of these attempts the Muslim religion took root in the Americas and as Diouf notices Islam is the second taste of monotheism of the Native Americans. The author asserts that Islam was functioning in hostile conditions in the new land .According to her slavery,†far from making the Africans’ religious fervor disappear, deepened it.† â€Å"Servants of Allah†, contains a comprehensive account of the Muslim slave attempts to hold on to the Islamic way of life, their unwillingness to accept Christianity, their attempts to