African Muslim slaves preserved Islam until Protestant abolitionism pulled them into Christianity

Evidence

Despite the large number of African Muslims enslaved in the United States, Islam was eventually extinguished among their heirs. Three factors led to this outcome. First, White Protestant slave owners believed Islam was a false religion created by the devil such that most prohibited their slaves from practicing it. Second, all enslaved African people were subject to coerced conversion to Christianity as a means of saving their purportedly heathen souls. They were given European names and prohibited from giving their children African or Muslim names. Protestant preachers taught the slaves that Islam was one of the primitive African pagan practices that must be shed in order for their souls to be saved. They instructed slaves, and eventually freed Blacks, to shed all remnants of their purportedly heathen African origins through conversion to Christianity. Although some slaves incorporated their Muslim beliefs into their Christian practices or only pretended to convert, Muslims’ inability to practice their communitarian religion accomplished what the slave owners wanted: the elimination of Islam among Blacks in America. … Finally, even those Muslims who secretly practiced their faith could not pass it on to their children or grandchildren due to the sale of their offspring. Rarely could a Muslim man find a Muslim spouse, raise the children Muslim, and keep the children long enough to pass on the religion. Absent Islamic schools and religious leaders, American-born African slaves could not learn how to recite their Quranic prayers or the tenets of the faith without parental teaching. … Thus what kept Islam in America during the antebellum era was the continuous arrival of enslaved Africans. When the last African-born Muslims died in the early twentieth century, Islam as practiced in West Africa effectively disappeared within African American communities. Around the same time, however, a new political movement was growing that would appropriate Islam as a Black Liberation ideology against White supremacy and the myriad legacies of slavery. The domestic backlash would merge anti-Black racism with Orientalism. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 576 (#contradicts, via linked claim)

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim
• XREF: connects to: Europeans saw enslaved African Muslims as semicivilized aids for Christianizing other Africans; Enslaved African Muslims preserved Islam for generations until Protestant abolitionism absorbed them.; Forced Christian conversion extinguished Islam among enslaved African Americans (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Enslaved African Muslims preserved Islam for generations until Protestant abolitionism absorbed them. #corroborates (1.00)
• Forced Christian conversion extinguished Islam among enslaved African Americans #contradicts (0.85)
• Slave owners suppressed Muslim slaves’ religion while forcing Christian conversion #contradicts (0.80) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 516
• Enslaved African Islam died out without continuous fresh arrivals of African-born Muslims #contradicts (0.80) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 576
• Shared Islam enabled enslaved West Africans to organize revolts in the Americas #expands (0.72) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 570
• For early modern Europeans Islam functioned as a civilizing intermediary toward Christianizing Africans #complicates (0.70) — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 130