GEORGETOWN, Guyana, CMC – President Dr. Irfaan Ali has told delegates attending an International Symposium on the History and Legacy of Muslims in the Caribbean’ that they should not only focus on Muslims’ history but also craft a strategy for religion’s future.
The organizers said that the three-day symposium brings together scholars, researchers, and educators from across the globe, fostering intellectual dialogue and collaboration.
The Guyana government organizes it with the Research Centre for Islamic History, Art and Culture (IRCICA) and the General Secretariat of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).
The organizers say it presents an opportunity to unravel the stories of Muslims and highlight their contributions to Caribbean history and culture, by fostering a deeper understanding of shared heritage through the promotion of unity, tolerance, and appreciation for religious diversity.
In his address to the opening ceremony, President Ali told the delegates, “Let us not only contemplate our effort on the history.
“It’s important because the context through which the conversation must develop is important, the context, and that is why the intellectual power is designed behind the forum because the intellectual power is to bring the history and context and then to build off that history and context and position us in the present day and then looking at challenges of the present day and the future and then to speak about the strategy forward,” said President Ali.
The said symposium provides the opportunity to discuss issues, including the role of Islam in the Caribbean’s multicultural tapestry, which dates centuries back to the colonial days.
“We have to design a paper on Islam and multiculturism in the Caribbean because there is a mistaken view that somehow, Islam and the practice of Islam cannot survive or is different from a multicultural environment, that Islam promotes existence in a multicultural environment.”
In addition, Ali told the ceremony that the symposium should highlight the experience of Muslims in the Caribbean, which is a story of resilience, resistance, and religious pluralism.
“We have to be very careful when you examine Islamophobia not to elevate it to a national or global system. The same way we are asking the rest of the world to not elevate extremism from Islam as a system or a global way of presenting Islam,” he added.
IRCICA director general Dr. Mahmud Erol Kilic said that the symposium represents a multilateral initiative that carries information about the cultural heritage of Muslims in the Caribbean.
“It builds a bridge between cultural audiences from the Caribbean and those in the other OIC member states,” he said, noting that IRCICA is the OIC’s cultural subsidiary and is entrusted with the mission to strengthen the common cultural grounds to study, preserve and promote correct understandings about the history, art, sciences, philosophy, scholarships, cultural and social traditions of Muslims across the world.
IRCICA special envoy, Dr. Abdullah Hakim Quick said that the symposium has brought together several experts to produce new narratives for the Caribbean region.
“We will examine the waves of Muslims who came into the Caribbean and study their impact. We are bringing forward documented evidence that shows that Muslims came to this region before Columbus,” he said.
“From Spain, West Africa, written records, eyewitness reports, maps, sculptures and much more. We will also look at the waves of Muslims who came during the Atlantic slave trade, bringing forward written documents, eyewitness reports, and autobiographies confirming that 15 to 30 percent of the enslaved Africans who came into this region were Muslims.”
They will also look at the 19th century and the indentured labor period in detail, the struggle to maintain identity, preservation of religious practices and culture from Suriname to Guyana to Trinidad to the islands of the Caribbean, not only from the Indian experience but the Javanese experience.
“We will look at the impact of Muslims in the region’s economy, sports, recreation, arts, culture, and storytelling. We will shift to the wave that came into the region in the 20th century, bringing economic migration, Arabic-speaking people, coming into this part of the world,” he said.
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