Omar ibn Said: From Senegal to Slavery in America, A Scholar in Chains, A Soul Unbroken
Matt Walsh, who is a right-wing political commentator, recently asked Mehdi Hasan, “What have Muslims ever contributed to building America?”. It was not really a question, but rather it was a provocation, born of historical amnesia.
But Hasan’s calm response pointed to a truth older and deeper than any modern prejudice: that the very foundations of America were laid, in part, by enslaved Africans, and among them were tens of thousands of Muslims, believers who carried faith, intellect, and dignity across the ocean in chains.
One of those slaves was Omar ibn Said who was born in the 18th century in the present-day Senegal, long before he ever set foot in America, he was already a learned Muslim scholar, fluent in Arabic, steeped in Qur’anic knowledge, and trained in theology and mathematics.
In America, Omar was enslaved, sold, and brutalized like countless others. Yet even in bondage, he refused to surrender the essence of who he was. When he was finally enslaved in North Carolina, he began to write, in Arabic, the language of revelation and scholarship.
The Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. has recorded and safeguarded the legacy of Omar ibn Said, preserving not only his portrait but, most importantly, his own handwritten Qur’anic verses in Arabic, a rare and powerful reminder of a learned soul who carried his faith unbroken through the darkest chapter of American history.
While in captivity he composed his now-famous autobiography, The Life of Omar ibn Said, a manuscript filled with Qur’anic verses, personal reflections, and subtle expressions of faith. In an era when enslaved people were denied literacy, Omar wrote with eloquence that astonished his captors and survives today as a treasure of American history, preserved by the Library of Congress.
The picture below shows the North Carolina Historical Marker I-89, which commemorates Omar ibn Said.
His life refutes every lie told about enslaved Africans being “uncivilized” or “unlearned.” He was a man of intellect, humility, and endurance, a Muslim scholar enslaved in a Christian land, yet spiritually unbroken.
Omar’s story is not an exception; it is a window to the numerous enslaved Muslim Africans brought to the Americas, taken from various places in Africa.
They brought with them centuries of faith, architecture, and philosophy. Their hands built the fields, ports, and roads that became the economic foundation of the United States, and their prayers, whispered in captivity, were among the first acts of worship on this soil.
When people claim Muslims have “no history” in America, they erase these men and women, the Muslim farmers, traders, and scholars who became the first involuntary immigrants to the New World. Before Ellis Island, before modern mosques, Islam was already here, carried across the Atlantic in the hearts of the enslaved.
Omar ibn Said’s life teaches us that faith and intellect cannot be shackled. His pen became his resistance; his words, his freedom. Though he lived and died as a slave, he never ceased to be a scholar of God.
When we remember him, we remember all those enslaved Africans, Muslims and others, who endured the unimaginable, yet held fast to their faith, their dignity, and their humanity.
So when Matt Walsh asks what Muslims contributed to America, the answer is clear: We built its wealth with our labor, We enriched its spirit with our faith, And we endured its cruelty with unbreakable souls.
Omar ibn Said, the scholar in chains, stands as our proof. From Senegal to Carolina, he carried Islam, intellect, and integrity across oceans. He may have been a slave in America, but he was, and remains, a free man before God. May Almighty Allah shower His mercy upon him - Ameen.
Abu Abdul Mannaan
https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/
Omar’s original Arabic writings, including his 1831 autobiography and Qur’anic passages, offering rare insight into an enslaved Muslim scholar’s life in America.
https://www.loc.gov/ghe/
https://a.co/d/adHR4fY
