Returning to Our Roots

[Music] [Music] [Music] great pleasure an honor for me to be with you here today for a number of reasons one is that my grandmother left Barbados in 1917 she was a nurse dietitian and she went to America and she married an African American in the city of Boston Massachusetts and my mother was a child and I knew my grandmother and she used to tell us about Barbados and she emphasized education and that affected my mother and my grandmother and my aunt my mother before she passed away got a master's in education and my aunt was the one of the first black women to graduate from Boston University this is back in the 1950s and so that feeling for education that feeling for knowledge is something that has affected me in many parts of my life so I wanted to share some of this information with you today and to talk to you not as an intellectual and high language and whatever I want to go straight straight to the point because a generation you live in is different than any other generation before because of digital technology people are able to make what is true appear to be false and to make what is false appear to be true so as a student and when you grow up and even as a person just living in this world you have to become like an investigative journalist you have to be able like Sherlock Holmes in order to find out information don't accept the hype that's what we say in America don't follow things that are just given to you even if it's in a book challenge it and I challenged it from when I was very young growing up in America they taught me and you probably heard of this before that Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1492 this is part of the information that's been given in the history book this is one of the main historical dates you will find in history books before I go into this though in 1926 an African American historian named Khadija Woodson he looked at the books he looked at the curriculum and he realized that African people among others were not being mentioned very often in the history books or a distorted image was being given so he started what is called Black History Week he did it in it was eventually changed into a month and he chose February and it may sound strange to be studying African Africa and black people in February because it's the shortest month of the year and it's the coldest right in the north why did he do that because Abraham Lincoln who was the president who signed the Declaration of Independence did this special this Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slate that the enslaved Africans in America he was born in February also Frederick Douglass was born in February so February was chosen for what is called Black History Month and in 1976 the US government adopted this as a special time to look at African history and in 1995 the Canadian government dedicated this but you would say what is the purpose of this we already have history books they told me Columbus discovered America in 1492 and I traveled around to different parts of the world I went to China I went deep in South America I went to Malaysia all over Africa I said when who discovered America and they said Christopher Columbus I said when they said 1492 but my question was as a student and to these people how can you discover a place when the people are living there already you understand this this is information being put into your head you have to learn how to take it apart because the reality is is that indigenous people have been living in the Americas for thousands of years we have some proof between ten to twenty thousand years and what you call amerindians here the Atty know the Caribes the Arawak the luke aliens lived in this part of the world for thousands of years this is a a picture an aerial shot of the Inca civilization in Peru since South America this is built long before Columbus and when you look down on it you see the grid of a huge city they had one of the largest cities in the world could you imagine that in the Americas and I mean Canada US Central America Caribbean South America there was over 75 million people there was 2,000 languages different 2,000 languages spoken by the peoples in this area and yet Columbus then says and it's put into the history books he discovered the place and if you think about this it's like if I came and I said I discovered st. micheal's in 2020 like none of you ever existed this island never existed nobody because I just reached here and so what we are dealing with is the erasing of an entire civilization when Columbus his son Ferdinand came he found pyramids Hanging Gardens the Mayans had calendars he found all types of amazing things in this part of the world even if you say Columbus was the first European to come that would be a mistake because we have people living who lived in the north call Vikings you ever heard the Vikings before do you know which country Vikings come from anybody know Norway Sweden Denmark right so they went over the northern route and they came into Canada Greenland Iceland Canada long before Columbus so he was not even the first European to discover America okay so what we're talking about now is deconstruction of history you take it apart and then you put it back together Columbus thought he was in India some islands off the coast of India but the people are not Indians here and up until now the name Indian still sticks to the people but this is not India so this is wrong information which we have been accepting over hundreds of years accepting this information as the truth and this is just the beginning of it but in actuality and I want to show you I want to show you some hard evidence I'm not just going to talk to you if you look at this picture see the size of this building this is in Mexico in Guatemala Belize Mexico these huge pyramids are there it was an amazing civilization so when you deconstruct information and you put it back together then if I had a chance to write the book I would say Columbus was discovered in 1492 see the difference in those two sentences he was lost and he bumped into the Americas on his way to India right this is deconstruction and what this does it gives us another understanding because true history helps to erase the mystery you get this it will erase the mystery and people who do not know the history right they're going to be lost totally lost in the present if you don't know your roots if you don't know your background you don't understand your history then you don't really know who you are as a person and so this is the challenge that I want to put to you and to open up this door today through some basic information this is what I call not his story it's our story see it history his story what we want is you get it we want our story right the story of everybody not you've been studying his story how many of you like history most of you will say no isn't it a boring subject all these dates and these old men fighting in castles in England why is it boy why is it a boring subject to most people if I took a picture of this room right now who was the first person you'd look at you'd look at yourself right you want to know if your eyes the clothes are you pretty you know I you handsome right you'd look at yourself first so if you open up the history book and you don't see yourself then you're bored about this you don't like this subject and so I want to do a little test with you though this is a type of a psychological test it's a word test that if you raise up to corporations this is how they check people out it's it's a psychological thing but you got to be honest with me right just tell the truth what you're thinking if I say the word sugar what comes in your mind sweet spice okay sugar and spice right and everything nice okay that's honest right if I say fire what comes in your mind what if I say ice if I say Africa one of the time black what else be honest now what comes in your mind poor what else poverty what else fighting and then most people start talking about animals hippo elephants lions this is your image of Africa and in the history books they depicted Africa as a backward dark place savages you ever heard of Tarzan before and Tarzan he becomes the king of the jungle right this is the image that we're given of Africa savage backward people I wanted to challenge this number one when you study geography you're going to see some major distortions that happen this is a map of Africa and most of the maps that you have in your book is the Girdhar Mercato amount and the Mercator map which is written a few centuries ago this map distorts the world it makes Europe big and it makes Africa smaller but the reality is if you go to what is called Peters projection which is taken by an actual picture of the earth itself you will see that Africa is a huge continent Africa is so large you can put India and China into Africa and you still have space see how big that is you understand how big that is then you can take all of the European countries who conquered Africa and you can put them inside too and you still got space so it's a distortion because if in your mind your country is small they want to make you think small and the other country is big Europe is bigger so they're bigger than you it's a psychological thing so the Peters projection is the proper map to get the proper map of Africa itself what about the history of Africa I traveled to Africa I traveled throughout Africa to 20 African countries and when I traveled into Egypt I found some amazing information this is what is called the Numair plate or the manys plate okay this is how the leader of ancient Egypt and what you got to realize if you look back this here is Egypt can you see my pointer that's the Sudan and you would think if you look at the map that the Nile the Nile River see the Nile River here you think it flows from north to south but it actually flows from south north because the mountains are in Uganda and Ethiopia and Kenya so the mountain is actually south and it's flowing north right and the civilization also went from south to north in 3200 BC minase United Upper and Lower Egypt he United what is now the Sudan and Egypt 3200 BC now fix your minds now we're in ad right you got to go back to 0 and you got to start counting backwards so 3200 BC he made a united country and this is an actual bust an actual sculpture of Mena's himself this is the ancient Egyptians the ancient Egyptians were African people look at mayonnaise face closely take his cap off put a baseball cap on him and he looks like he's from Christchurch am i telling a lie look at his face you know this brother this is the Pharaoh of Egypt you understand now what is important about this remember what the historian historian said Africa's never did anything it's a backward place in 3100 they had the first writing system it's called hieroglyphics they had a writing system 3100 BC then they built the Step Pyramid 2000 650 BC they built this building here now ok it's just a building but it's still standing up until today and I went underneath this pyramid and I found see how it looks underneath you go underneath and you will see passageways this is two thousand six hundred and fifty BC if you add 2022 that you're talking over four thousand maybe six six hundred plus years if you have a building in Barbados 100 years old it's a national monument right it's a historical building this is four thousand years old and it's still there the ancient Egyptians were doing brain surgery right we found this down at below the pyramids they had an amazing civilization but I said I want to take it a step further so I left the area of saqqâra and I went to another area in Egypt called Giza and as you're walking in Giza see the town then you see this huge structure in the back this is called the Great Pyramid of Giza and what is important about this pyramid and this is a this is how it looks when people going through the desert what's important about this pyramid here is this number one it was built for this Pharaoh whose name was Khufu look at his face closely with a baseball cap on him where'd he come from Saint Thomas where did he come from look at his face closely seriously what is important about this what is important about the fact that this is an African person it's important because this pyramid was the largest building in the world until the 19th century tallest right it was the tallest building on earth try to understand this till the 1800s right no human being ever built a building of this size in one structure it has two million three hundred thousand blocks of granite granite is a tough stone some of these blocks weigh two and a half tons look at this building closely the corner of the building is perfect right angles the corners face north south east and west the difference between the length of one side and the length of another side they measured it you know you know that the difference was between one side and another eight inches only eight inches huge stones look at the size of these stones and some of them weight 2.1 tons this stone here see the size of the stone that person by the way is me that's me you see so now you get a real-live scale model right that's me okay like look at the size of this you see how do they do this there's no slaves put a slave put it on their head and carry it you can't carry a stone like this you have to understand physics and math you have to have an unbelievable understanding but you know what's the strange thing about this we were taught that math modern math started with the Greeks right the Greeks right then the Romans but Greek civilization did not stop until 800 BC which means that's almost a thousand five hundred years or more after this was built and the original Greeks they were not racist people the Greeks were honest and they said we got our civilization from the Egyptians they were dark-skinned people with curly hair they had no problem okay look at the size of that building you know what's interesting also there's no cement in between the blocks it's cut out perfectly and put into place I went down into the pyramids there's tunnels inside you go down inside and found if different rooms and different things inside of the pyramid things that they were doing then I went south and I found a place called dibs or Karnak and they had a university there this is an ancient time a university they were studying all of these Sciences in this university look at the size of the column see the man there look at the columns now remember the Greeks that's the Greeks and the Romans see the difference between that column and the other column this was a thousand years after 2,000 years after because the Great Pyramid of Giza this was built around 2500 BC that's the Great Pyramid okay so put your mind together try to get your facts together now about history right 3200 Egypt is United 3100 writing system 2,650 Step Pyramid 2500 approximately Great Pyramid okay now go down closer to zero right 2,500 2,000 1,800 now the Greeks begin their civilization before that time there was no major civilization in Greece Rome anywhere in Europe at that time okay so now if you're a racist you got a problem with this you got a problem because these are the the Greek columns and England itself what is the greatest ancient structure it's called stonehedge compare this to the pyramids see this is what you don't get in the history books compare the two and the one that was built by the black african people had the lod tallest building until the 19th century they didn't put that in a history book but you know one historian came along and he said I'll solve the problem the aliens built it and they flew down from Mars outer space landed on earth built a pyramid and then flew back in space you ever heard of that before is a movie called Star Gate right Star Gate right because black people couldn't have done this because if you have a racist theory that nothing comes out of Africa that Europe taught Africa you got a problem now because it's the opposite right it's the opposite so you can't use a racist theory and so what is known by many people this pharaoh his name was ramses and his grandson was the pharaoh around the time of moses remember the prophet moses remember the pharaoh chasing moses and the water he raised the staff on the water opened right the story of moses when did that happen 1525 BC that's 2,000 years after it began you see so the pyramids were already there in the time of Moses and Pharaoh is only a title like president Prime Minister there were hundreds of pharaohs literally hundreds of them but Ramses had a problem he wanted his face everywhere so he put his face all over Egypt and his ego problem his grandson by the time it reached his grandson he thought he was God and he wanted to be worshiped in the place of God and that's where Moses opposed him and he was saved by the creator when he raised his staff and the water opened and favour was destroyed but what is important this large structure here it's called obelisk obelisk everyone in the world wants to obelisk the Americans they stole the obelisk one of the Egyptian when they put it in in America everybody wants an obelisk do you have an obelisk in Barbados go down but by the Lord Nelson statue you know downtown you see a cross the Lord Nelson it's an obelisk it's not a big one it's a little one right but you have an obelisk the largest obelisk in the world was not in Egypt isn't a place called Aksum which is Ethiopia now what is it that you know about Ethiopia okay Jah Rastafari one love right that's what you know right I and I this is what you know about Ethiopia but there's other things about Ethiopia as well one important point is that Ethiopia Aksum was one of the most powerful empires in the ancient world they had elephants in their armies that's the largest obelisk in the world this is technology as a sundial right they use it for mathematics they use it for astronomy okay and it's right around this time that Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him he appeared in the Arabian Peninsula he was teaching the belief in one God he was teaching no racism his followers were light-skinned dark-skinned Arab African Persian European they were all with the Prophet and after five years of teaching Prophet Mohammed then said to his followers you have to leave they're killing us they were torturing the Muslims killing them so he said leave Mecca which was their base where did they go they did not go to Syria they did not go to India they did not go to Malaysia they went to Africa this is a very important historical understanding the first place that the followers of what we believe is the last prophet Muhammad peace be upon him after Abraham Moses Jesus they went to Africa and What did he say to them this is an actual saying of the Prophet he said if you go to Abyssinia it would be better for you for innit there is a king who will not tolerate oppression it is a land of truth go there until such time as a lhasa shall relieve your distress Allah means God he said go to Abyssinia or al habesha that was now present-day ethiopia and eritrea so they went there and the Prophet wrote a letter to the king of Ethiopia the King's name was Osama his title was the Nagus in arabic you say annachi he was a great ethiopian ruler of the Aksumite empire they believed they were Christians but they believed in one God powerful believers because one of the disciples mark of Jesus he died on the Nile and the teachings went up the Nile so they were Christians from way back believing in in the original religion so this is a letter which is still available a copy of it on the left side the prophet dictated it to one of his followers you can find it in the Topkapi Museum in Istanbul Turkey this letter still there today what did the Prophet of Islam the last prophet say to the Christian Emperor okay this is the kind of history that you'll never get in your main books but this is hard facts he said in the name of Allah the beneficent the merciful from Muhammad The Messenger of Allah to the great Nagus of Abyssinia peace be upon he who follows the guidance as to what follows verily I praise Allah the one whom there is no deity except him the soul king the holy the source of peace the protector and the guardian then what did he say this is important he said I bear witness that jesus the son of maryam meaning mary is the spirit belonging to allah and his word which he cast into the chaste and excellent virgin she thus became pregnant by means of his spirit and his inspiration with jesus in the same manner that he created Adam with his hand so what does that mean you can't be a Muslim unless you accept that Mary was a virgin and that Jesus was born in a divine conception who believes in this outside of Christians nobody but people didn't understand it is a key point in in Islamic belief this is the letter that he wrote to the Emperor then he said verily I invite you to Allah the one who has no partner and to friendship continuity and government in obedience to him I invite you to follow me and have absolute certainty with what I have come with verily I am The Messenger of Allah I invite you in your government forces to Allah the mighty the majestic thus I have delivered the message and given you counsel therefore accept my counsel peace be upon he who follows the guidance the Najah she has Hama he accepted the letter and he gave sanctuary to the Muslims who were running away from the idol worshippers who were killing them in Mecca so it was a unity between Christian and Muslim you see complete unity and as Hama said there's no difference between our religion actually according to our what we're taught us Hama nagashi he became a Muslim before he died and this is where he's buried in lagash in ethiopia there fifteen of the companions of Prophet Mohammed buried with him there in Ethiopia okay so now Africa itself what happened to the followers of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon this green here is the spread of Islam within 100 years they found a place in the north today you call Tunisia they called it if repiy yeah this is Arabic everything yeah and it meant in ancient times a sunny place that is the first modern use of the word Africa that's where a European map maker took this word Afriqiyah he said the whole continent is Africa okay that's something that you wouldn't learn in most history books then they started spreading their teachings not by armies but they spread it by migration by trade by wandering scholars and people started to embrace Islam but you know what they found they found that below the Sahara Desert see this desert here below there is what is called the niger river here you have Senegal Gambia then you have Molly right present-day this Niger River below the river was the largest active gold mine in the world the people were shipping the gold so the Muslims made trade routes this is how this is one of the ancient towns this is Ghana ancient Ghana they cover their face in the desert because of the Sahara desk a Sahara Desert the sand so the men cover their face as they moved to the desert the scholars were there cities were built cities of the countries of takraw of God of Ghana of gow later of Timbuktu this is something from the from the fabled city of Timbuktu today and I visited this area here I'm bringing you information from this ear you see this picture with these scholars here see they see that person there that's me that's me sitting with the scholars okay all of the scholars speak the Arabic language it's an international language the trade route going across the desert it is the largest gold mine in the world and because of this the people were fabulously rich remember what we said about Africa what was in our minds poor right I want you to Google some information not right now when you go for when you go back who was the richest man who ever lived Google it Rothschild rockefeller Bill Gates the richest person who ever lived was a person named Mansa Musa I didn't write this go into Google and look he was a black African Muslim King he was the richest person who ever lived they had so much gold this is a map drawn by a European map maker he probably didn't look like this but they drew the map you see his crown it's all gold you see the piece of gold is like a grapefruit he made his pilgrimage to Mecca like a Muslim does he carried 72 thousand people across the Sahara Desert look at this story here this is an amazing story you realize what a desert is 72 thousand people crossed the desert 15 thousand camels laden with gold he changed the economy of every country that he reached see this this is an amazing story that's the part of history that we should be studying that's the knowledge a movie should be made about this but what are the movies we get now x-men aliens mutant creatures those are our heroes now right and the real history has taken away from us when Mansa Musa came back from his pilgrimage he used this gold and he brought scholars with him architects they built building structures all over Central and West Africa and he found a mysterious City which was called Timbuktu has anybody ever heard the name Timbuktu before usually when they say Timbuktu they say all get lost go to Timbuktu Timbuktu means you lost somewhere right why is that because Timbuktu was considered the shangri-la it was a place where gold was all over the place the people were fabulously rich and they used their gold for book education they were heavily into education Timbuktu just for you of those who want to really study history you know who founded Timbuktu it's a woman her name was buck - and Tim in the in the Tamasheq language that's the language of the Bourbons the two are eggs who cover their their face Timbuktu means the well of Bach - because when the two are eggs were coming out the desert down by the river they were getting sick with malaria right the mosquitos are biting them so she went about twelve kilometres eight miles north and she dug a well this is a reenactment of her well in Timbuktu right now today she dug a well where the mosquitoes could not come so that became a business town and eventually it became a town of scholars scholars from all over Africa were going to Timbuktu to the point where Timbuktu this is a present-day picture which I took myself in Timbuktu and by the 16th century remember 1500s right Timbuktu had 150 schools in the Sankore a university there was 25,000 students could you imagine this and I studied some African history books tareka Sudan by a Saudi and he said my uncle went for a cataract operation in a place called jen-mei which is close to Timbuktu and it was successful so they were doing complicated eye operations studying astronomy studying chemistry studying religious sciences 25,000 black African students you see now is it right to say Africa has never done anything for the on would flow of history it's a lie and this is what cottagey Woodson was searching for with this month Timbuktu became produced books and sent these beautiful books all day they reached all over the world eventually the the trade stopped in the desert and it went to the oceans and after Timbuktu became deserts coming in but there are still thousands of books in Timbuktu up until today and they're putting them in libraries thousands of books written by black African scholars ok this is what is left of the same court a mosque where the university was now you know what one of the books said in Timbuktu it was written by a person by the name of al Hamadi an Ahmadi was writing about the journey of Mansa Musa and Allah what he said when months of Musa reached Egypt remember months of Musa with up with the gold right they said where did you get this money from and he said I am part of the lineage of the Malian kings and my older brother Abu Bakr he went into the sea of darkness the Atlantic Ocean that would be somewhere around Senegal he went into the ocean with 2,000 ships and he never returned right this is now 13:24 is when he said this his older brother never returned to Mali 2000 ships what happened to the now we look and we see on the ocean there is what is called currents the current will take you right in it'll take you from North Africa or West Africa right into Brazil or will take you right into Barbados and to prove it a Norwegian scientist named Thor Heyerdahl he left he this is his boat rather second he left from Safi Morocco and where did he land 50 years ago Barbados he landed here this is the 50th anniversary of Doha dolls journey and God willing in July we want to have a celebration the Norwegians are coming we invited the Norwegians through hopefully they'll come to Barbados they're going to go to Morocco and they're going to talk about Thor Heyerdahl journey I visited Norway and there's a museum his boat's there he also crossed the Pacific to in another book called kontiki he's a very famous historian from Norway what did he prove he proved 2,000 ships Mansa abu-bakr munsi means king he never went back what happened to these people we traced it and I've given a book to Saint Michael's to show you these actual reports and the words of the people we traced it along Brazil the Amazon River so these mandingo man day most Muslims okay here we say mandingo they would say man day or Mandinka they traveled along the Amazon River they went in to paddle into Central America into the United States long before Columbus and when these are their writings inscriptions that are there in Brazil and when the when the Spanish came they found black people already here when balboa came to central america he found he went to the what was now the the Taino indigenous Latino people he met them this is Balboa the Spanish and they said and the Caribbean side on that side there is black people with beards don't go there right so Balboa went north all over Panama Central America they recognized African people before the Europeans came living in this region the British call them black Caribes the name they use is Garifuna you need to know Caribbean culture Garifuna the Garifuna you find them in st. Vincent I visited them in Belize the British made a treaty with them and sent them to Belize all along the Caribbean coast you'll find people of African descent Belize Honduras Costa Rica Panama Colombia Venezuela all along that side are African people and they trace their lineage and their history before Columbus so this is an amazing study that we are opening up and bringing to you another area which will bring it home now to what happened here this is what is called the Atlantic slave trade and it is this slave trade where political prisoners and African people were brought here to this part of the world in order to work on the plantations these are the ports of call and the middle passage was a terrible time but I want to report to you today that the people did not submit to this there was resistance there was resistance in Africa there was resistance on the boats and there was resistance here people fought back in any way they possibly could against this wicked system there now what we found out to some extra information because we're searching for roots right how do you find your roots because the people who were enslaved they were not allowed to keep language you couldn't keep your names you couldn't keep your religion you couldn't keep anything like this but the Muslims were writing Arabic and they wrote it down in different places and now it's coming to the surface so what we're studying documents written by African enslaved Africans during this period so now we know about one-third of the of the enslaved Africans were Muslims now how do we get this information there are documents like this eyewitness reports autobiographies written here by the people the first slaves that were brought were brought from Senegal sannen Gambia's but it was a mistake because they're well off and the Wolof are really proud strong people they made a rebellion in 1522 in Hispaniola which is now Dominican Republic and Haiti they made a rebellion in Puerto Rico they made a rebellion in Panama and so the rebellion started all over the region and this is how we study this to show you some hard evidence if any you ever want to be a historical researcher this here this document is saying it's written in 1774 it said it's a runaway it's a slave who ran away from the plantation right it said run away from the subscribers plantation and Augustine Creek three years ago a short well made Negro fellow called Mohammed now Mohammed is another way of writing Mohammed so this was a Muslim here so this is how we are identifying the names it's a lot of it's coming to the surface now just to show you this is a prince Abdul Rahman was his name and he was a scholar he spoke about seven languages the written language was in Arabic and when the United States began it was only thirteen colonies right fighting the British you'll study this in your history about loyalists and whatnot right the 13 colonies needed to be recognized the only country that would recognize America was Morocco there's a letter between George Washington President of the United States and the sultan abdul aji of morocco and within their correspondence george washington said anymore when he said more he meant muslims any Muslim who is captured as a slave should be free that's an agreement so when they found they saw him writing Arabic and the word got back to the United States government and they freed him and he returned to his home in Timbo which is in Guinea West Africa are you even sued a man a great scholar he wrote the call and the book of Scripture of the Muslim five times from his memory when they saw him writing Arabic remember the agreement with the government they freed him and he went back to his home yarrow Mahmoud this is an actual picture it's a painting drawn in 1819 of yarrow Mahmoud that's his actual face right he's relaxed and calm he died at a hundred and twenty eight years old he was seventy years in slavery could you imagine that but he won his freedom and he freed hundreds of other people he's a very famous person to us they are in our history Omar been saying it he wrote his own life story in Arabic and the whole book is there in Washington Bilal E Muhammad who is in a place the sapelo islands off the coast of Georgia Salah Mullaly captured at 14 and jennae in Kiana right 60 years in slavery in Georgia Oh Lizzy gray they called her she was a Muslim woman who died in South Carolina okay the Gullah people in South Carolina and you know what's interesting many of these Gullah people were finding out now came from Barbados there's a connection between South Carolina Gullah people and Barbados now what we're realizing many of these people were Muslims look how they dress up until today up until recent times Fatima or Phoebe the way for Bill Ali Mohammed well known on the sapelo Highlands okay let's go to the Caribbean you know the great rebellion of the Haiti of Haiti Toussaint L'Ouverture the rebellion was begun by a person named makan dalla he was what is called marabou which means a traveling scholar and a man named Bookman Toussaint L'Ouverture organized the small rebellions and he made a great army and they defeated the French okay that's McIndoe he was a Muslim scholar Muhammad Kaba from bucha in malinka Guinea he was studying to be a judge he was captured that and he was taken to Jamaica look at his writings Abu Bakr Siddiq he was a scholar from where Timbuktu he was brought to Jamaica and when the British magistrate Robert Madden came to Jamaica to to to oversee the change from slavery to indentured labor ship he found people speak in Arabic in Kingston and they were writing to the countryside and he said what is this he learned to speak Arabic because he was an he was in Turkey and Syria he said what is this and they said we have our own societies here okay so they were resisting and revolts were coming up all over the region there were revolts in Brazil look up the word Bahia Bahia Brazil the revolt you can get a book on this it was such a huge slave revolt so organized that the portuguese said to them here are some boats go back home and they took the boats and they went back to Nigeria and when I visited Nigeria I visited the Oba of the Yoruba who is the leading religious figure and he said there is a mosque in Lagos built by Brazilian ex-slaves it's still here today it's an amazing thing so there's so many amazing stories of resistance but the unfortunate thing is that the system of slavery was a brutal system it took away name it took away language religion it destroyed people's culture forced another religion on us changed our names to other names something which was one of the most brutal forms of slavery in the history of humanity but there was a legacy that happens the legacy is coming to us that amongst us the enslaved Africans they were scholars they were leaders look at their writings up dramatic yaro mohammed omar bin say it these writings are coming up from brazil in surinam there was a big revolt in jamaica the Maroons conquered the center of Jamaica and they were never defeated by anybody they have their freedom up until now this is from the time of the Spanish these documents are coming forward all over the place this is part of our legacy here it is a legacy of monotheism these are the Muslim slaves they were also Ashanti Yoruba Coromant a mandingo Wolof so many nations but amongst the Muslims they were known for toe heed which means oneness of God Tejada which means purity of mind body and spirit and calling to righteousness and forbidding evil that legacy still continues today it still continues in a very famous african-american Muslim who is recognized today his name is Malcolm X if you ever heard of Malcolm X before you usually see him in a in a bowtie but this is Malcolm X before he died he's wearing the clothes of scholar what does he have in his hand a book I want to give you a couple quotes of Malcolm he said education is our passport to the future for tomorrow belongs to people who prepare for it today he said if you don't stand for something you will fall for anything yeah what he said you got to stand for something he said if you have no critics you'll have no success he said people don't realize how a man's whole life can be changed by one book so this is the legacy of Malcolm X and these are some beginning thoughts in Black History Month prepared for you and as part of our returning to Barbados I leave you in peace assalamu alaikum warahmatullah peace be upon [Applause] [Music] you [Music]

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Views: 3,278

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Returning to Our Roots, African History, Dr Abdullah Hakim Quick, A perspective on African History, muslim, black history, St. Michael School, black ancestry, Media Resource Department

Id: vw3VOvZ0gzQ

Length: 54min 51sec (3291 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 16 2020