Guyanese Muslims

Via Africa and India, Islam traveled to the shores of Guyana, Suriname and Trinidad because of slavery and indenturedship.
Guyana is a multi-ethnic republic situated on the northern coast of South America. The country is inhabited by nearly one million people who are heterogeneous in terms of ethnicity and religious affiliation. Amerindians are the indigenous people of Guyana. In the seventeen century the country became populated by waves of immigrants due to colonialism, plantation slavery, the indenture system, and Dutch and British colonial mercantile interests which shaped the sociocultural environment of the country.
Guyana remained a British colony until 1966 when it achieved independence. Guyanese independence in 1966 marked the transfer of political power to the Afro-Christian population. The majorities who are of South Asian descend, are roughly fifty one percent of the population. They remained disenfranchised until the 1992 general elections. South Asians who are mostly Hindus and Muslims have always had a cordial relationship. It would seem that these two groups have come to a mutual understanding of respecting each other's space. Culturally, they identified with each other. In fact, Hindus and Muslims share a history of indentured labour, both having been recruited to work in the sugar cane plantations. They came from rural districts of British India and arrived in the same ships. Muslims and Hindus in Guyana did not experience the bloody history like their brethren in the subcontinent.
According to the Central Islamic Organization of Guyana (CIOG), there are about 125 Masjids (Mosques) scattered throughout the coast of Guyana. Muslims are about 12% of the entire population. Today in Guyana they are over ten Islamic groups which include the Central Islamic Organization of Guyana (CIOG), the Hujjatul Ulamaa, the Muslim Youth Organization (MYO), the Guyana Islamic Trust (GIT), the Guyana Muslim Mission Limited (GMML), the Guyana United Sad'r Islamic Anjuman (GUSIA), the Tabligh Jammah, the Rose Hall Town Islamic Centre, the Darul Ifta, the Salafi Group, among others. Two Islamic holidays are nationally recognized in Guyana, they are, Eid-ul-Azha or Bakra Eid and Youman Nabi or Eid-Milad-Nabi. In mid 1998 Guyana became the 56th permanent member of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC). Guyana's neighbour to the east Suriname, with a population of 25% Muslim is also an OIC member.

THE ARRIVAL OF ISLAM
In the year 1838 Islam was formally reintroduced in Guyana. Yet one cannot dismiss the fact that there was a Muslim presence in Guyana earlier than that. There were some Muslims among African slaves who were brought to Guyana. Mandingo and Fulani Muslims were first brought from West Africa to work Guyana's sugar plantations, however the cruelty of slavery neutralized the Muslims and Islam was vanished until the arrived of South Asians from the Subcontinent in the year 1838. To this day Muslims in Guyana are referred to as Fula, it is not a coincidence.
"From 1835-1917, over 240,000 East Indians, mostly illiterate, Urdu-speaking villagers, migrated to Guiana; 84% were Hindus, but 16% were Sunni Muslims who followed the Hanafi legal precepts" (Eliade: 426). There has always been a Shia presence in Guyana.
The Muslims who migrated to Guyana came from many different areas of the subcontinent: Uttar Pradesh, Sind, the Punjab, the Deccan, Kashmir and the North West Frontier (Afghan areas). In fact, one of Guyana's oldest Mosques, the Queenstown Jama Masjid was founded by the Afghan community. "The Jamaat compromised Muslims from India and Afghanistan; the latter apparently arrived in this country via India" (Centennial Magazine: 9). Ayube Khan writes, " Afghan and Indian Muslims living in this area laid the foundation for the Masjid" (Centennial: 31). A Muslim, Badrudeen Yankana, a grandson of Goolam-uddin reported that the land where the Masjid was built was purchased by his grand father, who was an Afghan butcher and cab driver" (Centennial: 31).