(1855)
PROPHETIC PERSEVERANCE
On land where enslaved Africans once labored in South Carolina, a small mosque now connects worshippers to a transatlantic Muslim tradition stretching from the American South to Senegal. In this essay, Youssef Carter brings together the stories of two West African Muslim scholars separated by nearly two centuries: Omar ibn Said, who was enslaved and brought through Charleston in 1807, and Shaykh Arona Faye, who arrived from Senegal with a mission to rebuild Mustafawiyya Tariqa, a Sufi movement founded by his uncle.
As Shaykh Arona Rashid Faye stepped off the plane at Charleston International Airport in South Carolina for the first time in 1994, he carried with him a robust legacy of sacred knowledge and Muslim devotion. Shaykh Arona was a member of the Mustafawiyya Tariqa, a Sufi movement his esteemed uncle had established in Senegal in 1966. Although the movement was only three decades old, it expanded across many different lands and drew on centuries of sacred knowledge transmission that can be traced all the way back to the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ.
But Shaykh Arona was not merely someone who was interested in the past. While he knew that many West African Muslims had been forcibly removed from their lands and their kin to be enslaved on the other side of the Atlantic, his major concern was to restore those broken connections with faith and homeland amongst their descendants. Shaykh Arona was an Islamic scholar who benefited from the rich intellectual tradition in which he was reared. But this heritage of Islamic knowledge served his more primary task as a dāʿī—someone who made it their life’s work to call others to the message of Islam. In fact, when Shaykh Arona first stepped foot in South Carolina, he carried a movement with him which he planned to plant firmly in his new home. From its establishment in 1966 until the mid-1990s, the Mustafawiyya Tariqa spread from Senegal to neighboring regions in West Africa and reached across what Omar ibn Said, another Muslim scholar, called ‘the Big Sea’ about 150 years prior. In 1807, ibn Said made a geographically similar voyage, being brought from Futa Toro in what is now northern Senegal across the Atlantic Ocean to South Carolina. Although both Omar ibn Said and Shaykh Arona Faye were Muslim scholars from West Africa, Omar arrived in South Carolina as an enslaved person, whereas Shaykh Arona came of his own volition and with his own mission.
Portrait of Shaykh Arona Faye
courtesy of Hassan Faye, son of Shaykh Arona Faye
Shaykh Arona was about 45 years old when he landed in South Carolina, with a mission to establish the Mustafawiyya Tariqa movement in the United States. He started modestly by serving as an imam in Charleston’s Masjid Al Jami Ar-Rashid, a predominantly African American mosque that had roots with the Nation of Islam (NOI). Shaykh Arona was aware that the community had transitioned over the years away from the NOI’s Black nationalist ethos, and he grew to appreciate more deeply the value in spreading Islam and transmitting sacred knowledge in the region amongst a people whose ancestors were enslaved and separated from their African homeland.
Over time, however, he was convinced more and more that establishing the Mustafawiyya movement required a fresh approach. At the time, the kind of advanced knowledge about Islam and its related sciences that Shaykh Arona Faye had mastered was not widely available in that part of the lowcountry. Like other Sufi traditions in which formulae for spiritual reform and self-cultivation were developed and spread, the Mustafawiyya Tariqa was originally conceived as a means for fellow Muslims to grow closer to Allah and fellow the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. And now, the eldest nephew and protege of founder Shaykh Muhammad Mustafa Gueye (1926–1989) sought to expand that vision across the Atlantic and beyond.
After a couple of years, Shaykh Arona Faye resigned from his post as an imam in Charleston and sought to build his own masjid in nearby Moncks Corner where he lived with his spouse, Umm Aisha Faye. In spite of the fact that there were a few Muslims living there, the small town of Moncks Corner, which was situated inland northwest of the coastal city of Charleston, had no mosque where Muslims could regularly pray in congregation. So devoted was Umm Aisha to the idea of building the Mustafawiyya movement in her hometown that she was willing to offer her own house as collateral in order to procure a building in downtown Moncks Corner. The building became the first location for what remains the only masjid in Moncks Corner—Masjid Muhajirun wal Ansar, named in honor of the sacred pact among those Muslims who supported the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ in seventh century Medina. That pact cut across tribal affiliations and thus transformed the social and political stagnation that characterized everyday life in Arabia. That act of solidarity also made possible the conditions that led to the Hijra from Mecca to Medina. That migration from Mecca where Islam was stifled by religious persecution of Muslims to Medina where Islam was able to reform society and flourish marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar. Shaykh Arona Faye found deep meaning in that display of righteous commitment, and for him it was an important pillar of the Moncks Corner Muslim community. In spite of that model of solidarity being so far in the past, he thought it was the best model for strengthening cultural and religious connection between American-born and continental Africans, and for repairing the lasting traumas that racism had left in the hearts of believers living in the region.
Shaykh Arona Faye and Umm Aisha
in Moncks Corner, South Carolina
date unknown
courtesy of Umm Aisha
Although Masjid Muhajirun wal Ansar was originally more centrally located in the middle of town, the community moved a few times around Moncks Corner as it grew. Many local residents became Muslim under the tutelage of Shaykh Arona Faye, while others relocated specifically from other places to join the community and benefit from its environment of spiritual care and education. Large community dinners were held weekly and classes about Islamic knowledge and the importance of righteous living were offered daily. Regardless of whether community members were introduced to Islam by Shaykh Arona Faye or if they were already Muslim, most participated in the regular dhikr gatherings as he led them in singing the qasidas (praise poems) composed by his teacher who founded the Mustafawiyya tradition. As they sought to remember Allah, members grew closer to each other while the community buzzed with activity. Eventually, the Muslim community moved onto Old Highway 52 on the side of a two-lane road that led into and out of town. It just so happened that the land where Muslims freely worshiped was land where enslaved people did not possess the same religious autonomy many generations prior: The land where the Masjid was now situated was part of Gippy plantation—one of the larger, more prominent plantations in the Berkeley County area where African people were considered property before the Civil War.
Before emancipation, enslaved Africans and their descendants in the region were made to plant and harvest crops such as pine, cotton, and rice. But something else more significant was planted throughout the lowcountry: a racial hierarchy that extended far beyond the approximately 1875 acres that made up Gippy plantation. The very idea that people of African descent were inferior was difficult to uproot from the soil and the hearts in which it was planted. Masjid Muhajirun wal Ansar was established as an institution that could aid believers in growing closer to Allah while moving away from the sickness of racist thought. And now, its placement on what was land where people had been enslaved exemplified how Islam could offer spiritual care and healing to all who stepped through its doors through proper education in religious sciences, regular devotional practices such as dhikr, and even international travel to West Africa.
Beyond a means of refining faith in God, Islam was a social reform movement that offered humankind a means of repairing and strengthening relationships among people who had neglected an understanding that all of humanity comes from a common source. Just as the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ transformed the spiritual-religious and sociopolitical environment of seventh-century Arabia by guiding people toward righteousness and productive collaboration, Shaykh Arona Faye spent roughly thirty years guiding students and followers on their respective journeys of personal transformation. In order to expand the Mustafawiyya Sufi Order, he worked hard to strengthen ties between Muslims in the United States and Muslims in West Africa. This meant consistently traveling between South Carolina and Senegal as he invited students, most of them Black American Muslims, to accompany him back to his homeland so that they might establish relationships with a part of the world from which many of their ancestors were forcibly removed generations ago.
Shaykh Arona Faye knew well that experiential learning was more valuable than theoretical knowledge and that wayfaring requires guidance. For African-descended people whose ancestors had been torn from their homeland, finding their way back to the continent was no small thing. But one dilemma that many faced was: how does a person travel back to a home that they never knew? Shaykh Arona made it his mission to aid his students who desired to visit Senegal by facilitating their travel across the Atlantic. For first-time visitors, he insisted that they visit the point of origin of the Mustafawiyya Tariqa—the small city of Thiès, Senegal. This was where the Mustafawiyya movement founder Shaykh Mustafa Gueye was laid to rest in a small mausoleum next to his older sister and his father, both Qur’an teachers who spent their lives transmitting Islamic knowledge to students throughout the region.
By bringing students to visit where the founder was laid to rest and encouraging their participation in the annual Shaykh Mustafa Day commemoration, Shaykh Arona ensured that they understood that this too was their noble heritage. But this practice of solidarity was cultural as well as religious. Well aware of the historical legacy of transatlantic slavery and the disinheritance that it produced for Africans and their descendants, Shaykh especially encouraged first-time visitors from the United States to travel to Gorée Island, which is located off the coast of Dakar, in order to visit the Maison des Esclaves (House of Slaves) and walk through the ‘Door of No Return’ as a symbolic gesture that acknowledges their own personal relationships to that history. These practices of remembrance, first conceived in Senegal and then brought across the Atlantic, are part of the enduring legacy of transatlantic movement and sacred transmission.
Shaykh Arona Faye in Thiés
Shaykh Arona Faye (pictured on the right) sitting next to his third-eldest son, Imam Hassan Faye, Imam of Masjid Muhajirun wal Ansar in South Carolina. Isa Abdul-Hakim, resident of Moncks Corner and fellow student of Shaykh Arona Faye, is pictured on the left.
Thiés, Senegal, 2019
photo by author
Like Shaykh Arona Faye, Omar ibn Said arrived in Charleston, South Carolina carrying with him a deep legacy of Islamic scholarship rooted in what is now northern Senegal. However, his arrival to the American South almost two centuries earlier was under quite different circumstances.
Omar ibn Said (hereafter, Omar, following the naming customs of his community) was legally considered chattel when he arrived, in 1807, to the port city of Charleston. Omar was enslaved from before he was taken from West Africa and forcibly transported across the Atlantic, where he remained enslaved until he passed away on the cusp of emancipation in North Carolina. Near the end of 1807, he was brought into the South through the port city of Charleston, which was perhaps the most significant entry point for enslaved Africans in the United States. History doesn’t record whether Omar appreciated the unique disregard for African personhood that his enslavers held before he reached Charleston, but it is no understatement to say that chattel enslavement was deadly for Africans. One stark example happened that same winter in Gadsden’s Wharf in Charleston when enslavers’ insistence on keeping enslaved Africans in cramped, unheated warehouses caused more than 800 enslaved Africans to die of exposure.
For three difficult years, Omar ibn Said was made to labor in South Carolina. In 1810, he escaped and ran northward and was captured and jailed in Fayetteville, North Carolina. In that jail, ibn Said drew upon his faith as he prayed for his freedom, or at least that he be spared the horror and indignity he experienced up to that point.
Omar ibn Said
Half length restored and colorized portrait
(c 1850)
In addition to prayers for relief from being returned to traumatic conditions and his reflecting upon the tribulation that past prophets had negotiated, Omar ibn Said took matters into his own hands. Omar was aware that the sacred words of Allah could help him transform the walls of his bondage into a reflection of his humanity. He wrote Qur’anic verses in Arabic and other expressions of his trust in Allah on the walls of his jail cell. Beyond the physical presence of the sacred words that now surrounded him, it was the devotional act of writing that very likely calmed him and served as a reminder to himself of the quite important principle of tawakkul—that trust and reliance upon Allah was paramount in any condition and under all circumstances. It is unknown what specific Arabic words and sacred formulations Omar wrote while he was jailed. But considering his rearing in an environment of Islamic scholarship, it is more than likely that Omar knew the verse in the Qur’an 12th chapter, Surah Yusuf:
Indeed, in the story of Joseph and his brothers there are lessons for all who ask. (Qur’an 12:5)
As someone who was reared in an environment of Muslim scholarship, Omar appreciated the striking parallels between his own plight and the story of Prophet Yusuf’s (Joseph) patient perseverance (sabr) in the face of bondage and injustice that preceded his redemption and freedom. As retold in the Qur’an, the Prophet Yusuf was sold into slavery in Egypt as a young child and was unjustly imprisoned later in his life. Yet, his possession of sacred knowledge and perseverance led to his freedom from incarceration and redemption. In fact, he was even later elevated from being a cherished servant in the Chief Minister’s household to the position of a Chief Minister himself.
Like the parable of the Prophet Yusuf, Omar ibn Said was also captured, enslaved, and forcibly separated from his family and homeland. Whereas Prophet Yusuf willingly endured incarceration as a refuge from physical abuse, ibn Said escaped his abuser, whom he described as a “wretched man,” and was later jailed. Although the consequences of their circumstances differed significantly, the possession and display of sacred knowledge (‘ilm) paved the way for both Prophet Yusuf and ibn Said to be freed of their imprisonment. Additionally, they both were later recognized as exemplars of sabr (patient perseverance) and tawakkul (trust and reliance upon Allah) in spite of false claims being spread about them.
Omar ibn Said passed away in 1864 as an enslaved person and was buried in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Nonetheless, it seems that his redemption has taken place posthumously. As fate would have it, Omar was recognized during his later years as a symbol of Christian redemption from the ‘heretical’ Islamic faith as the news of his alleged conversion was reinforced by his strategic insistence on carrying an Arabic Bible as he regularly attended church on Sundays with his enslavers. Even still, upon being asked to write Bible verses in his native Arabic script for guests, scholars later discovered that the majority of what Omar actually wrote (unbeknownst to his enslavers) were Islamic formulae that included the basmallah, verses from the Qur’an, or praises on the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. These indicated that, far from being a paragon of Christian conversion, ibn Said remained committed to his Muslim faith. After so many years, scholars and researchers debunked claims of his alleged conversion while pointing out that the spread of such claims likely had more to do with the fundraising efforts of a late-nineteenth-century missionary project.
As an enslaved person who knew little of the English language, Omar ibn Said was still keenly aware that his ability to patiently endure and allow his enslavers to convince themselves of his adoption of Christian faith insulated him from a hard life of plantation labor that traumatized him back in South Carolina.
Historic Marker
for Omar Ibn Said on Murchison Road, North Carolina
Highway 210 in Fayetteville, North Carolina
(Cumberland County)
Yet Omar’s own words tell another story—one that was personal to him, and is also significant to the history of Islam. His 1831 autobiography is the only known surviving narrative written in Arabic by an enslaved person, a fact that is particularly notable because it means his enslaver could not have edited it. His additional Arabic writings, some of which are housed in special collections at Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and others of which are held in the Library of Congress, display his quiet life of faithful perseverance and continue to reveal a piece of a larger and deeper tapestry of West African Muslim faith in the American South. The continued redemption of Omar ibn Said has also extended beyond scholarly attention. In honor of Omar’s story and in recognition of his faithful perseverance, the Muslim community of Fayetteville renamed their masjid after him in 1991. As well, Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels wrote a Pulitzer-Prize winning opera, entitled “Omar,” that was inspired by his story in 2022.
Both Shaykh Arona Faye and Omar ibn Said knew that the Qur’anic stories of the Prophets were more than just parables and were revealed for the sake of offering examples of how to persevere and patiently apply care in the face of injustice and disinheritance. Their labor and their stories remain present in the hearts of fellow scholars and faithful admirers in ways that continue to inspire. Although they were situated in two different points in time, these West African Muslim men stand out as exemplars who spent their lives embodying prophetic principles of righteousness and piety.
While ibn Said surely reflected on the rupture he experienced with his homeland and his people, perhaps he also looked forward to a day when he might be free. Two centuries later, Shaykh Arona Faye labored diligently in establishing the Mustafawiyya movement in those same lands where West African Muslims like Omar were enslaved so that their descendants, known and unknown, might return to the religion and lands of their forebears.
Whereas Omar ibn Said was unable to travel back home to Futa Toro to reunite with kin, Shaykh Arona Faye traveled back and forth from West Africa to South Carolina to create ties, and perhaps even recreated kinship, between Muslims. After three decades of community service and spiritual care, he is now buried on the same grounds where West Africans were historically enslaved. Those same grounds are now where his students, family, and supporters devote themselves to Islamic scholarship and spiritual development as he taught them.
When viewed together, they illustrate the manner in which Muslims have relied on their faith to negotiate life away from home from before emancipation to the present. Both of these men embodied a Qur’anic mindset that encouraged striving in meaningful ways. Many find inspiration in Omar ibn Said’s display of sabr (patient perseverance) and tawakkul (trust in Allah) as he remained deeply connected to Islamic faith as an enslaved person. Meanwhile, Shaykh Arona Faye devoted the entirety of his adult life to being a da’i (caller to Islam) and worked tirelessly to assist Muslims in cultivating their practice of dhikr (remembrance of Allah). Together, they both continue to offer important lessons on the power of faith amidst tribulation and disconnection, as well as the important relationships between scholarship and freedom.
SOURCES & FURTHER READINGS
Lo, Mbaye, and Carl W. Ernst. I Cannot Write My Life: Islam, Arabic, and Slavery in Omar ibn Said’s America. The University of North Carolina Press, 2023. Carter, Youssef. The Vast Oceans: Remembering Allah and Self on the Mustafawiyya Sufi Path. The University of North Carolina Press, 2026.
Youssef Carter
is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and Kenan Rifai Fellow in Islamic Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He offers courses such as Religion & Global Justice, Islam and the Black Global South, Muhammad & the Qur'an, as well as Sufism. His scholarship centers on Muslim life and networks in the Black Atlantic and is primarily interested in religious empowerment. Carter's book, The Vast Oceans: Remembering Allah and Self on the Mustafawiyya Sufi Path (The University of North Carolina Press, 2026), is a multisite ethnography of a transatlantic spiritual network of African-American and West African Muslims in South Carolina and Senegal.
