The The imales’ shadow. Esoteric knowledge and resistance as Islamic contribution to Latin America afro-epistemology
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22380/2539472X.2411Keywords:
islam, slavery, afro-epistemology, yoruba, West AfricaAbstract
This paper proposes to rethink the epistemology of Islam in Latin America. It will explore how Islam transfused elements of esoteric knowledge and resistance, symbolic and practical, into the Afro-descendant community. To show it, we will start from Intellectual History through the contributions of enslaved Muslims from present-day Nigeria, of Hausa and Yoruba ethnicity, during the final stage of the European colonial era. The Imales, a yorubization of the Arabic word ‘alim (wise), were a very complex and, today, almost forgotten part of the silent resistance of Afro-descendants in the Americas. To illustrate this issue, we will take two examples: the survival of the Islamic memory in the oracle of Ifá, and the revolta dos males, that took place in 1835, where a group of Afro-Muslims started a jihad, exoteric and esoteric, against their masters.
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