‘As-Salamu-’alaikum’, the Islamic greeting in Arabic, meaning ‘peace be upon you’, continued to be the offi cial greeting among the Maroon Council members in Mooretown, Portland, Jamaica and the dhikir,‘Allahu Akbar’, declaring the Greatness of Allah, still throbbed in the hearts of many of the former Muslim slaves when the Indian indentured Muslims first landed in Jamaica in 1845. 1 However, the Islamic greeting, which had distinguished the Muslim Maroon community from the non-Muslims, had lost much of its Islamic signifi cance. The dhikir presumably became a personal enlightenment of the soul of the many freed African Muslim slaves in the midst of great social, economic and political uncertainties following emancipation. 2 With the arrival of the indentured Muslims from India, the peaceful revival of Islam in Jamaica began. Although these Muslims formed a minority of a larger group of indentured labourers and were in an adverse atmosphere, they were resilient and set up institutions which were clear manifestations of a promising resurgent Islamic community. The inner struggle or jihad for self-purifi cation and to lead life in accordance with the Holy Qur’an and the Sunnah, replaced the somewhat outer jihad of the African Muslim slaves as manifested in the Baptist War of 1831–1832 or the Maroon Wars of the eighteenth century.
