Many African slaves Muslims before coming to America

Omar ibn Said was captured in Senegal and brought to North Carolina when he was 37 years old.

It has been suggested that at least 10% of slaves captured in West Africa and brought to America by Christians and Jews were fluent in Arabic and read the Koran.

Here is one account from The Autobiography of Omar ibn Said, and enslaved Muslim living in the U.S. in 1831.

"Wicked men took me by violence and sold me to the Christians. We sailed a month and a half on the great sea to the place called Charleston in the Christian land. I fell into the hands of a small, weak and wicked man, who feared not God at all, nor did he read (the gospel) at all nor pray. I was afraid to remain with a man so depraved and who committed so many crimes and I ran away."