Criminalizing religion was vital to the project of stripping the humanity of Africans and reducing them to "beasts of burden" pushed to inhuman limits to maximize revenue for their slave masters. Frederick Douglass observed that "elevating" a slave through better treatment gave witness to the humanizing effect of religion and the dehumanizing effect of keeping a person's religion from them. Douglass famously stated, "Beat and cuff your slave, keep him hungry and spiritless, and he will follow the chain of his master like a dog; but feed and clothe him well, work him moderately, surround him with physical comfort, and dreams of freedom intrude." Part of the "spiritlessness" Douglass speaks of had to do with barring slaves from feeding their spirits with the soul food of religion. Denying slaves religion kept them bound to their condition. Religion, and in this instance Islam, would inspire the enslaved to question their condition, contemplate resistance, and as illustrated by a series of slave narratives from within and beyond the United States, rebel, revolt, and seek liberation.

DEFINE: Clarifies the author's mechanism connecting the denial of religion to the maintenance of enslaved submission.

Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Unde…, loc. 172