“My name is Omar ibn Said. My birthplace was Fut Tûr, between the two rivers. I sought knowledge under the instruction of a Sheikh called Mohammed Said, my own brother, and Sheikh Soleiman Kembeh, and Sheikh Gabriel Abdal. I continued my studies twenty-five years. Then there came to our place a large army, who killed many men, and took me, and brought me to the great sea, and sold me into the hands of the Christians, who bound me and sent me on board great ship and we sailed upon the great sea a month and a half, when we came to a place called Charleston in the Christian language. There they sold me to a small, weak, and wicked man, called Johnson, a complete infidel, who had no fear of God at all.”
Said’s alludes to the intersection between Christianity and slavery when he explicitly states the religion of the individuals who are responsible for this enslavement. Christians commodify the slaves are sell them off in exchange for monetary gain. The dehumanization of slaves like Said through selling them undermines the ideology of Christianity.
“I continue in the hand of Jim Owen who never beats me, nor scolds me. I neither go hungry nor naked, and I have no hard work to do. I am not able to do hard work for I am a small man and feeble. During the last twenty years I have known no want in the hand of Jim Owen.”
Jim Owen is different from others considering that he does not humiliate of dehumanize Said. Owen’s approach surmises that not all whites were vicious towards the blacks. Accordingly, it cannot be generalized that all slave owners were cold-hearted.
