The Word of Unity: La ilaha illallah, comprises the foundation of the Islamic faith.
Taken literally, it means: There is no god, only Allah.
If we evaluate its meaning… La means No, ilaha means god, i.e. there is no god.
Note that, the first part of the word of unity is a denunciation: there is no god, there is no deity, after which it establishes the realityilla Allah, there is ONLY ALLAH!
It is of paramount importance that we understand how big a mistake it would be to evaluate and translate this statement according to the colloquial language spoken by the Arab population today.
Let us give an example. The Arabic statement: La rajulun illa Ali can be translated literally as: ‘There is no real man except/but Ali’ or ‘There is no man like Ali’ or ‘Among the men none are Ali’s alike’ (note that all of these statements denote there are in fact other men, but they are not like Ali). However, when the word illa is used in conjunction with the word ALLAH it does not mean ‘a god like Allah’, that is, it should not be understood as ‘there other gods, but none are like Allah’, as the very meaning denoted by the word ALLAH invalidates this supposition from the onset.
Just as the auxiliary verb was (khaane), when used in conjunction with Allah, loses its general meaning and is taken as the present simple tense, when the word except (illa) appears next to the word Allah it also loses its general connotation and is taken to mean only. Here is an example:
KhaanALLAhu gafurur rahiyma cannot be translated as ‘Allah wasGhafur and Rahim’as the qualities denoted by the Names of Allah cannot be subject to time; they are ever present and ever effective.
Similarly, illa Allah cannot mean except Allah, which denotes the existence of others, but must be understood as only Allah!
The compositional qualities of the One to which the word Allah refers, does not accept the existence of another, especially that beside itself.
Hence, khaane, illa and all other expressions that denote time and (other) existence must be construed appropriate to the meaning of Allah when used in conjunction with it. Otherwise, it will inevitably result in the conception of a god beyond!
Now examining the Word of Unity: There is no God, there is only Allah in light of this consideration, the first message that we are given is There is no god. Only after this definite denunciation we are told ILLA ALLAH. As explained above, because the word illa is used besides the word Allah the only correct construal of this statement can be ONLY ALLAH as opposed to except Allah or but Allah for there is no other being in existence to which Allah can be compared to or excluded from![1] Therefore, in order for the UNITY and ONENESS (non-duality) of the Islamic faith to be communicated correctly, the Word of Unity must be understood and translated accurately.
Indeed, there is only Allah, and Allah is not a god to be deified, idolized or worshipped, as per the message ‘there is no god’! In fact, Allah isn’t even a god that is beyond man and creation!
So, what is worship as opposed to servitude?
To deify or worship something necessitates the existence of a god. That is, the very act of worshipping someone or something means there is a worshipper and one that is worshipped. This leads to duality. There is a you as an individual, and then there is your god who is beyond you, and you worship this god. Clearly, this is an interaction between two parties. We may say then, that worship, in this context, refers to the collection of all the activities that are done in respect to this earthly or heavenly (exterior) God.
The phrase ABDU HU (HU’s servant) in the Kalima-i Shahadah (the Word of Witness)[2], clearly indicates that servitude is necessarily to the Absolute Essence, that is, to HU.
As for the meaning of servitude… All output by an individual, based on his creation program and natural disposition, is termed servitude. As the 56th verse of chapter Adh-Dhariyat says:
“I have created the jinn and men only so that they may serve me (by means of manifesting the qualities of my Names).”
As such, it is not possible for the creation of Allah to transgress the purpose of their existence. This verse indicates a clear verdict and its result. It is also pertinent to remember the verse:
“There is no animate creature but that He holds its forehead (brain; the programming of the brain by the name Al-Fatir).” (Quran 11:56)
In point of fact, the verse “it is You we serve” in the opening chapter al-Fatiha, exposes the meaning ‘we perform our duty by executing the necessary functions of our creational program and the purpose for which you have created us’.
“Say: ‘Everyone acts according to his own creation program (natural disposition).’” (Quran 17:84)
Servitude is the output of activity by individual manifestations, based on the creation program given to them by Al-FATIR. That is, when individuals live according to their natural disposition, they are serving the purpose of their creation.
Oblivious of submission or rebellion, all activities of all individuals can be thought of as servitude. Submission and rebellion are different types of servitude.
“The seven heavens (all creation within the seven dimensions of consciousness) and the earth (the bodies) and whatever is in them disclose (tasbih) Him (manifest the structural qualities of His names by constantly changing states). And there is not a thing that does not disclose (tasbih) by His hamd, but you do not understand their [way of, discourse, disposition] disclosure.” (Quran 17:44)
Servitude in the form of taat is the pursuit of an individual trying to know his essence and origin.
Servitude in the form of rebelliousness, on the other hand, is the collection of activities that prevent and deprive the individual from the treasures within his essence, which leads to remorse.
Therefore, while servitude refers to a lifestyle befitting one’s creational purpose, worship is the deification of a supposed god by honoring him and expecting him to grant your wishes in return.
Thus, it may be concluded that, God is worshipped, while Allah is served.
How then, should servitude to Allah be performed?
In order to answer this question one must first discern the AHAD quality of Allah. For if the AHAD quality is comprehended well, one can see (with foresight) that there is no duality in existence. The concept that there is Allah, and there is also the universe (outside of Allah) is obsolete.
In other words, the common approach that beyond and other than this cosmos there is a God is completely false.
Allah disclosed by Muhammad (saw) is not a god!
Allah disclosed by Muhammad (saw) is AHAD (ONE).
Allah disclosed by Muhammad (saw) is the possessor of infinite meanings, which He constantly observes!
The realm of observation is the realm of names.
In respect of His absolute essence he is Wahid-ul Ahad (The Absolute One).
In respect of His attributes, He is Hayy (The One who gives life to the Names and manifests them), Aleem (The One who, with the quality of His knowledge, infinitely knows everything in every dimension with all its facets.), Mureed (The Possessor of Absolute Will), Qadir (The absolutely boundless One who manifests and observes His knowledge without depending on causality), Basir (The One who is constantly observing His manifestations and evaluating their outputs), Kalim (The Discloser).
He possesses infinite meanings and qualities, which have all been expounded by Muhammad (saw).
This realm of activity referred to as the world of acts (af’al) can also be called the perceived universe as its existence depends on the sensory perception of man, angels and the jinn that reside within it. They constitute materialized manifestations of knowledge within Allah’s knowledge.
To put it another way, everything in existence is essentially localized, densified apparitions of knowledge, which, according to the enlightened ones, haven’t even sensed existence yet!
In short, nothing in the universe has an actual existence; their existence is only within the knowledge of Allah. To put it simply, they are imaginary beings!
No matter what age man lives in and what level of knowledge he has, based on his five senses, he can never perceive the actual essence (origin) of existence!
Knowledge based on the five senses will only take you to the infinite space and dimensions of the universes within the microcosm or the macrocosm. Knowledge based on the five senses will take you to the stars, the galaxies, the black holes and white holes and to other universes perhaps, but you will always pursue your life with the false belief of a god beyond…
In my book Spirit, Man, Jinn I had talked about the alien beings to which the older generations referred as jinn, and how they deceive and delude man, including depriving man from the reality of Allah by injecting false ideas and visions of religion and reality. I want to briefly touch upon this topic here also. Alien beings, or in Islamic terms, the jinn, are deficient in two areas of knowledge, and these are the areas from which they usually try to deprive their subjects. The first of these is the AHAD (oneness) quality of Allah and the second is fate, or destiny, which is the natural derivative of the Oneness of Allah.
The Unity (non-duality) aspect of the Islamic faith, that is, the system of belief explained by Muhammad (saw), is founded on the belief that there is no god to be deified and idolized (hence, there is no god-concept) and that people will inevitably face the consequences of their actions.
The Quran confirms this notion with various verses:
“And man will only accrue the results (consequences) of his own labor (his own actions).” (Quran 53:39)
“Indeed, you will be tasters of the painful punishment. And you will not be recompensed except for what you did (your own actions).” (Quran 37:38-39)
“And you will not be recompensed except for what you did (your own actions).” (Quran 36:54)
“And there are degrees for what they have done, so that they may be fully compensated for their deeds, without any injustice.” (Quran 46:19)
Since, as the above verses point out, we will be recompensed for our deeds, we should urgently study and learn about the life awaiting us after death and understand what Allah really is. For the concept of Allah is what constitutes the foundation of religion.
Let us know that, without understanding the meaning of the name Allah, we can never correctly know the essence of existence. Indeed, man and the universe can only be addressed and understood after comprehending Allah. Otherwise, we will have to make do with local evaluations and be deprived of the essence of reality.
Let us now, with this awareness, explore the encrypted words that depict Allah in chapter al-Ikhlas…
From a God who thinks like a man, to a man who thinks like Allah!
For centuries after centuries, mankind has found solace in the idea of idolizing and deifying an all-powerful being with whom refuge can be sought against the many calamities and events that leave mankind helpless and impotent.
This process of deification and seeking salvation and success from an outside source, has led mankind to turn towards numerous concepts of god/s with the hope of having their dreams and desires met. As such, various objects that were thought to be powerful enough to have the capacity to meet their demands were deemed as gods, and hence began the period of idolatry.
At first, the gods were identified from among certain stones, plants and animals on earth. However, once their mortal nature was recognized, and as Prophets and Rasuls came time and time again pointing to the absurdity of deifying these earthly objects, man gave up on earthly gods and turned his gaze towards the heavens. This time, deifying certain heavenly objects or stars with specific influences as gods.
Whenever man encountered an object or event that he could not solve or comprehend, it became a mysterious power for him, to which he eventually associated a concept of godhood. This concept of an earthly or heavenly god falls into direct contradiction with scientific knowledge and is nothing but postulation. The Quran rejects this assumption that goes against verified knowledge with its ‘kalima-i tawhid’ (The Word of Unity), ‘there is no god’.
Man imprisoned himself in a cocoon when he idolized fire and heavenly bodies, all in supposition of a ‘god’. In time and with conditionings from the environment, he began to lead a life completely devoid of contemplation. Enslavement was the price of this ignorance; he became a slave to his gods and this dependence became his reassurance.
Of course, this only led to the hardening of his cocoon, burrowing him further into darkness!
When Muhammad (saw) announced to be Allah’s Rasul in Mecca, there were 360 different gods inside the Kaaba alone. That is, 360 idols! Mankind was finding solace in deifying 360 idols that represented 360 different gods, each with a different role.
They were not able to discern that such earthly or heavenly gods could not exist, simply because they had no idea of the vastness of the universe they were in!
They thought that god sat on a star up in space and watched over our world, sometimes interfering in our affairs, and sometimes quietly observing to examine us, all eventually to place those of his liking in heaven and cast the rest into hell.
Mankind has done a lot of nonsense in the name of pleasing earthly or heavenly gods. In fact, in Hadhrat Omar’s words, they would make an idol to resemble their god with a cookie, then they would worship and deify this cookie-idol and then, with much appetite, they would sit and eat it! Even worse, they would bury their 8-year old daughters alive just to ingratiate themselves with their illusory gods!
God denotes the existence of a deity beyond the individual. A deity that bestows the wishes of individuals in exchange of being praised, glorified, and exalted!
A God that gives commands with which you must comply in order to earn his favor, so that he places you in his paradise and blesses you with plenty in the world. For if you oppose him by following your own free mind and free will, he will become your enemy and punish you by subjecting you to various sufferings!
While mankind was caught up in the deification of false and primitive gods, Muhammad (saw) received a revelation that announced him as Allah’s Rasul, after which he strived strenuously to stop people from deifying gods. He told them:
THERE IS NO GOD. THERE IS ONLY ALLAH.
This reality has been termed as the ‘kalima-i tawhid’(the Word of Unity).
There’s no use in arguing about religious matters with those who can’t read the universal system. They lack the sufficient database necessary for such debates.
On the other hand, purported Muslim ‘herders’, are becoming increasingly successful at robotizing people. Never has such robotizing occurred in the history of mankind! These impressive ‘herders’ have scored a historic victory at producing hundreds of millions of Muslim robots!
Never has such wrong been done to the most magnificent source of knowledge, the Quran, and to Muhammad (saw), the spirit of eternity and the most eminent human to have ever walked on earth.
It’d be bad enough if these perpetrators were from amongst those who deny this noble spirit, for they are neither fond of him, nor are they interested in his teachings. But alas, the very Muslims are the ones who are doing wrong by the most magnificent being who has descended as grace and mercy to the worlds… Robotized Muslims, who have no idea what they’re reciting, who unconsciously and somewhat mechanically repeat memorized words and behaviors without any conscious intellectual activity!
Stuck in such an extensive veiled state they are unaware of the weight of suffering awaiting them as a consequence! Such ‘Muslim herders’ have been programmed to ‘not think’, ‘not inquire’, ‘not research’ and to ‘not reason’; thus, has their foresight been blinded and their brain functions suspended.
While the Quran encourages the acquisition of knowledge and claims humans are the vicegerents of earth (men and women alike) and invites us to contemplate on the meanings of the metaphors it employs, the herders in question, are doing everything they can to program the people, as of childhood, to not use their brain…
Eventually these robotized Muslims do not perceive anything other than the commands and orders of their herders or programmers, as though they’ve been deeply hypnotized, they even perceive the Rasul of Allah (saw) the way their herders want them to. They cover with ‘tashbih’ (the similarity/comparability of the divine) and throw beyond with ‘tanzih’ (the incomparability of the divine)! They suffocate the people with words and phrases rather than encouraging them to explore the meanings denoted by them.
‘Knowledge’ is a key to understanding what it references, and to experience new insights through contemplation. It is not for memorizing and repeating like a burden in need of constant porting.
The Quran addresses those with an intellect, not those who live a robotized unconscious mechanic life. The magnificent source of knowledge called the Quran did not come for people to merely memorize without knowing its meaning. A simple robot can also repeat the verses of the Quran and imitate the motions of salat. What’s man’s difference?
Robotization is the loss of our generation. If only those who commit this crime knew the scary consequences awaiting them, if only they were aware of the extent of wrong they are doing to the magnificent being, the Rasul of Allah (saw) they would lose their minds!
It’s ironic how they claim to deeply love their ‘beloved prophet’ but then they outright discourage people from questioning and researching his teachings ‘lest they lose their faith (!)’ Little do they know they are losing much greater things, which they can never regain. There is no room for excuses in the system.
The meaning of “La ilaha illa Allah” according to these herders is “no god is greater than our god, our god is better than your god” and they insidiously inject this idea to the Muslims, obstructing the Rasul’s (saw) call for contemplation and covering the most magnificent source of knowledge under the guise of “god’s book of commands” and rendering it dysfunctional….
What else can I say…
The Rasul of Allah (saw) invites us to the experience of salat and instructs us, “you are the vicegerents of earth”!
While we are busy entertaining ourselves with how robots bow and prostrate, the Quran invites us to thought and contemplation, with the words of Allah’s Rasul and Nabi Abraham (pbuh):
“My Rabb, make me an establisher of salat(of those who experience the return of introspectively turning to the reality of the Names) and also from my descendants (create establishers of salat)!”[1]
Salatis the pole of religion. It is the ascension of the believer. It is a magnificent experience of consciousness. It is far beyond physical movements. Those who haven’t discerned the reality of “La ilaha illa Allah” cannot comprehend what salat actually encompasses. Those who haven’t recognized the One referenced with the name Allah can never even ponder on the meaning of the Akbariyyah of HU!
Those who have been robotized and thus whose faculty of thought has been suspended cannot say “B-ismi Allah” just as they can never recognize the Rahmanand the Rahim.
Salat isn’t salat without the Fatiha. This doesn’t mean reciting the Fatiha out loud as those who have been frightened away from using their intellect and reason in case they become “confused” think it does…. It means salat can’t be really established and experienced without contemplating on, feeling and experiencing the meaning of the Fatiha… It’s really very sad, the herders and the herded alike are missing out on the most profound experience the Quran invites us to have and passing on to the realm of eternal life with this irrecoverable deprivation and loss…
They’ve been conditioned to think READing the Quran is all about the correct pronunciation of its Arabic letters and performing salatis a way of deifying and consecrating “god” …
On the contrary, salat is about introspectively turning to the reality of the Names comprising one’s essence, i.e. it is to worship Allah, where worship means being conscious of and fulfilling one’s servitude. This in other words means knowing, feeling, experiencing the reality that one’s being is comprised of Allah’s Names and that essentially the ‘person’ doesn’t exist (the state of nothingness). It’s important to understand this well as hidden duality stems from here.
The chapters al-Ikhlasand al-Fatihain the Quran contain the quintessential knowledge to enable the believer to understand and experience this truth. He who discerns and lives by this reality will discover the essence of his being and the nothingness of his “self” within the Absolute SELF and thus experience the ascension denoted by salat!
These are the doors to the infinite beautiful bounties to which the Rasul of Allah (saw) opened for us. Those who enter may encounter beauties no eye has ever seen and no speech has ever expressed before!
Those whose foresight is blinded in this world will be blind in the hereafter. This is the inevitable truth of the system (Sunnatullah).
If Allah wishes emancipation for you, you will consider my writings well and live your life accordingly.
To be in the presence of the Divine implies duality and results in suffering and loss. To be present, or being presence itself, on the other hand, is a constant state of bliss.
Amongst the signs of not being present is gossiping, whatever its reason may be, it is always driven by the ego and the negative forces.
The signs of having reached bliss and divine grace are becoming free of the limits of the five senses, and observing the qualities of the domain of the Names via the wings of contemplation. With your physical eyes, you can observe only what you see within the visible range… How about all of the things your eyes can’t perceive, what if you could perceive and see all the other living forms and beings? And not just those in your own system or your own galaxy and universe, what if you could perceive all of the forms of consciousness within every layer of existence, from the microcosms to the macrocosms, from the sub-atomic levels to the infinite layers of higher matter….
Fasubhanallah… Allahuakbar!
Come my friend, whoever you are, come to the world of thought and contemplation, enter amongst the intellectual…. Stop the imitation… don’t worry about becoming confused, chaos will soon give way to cosmos…
Of course some confusion is bound to occur as knowledge comes to invalidate your years of conditioning, but if you want to become healed of cataracts and enjoy having true sight you have to let go of your fears and accept surgery… Be realistic my friend… look at all the enlightened ones who have become the intimates of the reality, whether you take as example Gaws al-azam Abdulqadir al-Jilani or Sheikh Naqshibandi or Haji Wali Bektashi or someone else to whom you give value…
All of them have stayed as far as possible from the world of the blind and tried to apply the teachings of the Rasul of Allah (saw) and the magnificent source of knowledge, the Quran, in order to be saved from being amongst the blind ones in the infinite realm of the hereafter.
Islam is not a religion of looks, it’s not about dress codes and hair scarves. The Rasul of Allah (saw) says “one belongs to the tribe to which he likens himself” and the Quran says, “Allah will not look at your appearance but to what is in your consciousness (heart)”. While the herders try to restrict and condition you to the domain of the body, awaken and become aware of the amazing life full of wonderful experiences that you’re missing out on!
May Allah ease for us the renewal of our consciousness with the realities disclosed by the most magnificent being to have ever lived on earth, his Rasul and final Nabi Muhammad Mustapha (saw).
According to Islamic belief, many prophets have come to humanity throughout its history, and all have preached the true religion of the One God. None of these preached anything else, so that there can be no contradiction between their original teachings. Due to either entropy or Murphy’s Law, however, these pure teachings became corrupted with the passage of time, so every so often, a new prophet appeared to correct the course. If we understand the word Islam in the sense of “surrender to God,” or more generally of monotheism, there is nothing strange in saying that Judaism was the Islam of Moses, Christianity was the Islam of Jesus, and so on.
Again according to Islamic belief, the repetitive appearance of prophets was not simply a return to the original teaching, but an actual upgrade, the revelation of something new. As humanity progressed from infancy toward emancipation, new information was revealed—at a higher turn of the spiral. This was commensurate with the ability of humankind to digest it, just as an infant is weaned away from milk to other kinds of food as it grows up. Finally, with the emergence of Islam, this growth process was complete, and there being nothing further to add, that was the end of prophethood.
During the long stretches of time when a prophet did not arrive, humanity frequently regressed to a state of polytheism, if not outright atheism. Even then, however, the monotheistic ideal was not entirely forgotten. People either recognized one god as supreme, as Zeus (Theos) was with the Greeks, or assigned supremacy to a different god at different times and places, as was the case with the Egyptians.
Now every religion has two components in general, with varying emphasis placed on each according to the case being considered. One has to do with external regulations, observations and worship: this is the exoteric component. The other involves inward experience, psychological states and spiritual progress. This inner dimension is called esoteric. Note that the exoteric is usually for the masses, while esotericism appeals to the few, the Elect. In Islam, the esoteric component is known as Sufism. But if earlier religions were earlier incarnations of Islam, it would follow that earlier esotericisms must have been earlier incarnations of Sufism. And thus, even when people strayed far from the ideal of monotheism, residues of true esotericism must have survived. It then remains for us to identify and clarify these.
It is with this in mind that I now propose to look at the polytheistic religion of ancient Egypt, through the medium of its art. (There were 1400 deities according to one claim, “thousands” according to another. This excludes the monotheistic “Amarna religion” of Akhenaten, which lasted about 20 years.) Of course, most people accept that ancient Egyptian religion was nothing if not symbolic. But can we identify elements therein that are also present in Sufism? Though we no longer need to refer to that wisdom, it may be instructive to observe the continuity.
The ancient Egyptians were preoccupied with the afterlife. Their entire culture bears testimony to this fact. But if we recall the Sufi precept, “Die before you die,” then the big picture takes on a whole new meaning. In that case, we realize that not simply the deceased, but living adepts, may have been on their minds. The elaborate rituals, invocations and prayers may have been intended, at least in part, for inducing a death-rebirth experience in the living human being.
The Base Self
The Base Self (nafs al-ammara) is our inner demon that lurks inside each of us, silently plotting our downfall. More information on the Base Self is available elsewhere on this website (here), or here.
The Base Self is depicted as a snake, monster or ass (among other things) in Sufism. But not just there: in every tradition, whether wittingly or unwittingly, the Base Self has that kind of depiction, all of it unsavory. Ancient Egypt was no exception. In the four drawings (above left), we see a person in the act of fighting a serpent, crocodile or donkey. Especially the ass is a dead giveaway, since the characteristics of the Base Self have much in common with those of an ass. (This picture could also be read as the devil pestering the Base Self.)
But how can we be sure that the person is fighting the internal principle of evil (the Base Self) and not the external principle of evil (Satan or some equivalent)? The drawing on the right shows a snake with human legs and feet. Indeed, the Egyptians depicted their deities with human bodies and animal heads, indicating an awareness that human personalities could take on some of the characteristics of these animals.
Customary Interpretation: The four pictures at left show Apep, a huge serpent (or crocodile), an Egyptian monster living in perpetual darkness. Apep is the personification of darkness, evil, and chaos, and thus opponent of light and Ma’at (order/truth). Ra was the solar deity, bringer of light, and thus the upholder of Ma’at. Apep was given the title “Enemy of Ra.” (Wikipedia, “Apep.”) The Greek equivalent of Ra was Apollo, from a-pollon: “not-many,” implying One.
The picture at right shows a snake. Because they shed their skin, snakes were viewed as symbols of death and rebirth and thus of regeneration. The deceased recites: “I am a long-lived snake; I pass the night and am reborn everv day.” (Egyptian Book of the Dead, 87: Chapter for being transformed into a snake.)
Stages of Selfhood
The Sufis have traditionally considered that the Base Self is merely the basement level, or starting point, of the evolution of the self. As I have elaborated elsewhere (especially in The Station of No Station (2001), Chapter 4), the Sufis consider that there are seven or nine levels of selfhood (nine, if the seventh is “exploded” into three). These are: 1. the Base Self, 2. the Critical Self, 3. the Inspired Self, 4. the Serene Self, 5. the Pleased Self, 6. the Pleasing Self, 7. the Perfect(ed) Self.
Each of these represents a higher level of purification of the self (nafs). The last, with the highest level of purification, is difficult to conceive of in ordinary human terms. The others are intermediate stages leading to that goal.
Do we find representations of this concept among the ancient Egyptians? The figure below shows a person in a position very similar to the prostration (sujud) posture in Muslim Prayer. In Egyptian belief, the deceased were assimilated to Osiris if they passed the Judgment (see below), so much so that they were addressed as “Osiris N(ame)” in rituals. (Initially this was the privilege solely of the pharaohs. With the democratization of religion, in time this was expanded to include everyone.)
Under the prostrating figure are depicted seven different crowns. Each of these could well be conceived as the crown of a different station of selfhood.
From a Sufi perspective, the following drawing is even more interesting. It shows a person on every one of nine steps. The Egyptians also depicted a stairway of seven steps (see examples given below).
A Sufi might read this picture as follows: at every instant, one stands in judgment before God, as shown by the human figure with scales (about which more below). As s/he is progressively purified of the principle of evil—or Base-Selfhood—(shown by the pig in the boat being driven away), s/he progresses to the next level, or station. In this case, the persons on the stairs each represent a higher stage of one’s own self-purification (and hence, self-development). They depict, not different individuals, but different stages for the same person.
Customary Interpretation: The nine gods of the Ennead occupy the steps. Set or Seth is a god of the desert, storms, and foreigners (thus, of fearful things) in ancient Egyptian religion. In later myths he is also the god of darkness and chaos. He is represented by the pig being driven away from the presence of Osiris.
The Judgment Scene (Psychostasis: Weighing of the Soul)
The weighing of the soul represents the most critical stage in the progress of the deceased in the Afterworld. Here, in self-defense, s/he engages in the famous Negative Confession: “Not have I sinned, not have I wronged another…” and so on.
The jackal-headed Anubis weighs the heart of the deceased (red pot) against the feather of Truth (Ma’at, al-Haqq in Sufism). The ibis-headed Thoth keeps record. The heart must be light as a feather, free of any sins or excrement that weigh it down. If his heart exactly equals the weight of the feather, the deceased is allowed to pass into the afterlife. If it is heavier, he is eaten by the waiting chimeric devouring creature Ammit, composed of the deadly crocodile, lion, and hippopotamus.
In Islam and thus also in Sufism, scales again play a role. A person’s sins are placed in one scale, his virtues or merits on the other, and weighed against one another. If the virtues outweigh the sins, one is allowed to pass into Paradise.
Miraj (Ascension)
One of the most important events in the Prophet’s life was the mystical journey he embarked on circa 621 AD. He was raised through the Seven Heavens to reach communion (if that is the right word) with God. At each level, he was greeted and allowed entry by the guardian of that level.
This was also the occasion on which Formal Prayer, one of the Five Pillars of Islam, was bestowed on humanity as a gift, so that everyone could experience their own personal Ascension. As the Prophet said: “Formal Prayer is the Ascension of the faithful.” Even if one does not experience it in the full clarity of consciousness, the ritual Prayer of Islam is the primary method for drawing near to God. Those who continue this Prayer for a long time are distinguished by their peacefulness and serenity.
There are various claims as to the mode in which the Prophet’s Ascension occurred, and also as to its repetition. Some say it happened both in body and spirit, some say only in spirit. Again, there have been claims that the Prophet Ascended 33 times during his life, others say he was always at that level after the first and famous Ascension. Concerning these we frame no hypothesis—all of them are acceptable to us.
When we look at the etymology of the word miʿraj, we find that it is derived from uruj, “elevation,” and that it means “ladder.” (In today’s terms, it would have meant elevator or escalator.)
Moreover, there is a chapter in the Koran titled Maʿarij, “Ladders” (Chapter 70). This implies that there are more than one Ascensions. As Master Ahmet Kayhan explained, “There has been no prophet without ritual Prayer, nor without Ascension (miʿraj). Many of them have ascended twice.” We also know of “Jacob’s Ladder” and the “Stairway to Heaven.”
The ancient Egptians believed that the soul of the dead ascended from earth to heaven on a ladder, as depicted above. They conceived of Paradise as having Seven Arits, or divisions of Sekhet-Aaru (Elysian Fields, abode of perfect spirits) corresponding to the Seven Heavens. Each Arit had its door, or gate, which was guarded by a gatekeeper, by a watcher, who reported the arrival of every comer.
Various images above show Ra’s magical boat (solar barque) with the flight of steps, representing the primeval hill where Ra had been born. The seven steps found on each would correspond to the seven levels of selfhood in Sufism, as well as to the Seven Heavens. They also resemble the pulpits to be found in mosques, some of which actually have seven steps. Of course, every such pulpit (minbar) is a symbol for the miʿraj: “the minbar’s symbolism…corresponds to the ladder of the worlds… The fact that the [top]most level of the minbar, the throne sheltered by its canopy, remains empty…represents…the unseen presence of the Divine Messenger.” (Titus Burckhart, Art of Islam, p96.) That would correspond to “the Station of Praise” (maqam al-mahmud).
What about one who ascends the staircase spiritually? Of the prophet Enoch (Idris), God says in the Koran: “We raised him to a high place” (19:57). Master Kayhan elaborated that this was the sun: “We attached him (Idris) to the sun.” (Tr. “Biz onu güneşe raptettik.”)
Axis of the Universe
The first letter of God’s Name of Majesty (Allah) is alif or aleph, A. In form, alif also depicts the numeral 1 in various cultures, underlining the fact that God is One.
As René Guénon points out in Symbols of Sacred Science, alif represents the World Axis (p270n19)—the Axis of the Universe, also known variously as the Tree of Life, the Cosmic Mountain, the Ray of Creation, etc. It is associated with the Navel of the World (omphalos) and with the concept of Pole (qutb). It is the axis that connects Heaven and Earth. Martin Lings equates the alif with the erect human body when he says that “the body stands for the Axis of the Universe which is none other than the Tree of Life.” (What Is Sufism, p84.) Indeed, in pictures of Islam’s Formal Prayer (salat / namaz), the standing position (qiyam posture) is depicted by the letter alif. Again according to Guénon, the “Straight Path” (es-sirâtul-mustaqim) in Islam is the same thing as the vertical axis in the upward direction, since the root word denotes verticality (qam, “to raise oneself”) (The Symbolism of the Cross, p113).
In Kundalini Yoga, the Axis of the Universe is the nadi (etymologically “water path”) called the Sushumna (its name in Taoism is Chong Mai). This is the channel corresponding to the human spine in the Subtle Body. In accordance with the Hermetic principle: “As above, so below,” it is thought that the macrocosmos is mirrored in the microcosmos (namely, in Sufism, the human being).
Others have already remarked the parallels between Kundalini and the Djed (or Tet) column in ancient Egypt (e.g. see Wikipedia entry for Djed). The Djed pillar is the spine of the human being and of Osiris, god (I prefer the Jungian term “archetype”) of the Underworld, death and resurrection. The Egyptian Book of the Dead identifies the pillar as both the backbone of Osiris (Ch. 155) and the support of the universe. It is indicative of stability. As the cosmic axis, the Djed is a cylinder, a column of light. It is the seat of the “magic fluid,” and the Axis of the Universe.
Interestingly, scientists have recently found indications that the physical universe may also have an axis. Regularities in the Cosmic Background Radiation, as well as a study of 15 thousand galaxies, have led them to this view.
So: beneath their all-too-obvious polytheism, did the ancient Egyptians hide a secret system that spoke of perennial truths, that even today corresponds to valid elements in Sufism, which only initiates were made privy to? Or was it polytheism all the way down? I have presented some of the pictorial evidence. You be the judge. Meanwhile, we have enjoyed an excursion into Sufi concepts, using material from ancient Egypt. Certainly a thrilling ride!
The most popular Afrocentric perspective of Al Islam is basically the same as the Eurocentric view of man, history, and reality. The Afrocentric movement has with some degree of success, analysed, critiqued and revised the biased and most certainly racist presentation of Africa by so called European historians. However when it comes to Al Islam and the Muslims, it [the Afrocentric movement] embraces it [the Eurocentric view], wholeheartedly.
Particularly as it relates to Al Islam & it’s usefulness among African Americans / Caribbean and its major role in African history. In fact, in some cases Europeans have been much fairer in their writings, analysis and projections of Islam than many of the leading advocates of Afrocentricity.
The most popular Afrocentric perspective of Al Islam is that it, like Christianity, led to the destruction of African civilization; and that Islam is a religion /way of life/philosophy created by Arabs for the advancement and edification of Arabs and their culture.
Al Islam, according to many advocates of Afrocentricity is not an indigenous African religion and therefore African people should reject it. [i.e. John Hendrik Clarke, Chancellor Williams, Dr Ben Youchannon ]
WHAT FOOLISHNESS!!! WHAT HYPOCRISY!!!
Nothing could be further from the truth
Aside from the fact that The Prophet Muhammad [pbuh] his family, and many of his companions [pbut], were pure black Arabs of African origin, the basic principles of Islam do in fact have their roots among the ancient Africans i.e.
The unity of The Creator, Worship, Life after death, Moral [community] laws, Polygamy, Fasting, Showing respect [not worship] to our ancestors, Male and Female circumcision, Judgement day to name a few.
The Quraan came and confirmed some of these ancient practices. Because Islam [The peaceful submission to The One Creator] was and is THE religion, culture and spiritual expression of all times, taking on various forms at different times, locations, tribes, languages and environments, while fundamentally remaining the same essence.
The Quraan as revealed to the blessed Muhammad [pbuh] is the completion [final revelation] of ALL those spiritual expressions.
Yet the average Pan Africanist is so engulfed in their zealousness for countering the Eurocentric deception of Africa and it’s peoples [particularly Egypt], that very little if any, research is done on equally countering the historical and ongoing deception of Islam, Arabs and Africans.
The Kaffers [disbeliveers and enemies of Al Islam] conceal the truth and are constantly engaged in mass deception.
The increasing incidence by those who accuse pale Arabs of enslaving Africans, must be in response to the fact that reversions to Islam is highest amongst the African communities in America and Europe. In other words, the Kaffir’s devious strategy of enslaving Africans, taking them away from Islam and Arabic [one of the literate languages of their enslaved ancestors] has FAILED and is FAILING, after 500 years of trying. And what a spectacular failure!
ISLAM WAS SPREAD BY THE SWORD: A very popular accusation.
There is no truth to this expression. If Islam was spread by the sword, what did the non-Muslim army facing the Muslim army have in their hands? Did they have sticks or toothpicks ?
They too, must have had swords !!! The sword was the weapon of war at that time.
Is it possible that the swords Muslims had in those days were sharper than those of Africans ?
Are you suggesting that the blackman, with all his scientific knowledge and heavily melanated physique, is really just a wimp ?
And where is “the sword” of Islam in America, where the Muslims now number 6 million and 50% of them are African American ? Did Arabs Attack Brooklyn, Bronx, Detroit, Washington, Brixton, Manchester, London, Birmingham and Leeds ?
OF COURSE NOT !!!
SO WHO DID ENSLAVE AFRICANS?
Africans are physically the strongest of all the nations / tribes on the earth when it comes to ground or one on one combat. Pale Arabs are not only physically weaker than Africans but far less numerically, both in modern and ancient times.
SEE how the oil-rich Arab countries are totally dependent on military personnel (mercenaries) from Europe, America and Pakistan for their defence from fellow Muslims in Iraq and Iran!
The only people who had the strength to take on Africans and enslave Africans were Africans themselves – NOT the Arabs and NOT the Europeans.
Many of the Africans who were enslaved were Muslim Africans. [ Deeper Roots = Dr Abdullah Hakim Quick; African Muslims in the Atlantic slave trade = A.Austin ; Roots = Alex Haley; Christianity, Islam and the Negro race; E.W.Blyden; African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas; Sylviane .A.Diof ]
Many of the Africans who did the enslaving were Christian Africans who had converted to the faith after relinquishing their own tribalistic spirituality.
THE CHRISTIANS
During the dominant European period of slave trading, the ‘Scramble for Africa’ and colonisation, Christian Ethiopia was the only African State that was left virtually untouched by European colonisation. In fact its empire doubled in size during the ‘Scramble for Africa’!
On page 442 of ‘The Triumph of the West’ by J.M. Roberts, there is a map of the world showing those parts of the globe that came under Western domination by 1914. Ethiopia stands out like a sore thumb and so does Liberia and Sierra Leone who were Christian states created by Britain and America for the settlement of intellectually, morally and spiritually `weak’ Africans who had been Christianized!
BLACK POWER.
Famous Islamic scholar Al-Jihaz (778-868) wrote of the physical superiority of the Africans nations over all other nations. For example, he states: “We Blacks have conquered the country of the Arabs as far as Mecca and governed them. The desert swarm with the number of our men who married your women and who became chiefs and defended you against your enemies. You even have sayings in your language which vaunt the deeds of our kings – deeds which you often placed above your own; this you would not have done had you not considered them superior to your own. We defeated Dhu Nowas (Jewish ruler of Yemen) and killed all the Himyarite princes, but the Arabs and Whites (from Europe) have never conquered our country. Our people, the Zinges (an African race), revolted forty times in the Euphrates, driving the inhabitants from their homes…Blacks are physically stronger. A single one of them can lift stones of great weight and carry burdens such as several whites could not lift nor carry between them. They are brave, strong…- these good traits are the gifts of God.” [Excerpt taken from the book – The Superiority of the blacks over the whites].
When the last Prophet (pbuh) was born – in the `Year of the Elephant’, Abraha Al-Arsham – the self styled emperor of Ethiopia and Yemen tried to attack the Kaaba at Mecca with a force of 40,000 men, cavalry and armoured elephants. The pale Arabs could not fight the Ethiopians nor could they even defend their own territory. The Arabs fled on their camels to the top of the mountains. This is a well-documented fact in Islamic and Arabian history. There is even a prophetic tradition, which states that one of the signs of “the end of time” would be that the Abassynians [ancient word for blacks] would attack and control Mecca for a period of time. [Signs of the times = ibn Kathir ]
SEE how millions of Arabs are unable to fight a handful of Zionists in Palestine today even though the Arabs have a numerical (population) and financial (oil wealth / petrol-dollars) advantage. So how can Arabs have enslaved a physically stronger nation when they cannot even fight and displace an occupier [pale Jews] who are described in the Quran as people who turn their back on you. [I.e. cowards when it comes to fighting?]
SEE how the Iraqis ‘fought’ and surrendered in the Gulf War and compare with how the Afghans and Vietnamese fought to the death or until victory was achieved against Russia and America respectively. Yet, HIS storybooks tell us that pale Arabs are the people who enslaved Africans! WHAT A LOAD OF RUBBISH!!!
EGYPT/ETHIOPIA
Soon after the Last Prophet (pbuh) passed away, the Arabs moved out of the Arabian Peninsula and went into Egypt to free the indigenous Egyptian population from the tyrannical rule of the Romans. In 643 AC, Abdullah the new Arab governor-general (viceroy) of Egypt, decided to go into the Heartland of Africa against Ethiopia with a larger and better-equipped army. However, the Arabs suffered a major and massive military defeat at the hands of the Ethiopians where the whole Arab army was wiped out. An Arab historian of the period felt compelled to admit that it was the most devastating defeat ever suffered by an Arab army. Thereafter, the Arabs became more cautious, changed direction and proceeded with revealing the Last Message along the North African coast, crossing into Spain in 711.
However, Ethiopia remained the only Christian State in Africa until the arrival of the European colonialists. Read ‘The Destruction of Black Civilization’ by Chancellor Williams, Third World Press, Chicago, Illinois, 1976.
By the time slavery had started in the 1400s, the Arabs had become significantly weakened as a military force by the time of the Western Crusades (1095-1250s) and the Eastern Crusades, namely the Christian-backed Mongol invasion that culminated in the sacking of Baghdad in 1258. Their military response to these successive invasions can best be described as pathetic. The Arabs were ‘saved’ only by the intervention of non-Arab Muslims e.g. Sala udin Ayubi – from Kurdistan, the Mamelukes (Muslim kinsmen to the non-Muslim Mongols and Tartars) and then the Ottomans who took over the Caliphate. The Arabs were in no position to enslave other people after suffering such bruising attacks from Central Asia.
THE AFRICAN PESENCE IN ASIA
When Islamic rule was at the height of its splendour in India, there was a considerable influx of African Muslims from east Africa. Coming as traders and mercenaries, and settling in the Deccan (east of Bombay) and Bengal region (Barbek Shah, Malik Amber, Malik Andeel, Mawla, Admiral Sambal, Admirals Masud and Ali Kasam; Generals Kafur, Abudullah, Rahim Khan, Abdul Rahman, Battla, Belal, Forts, Hillol, Ibrahim Khan, Jauhar, Johar, Kasim Sabaun, Sambal, Sat, and the eminent military commander, Yakut Khan. Ekhaz Khan was a noted Sultan.
In time they emerged from the mass to form the backbone of armies and became, great military and naval commanders, hereditary admirals, and in several instances, Sultans [Prime Ministers]. [African presence in ancient Asia = Dr Ivan Van Sertima]
Under their own commanders, they eventually became the source of central power. Their presence brought them into conflict with the Afghan, Turkish and Mughal rulers of North, Central and East India. The Afghans, who have a fiercesome reputation for fighting, being the only Muslim country to have successfully fought off colonialism by beating Britain an imperial power three times and then a perceived superpower, Russia . However, even Afghan chiefs were unable to beat the African Muslims in south India and Bengal, even when they outnumbered them four-to-one. [Ibid.].
DID EUROPEANS ENSLAVE AFRICANS?
Relatively speaking European and American armies are physically weak and cowards, and are totally dependent on heavy protection (armour plating, helmets, bulletproof equipment, chemical weapons, stealth bombers etc) because they FEAR death and their hypocritical chattering classes FEAR body bags. Their soldiers even have to get drunk just to pluck up enough courage to chat up loose woman in a bar!
MODERN WARFARE
They don’t like fighting man-to-man in a field and away from built-up areas and so resort to attacking civilian infrastructure such as roads, bridges, power stations, women, children (collateral damage) because these `targets’ can’t and don’t hit back. Their technology is ‘stand-off’ where they can fire projectiles without even seeing the enemies’ eyes.
POLICE BRUTALITY
Whenever there is TV / video footage of an American / British policemen beating up an Afro-American / Afro-Caribbean – the African is always outnumbered by his attackers because his attackers are too scared to take him on – man-to-man / on a one-to-one basis. [Remember Joy Gardener, Steven Lawrence, Duane Douglas, Rodney King e.t.c.]
GHETTOES
Some of the cities, in which Africans have a large presence in America and Europe, are known as NO GO AREAS because the indigenous population FEARS them. So if white man FEARS walking through his own land, how could he have travelled to the DARK CONTINENT to enslave Africans, having only just discovered the world is not flat and monsters do not inhabit the sea?
CHINA
Britain could not fight the Chinese and so introduced opium as a way of weakening them. In order to rule and maintain its empire, Britain created the two million strong British Indian army – the largest all volunteer army ever created in the history of mankind. Consisting of the so-called martial races of South Asia. This army was deployed against the Muslims of Africa, the Ottomans, even fellow Asians – the Chinese in the Opium Wars.
In World War 1, Britain had to resort to conscription because not enough men came forward to fight, whilst in its colonies, the natives of India VOLUNTEERED. Now they are recruiting women to fight on the front-line.
THE NATIVE AMERICAN INDIANS
Sitting Bull, the Leader of the Teton Sioux, c.1831 to 1890 said: “We have now to deal with another race – small and feeble when our fathers first met them, but now great and overbearing…” The Americans could not fight the Native American Indians man-to-man, and so fought them indirectly by wiping out the buffalo, which the Red Indians were totally dependent on for food / meat, clothing, milk, transport, trade, etc. Another tactic was the use of germ warfare i.e. deliberately infecting the Native Americans with European diseases.
VIETNAM
The debacle in Vietnam and Somalia is further evidence of their weakness and cowardice. In fact when stooges like Martin Luther King came on the scene it was at a time when the war in Vietnam was stepping up and men were needed to fight in Vietnam. They wanted African-Americans to fight their war in Vietnam because they themselves are cowards. People like Clinton fled to Europe to avoid the call-up or as he says because of his conscience towards the war, though his conscious does not extend to bombing defenceless Muslims in Iraq, Sudan and Afghanistan. Thus the head of the American armed forces is a coward. Stooges like Martin Luther King wanted equality for Afro-Americans and once achieved, they could then go and fight in Vietnam as equal citizens of America! But African-American Muslims like Muhammad Ali – the famous boxer saw through this trick.
THE GULF WAR
As to the Gulf War – the Arabs are not a formidable fighting force today and hence their reliance on mercenaries. Indeed they are so desperate they even rely on cowardly Kaffer mercenaries for their protection! Some of these Kaffer armies have to recruit women to fight on the front-line because their own men don’t want to fight. [Women on the frontline; article TIME magazine Sept. 1993]
GHANA
It took hundreds of years for mechanized European armies to colonise the whole of Africa. For example, in the Ashanti wars of the early nineteenth century, the British tried to occupy the hinterland of the Gold Coast (now called Ghana). There were eleven major wars in this conflict. The Ashanti won ALL of them, except the last. In these wars, Ashanti generals – and we should call them generals, because they were more than equal to the British generals who failed to conquer them – stopped the inland encroachment of the British was. In 1896 the British exiled the Ashanti King Prempeh, but still were not able to take over completely the hinterland of the Gold Coast. The British still did not give up their desire to establish their authority in the interior of the country and avenge the many defeats they had suffered at the hands of Ashanti. It took the British nearly a century of fighting with the Ashanti before they gained total control of the region.
So if mechanized British troops had so much difficulty colonising a coastal region, how did Arabs manage to enslave millions of Africans and sell them into slavery?
SUDAN
When Britain colonized Egypt they began fighting with Muhammad Ahmad (‘Mahdi’ of Sudan) – an African Muslim. The British organized three mechanized armies against the Muhammad Ahmad, namely the Anglo-Egyptian Army, the British Indian Army and the Ottoman Army. Muhammad Ahmad and his followers were only armed with swords and spears. In one encounter, Muhammad Ahmad and the African Muslims massacred all 10,000 Arabs of the Anglo-Egyptian Army. One of Britain’s best generals, a coward by the name of Charles Gordon was killed. Britain then had to send another one of its elite generals of the British Army (a sodomite called Kitchener) to destroy the Sudanese Muslims. It took a MECHANIZED army to destroy Muhammad Ahmad and his followers. Winston Churchill was a reporter at the time and his dispatches describe the sheer bravery of the African Muslims who fought to the death against the might of combined modern armies from Egypt, Britain and India, without fear or cowardice. Read ‘Scramble for Africa’, and The White Nile =A.Moorehead .
SOMALIA
When America, a perceived superpower went into Somalia in 1993, for so called peacekeeping duties, young African Somalis forced their military out. American soldiers armed to the teeth with all their sophisticated weaponry could not ‘take on’ the African boys.
So whoever enslaved Africans had to be physically strong. Otherwise, as Mike Tyson has recently shown an angry African can easily bite your ear off!
What about the Maroons of the Caribbean? And the countless slave revolts in North and South America?
When Britain fought against the ‘Mad Mullah’ in Somalia, 10,000 Christians from Ethiopia joined them.
NO ONE BUT AFRICANS COULD HAVE ENSLAVED AFRICANS, and it was Christians Africans who were taking Muslim Africans captives and selling them to the Europeans at the coast.
There was a crusade / Jihad taking place between African Muslims and African Christians. It is unbelievable and illogical to believe that Muslims would sell prisoners of war to their enemies, particularly as the enemies are Christians from Europe who had recently ended the 700 year old Moorish civilization in Spain, and are now conquering Muslim North and West Africa.
Moreover, in a Jihad [struggle, Holy war], prisoners of war and their property are considered as lawful war booty and the property of the Amir and the Islamic State which the Amir distributes to enhance the power of the Islamic State and reward those who have given their resources and lives in Jihad. This is the Sunnah [practice] of the Prophet (pbuh). And if you do a little research you will find that this was the practice of warring African tribes, prior to the arrival of Europeans.
Did the Prophet (pbuh) ever sell the war booty to his enemies, thereby weakening his power and strengthening the enemies’ power ? NO. Prisoners of war are valuable because there is reward for converting them to Islam, as marital partners, as servants, as ransom, etc. In each case the quantity and strength of Muslims increases.
DOES SLAVERY STILL EXIST IN AFRICA TODAY ?
THE SUDAN
Recently there has been a lot of media speculation about alleged slavery in Sudan.
Sudan, formally known as Kush in ancient times, represents the African microcosm in all respects: ethnic, cultural and even in respect to its former colonial powers. Like almost every other African country, not only was Sudan bequeathed an ethnic problem, the problem was itself created and nursed during the colonial period and the conflict seems to have become so dear to its creators that they would not allow the Sudanese to come to any mutual agreement.
NUBIANS
Historically the northern Sudanese are descendants of the ancient Egyptians and Nubians of the Nile Valley. Over different periods of time people of various ethnic origins [Greeks, Romans, Turks and Arabs both black and pale skinned] has populated the Nile Valley. These migrations have resulted in a small part of the population in the north having a hybrid or mixed appearance. But for the most part, the majority of the Nubians have retained their African features and customs. [ Cheikh Anta Diop = The African Origin of Civilisation ].
By the time Islam had become the dominant culture in Sudan [north, west and east], the ancient Kushitic civilization had long since declined. There was also a large presence of black Arabs who had migrated from southern Arabia and had intermarried with the local inhabitants. [History of the Sudan = Abdullah Tariq al Mansour]
The people embraced Islam [not forced on them as you silly Pan Africanists advocate] and Arabic became the language of trade, commerce and communication in the north. The south remained animist and distant from the changes in the north. Later on it would embrace Christianity through the European missionaries although still up until this day, there still remains a large percentage of animists.
In the past, race, ethnicity, identity and difference were limited problems, which were resolved in a civil manner. Even the wars they had with each other did not reach the heights of barbarism that we see today in Africa [i.e. Rwanda, Sierra Leon, Burundi, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Liberia].
Sudan has been facing such a problem for the past 15 years, although to their credit there has been no reports of tribal massacres or ethnic cleansing. It is guerrilla warfare, which is currently taken place there between a small band of southerners [between 2-4 thousand] and the government forces, [which includes southern tribes who are against the southern rebel army]. It is not a full-scale north Vs south war as the media would have you believe. If you were to travel to the Sudanese capital Khartoum, you will see hundreds of thousands of southern tribes living, working, marrying and generally living at ease with the Nubian [northern] tribes.
The western press have used terms such as Muslim Vs Christians or worse still Arabs Vs Africans and the Afrocentric movement who at one point accuse the western press of distorting news or history, but hypocritically support the press on their tirade against the Sudanese government. Another point to consider is that the rebels in the south have been joined by Muslims from the north who are composed of the main opposition parties in Sudan. So basically it is political problem as well as ethnical and religious. It is black Vs black just as in the rest of Africa, and The Caribbean, where there is conflict and strife. But the Afrocentrist doesn’t want to see it that way. Why? Because Muslims are involved and we know you don’t like Islam.
As far as the allegations of slavery are concerned, it can not be denied that individuals have taken advantage of the situation and this is a shame on African people and the Muslims and those who are participating in this inhumane practice need to be condemned [I could say worse]. However the situation has been definitely blown up out of proportion and we should be wary of white Christian groups such as Red Cross or Christian Solidarity International, who are at the forefront of the slavery propaganda machine.
It is not just the “selling” of Africans that should be our prior commitment, equally so we should be concerned about the “trade” taking place in our communities right on our doorstep i.e.
The selling of drugs within our communities by Africans
The selling of fast-food within our communities
The selling of degenerate music within our communities by Africans
The selling of negative movies within our communities acted and promoted by Africans
The selling of so called designer clothing within our communities designed by whites, sold and worn by Africans
The selling of indecent clothing for our women designed and worn by Africans
African men and women selling their bodies on the streets
Informants within the community who will spy on organisations and sell them to the authority
Recording artists who sell their soul to the Devil and then sell millions of records to African youth
The selling of dangerous cosmetics such as bleaching cream, hair perms and fake hair weaves. Made by whites, sold and used by Africans
The selling of silly tabloid newspapers such as The voiceless Voice, The few New Nation and The joke Journal, which continue to give African people useless and trivial information
The selling of our children from 9-5pm, to day-care nurseries and poorly run ethnic majority populated schools
The selling of guns within our communities, made by whites, sold to blacks who in turn sell to and kill other blacks
The selling of glossy Negro magazines which are full of black wannabe’s [Ebony, Essence, Black Beauty.]
The selling of poorly written Afrocentric history books which contain contradictory information, a lack of sufficient evidence, poor sentence and grammar construction and last but not least are confusing as to which direction they are going. This does not include eminent scholars, the likes of Dr Ivan Van Sertima, William Preston, J.A Rogers, John Hendrik Clarke [?], Runuko Rashidi, W.E.B Dubois , Edward Wilmont Blyden, Cheikh Anta Diop, and Wayne Chandler, of whom I don’t agree 100% but they stand head and shoulders above most of the emotional drivel that is currently saturating the market of our historical knowledge. This was partly addressed in a book entitled “THE SCIENCE OF MELANIN: DESPELLING THE MYTHS = T.Owens. Moore”
Now you tell me which one is worse. Physical slavery or mental slavery? Or are they as bad as each other ?
FACE THE FACTS
So, it was Africans who made the slave trade possible through ignorance, greed and envy. And yes all were involved [Animists, Christians and Muslims]. It is a sad and painful truth but a reality we have to contend with if we are to become the people we are supposed to be. The romanticizing about Africa and its peoples has to stop. There has always been a negative element amongst us from way back. Their descendants are amongst us today reaping havoc and hell in our communities, countries, organizations and leadership.
If you are sincerely seeking the truth about Al Islam then you should go to the primary source, which is The Quraan. If you are going to judge Islam by the Muslims then you will find fault because people often do not reflect their beliefs in the prescribed way, which in turn breeds hypocrisy.
Even We the conscious African aware advocates, have our own individual shortcomings. We are all [humans] here [on earth], striving on the path of knowledge, truth and enlightenment. But it is not an easy path, what you may say and do today can easily change tomorrow, but the true and sincere believers know that ALLAH’S [GOD] TRUTH is infinite and with it there is no confusion.
In conclusion I leave you with this beautiful narration from The Beloved Messenger of ALLAH, The Unseen Source of ALL Creation:
“The Believers in their mutual love, compassion and sympathy are like one body
When one of it’s parts suffers from some illness, the rest of the body shares its
Suffering with sleeplessness and fever” [ Sahih Al Bukhari vol. 1]
article was written by Abdul Kareem Ibraheem al Salih.
He must be awakened. He’s in a strange world. His eyes must come open, the spiritual eye. He must see the people as they really are; he must see himself as he really is; he must be awakened, spiritual awakening. – Elijah Muhammad
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad spoke on many different levels to many different audiences often in the same speech, even using the same words. He was not allowed to outright reveal the deepest esoteric wisdom, none of the prophets were. So, he phrased that wisdom very carefully so it would be available one day when someone was awake enough to separate the wheat from the tare. Esoterically, “the dead” means the completed initiate as I’ve explained in other writings. The Egyptian Book of the Dead has many references to “the Dead, the Auser Ani, whose word is true says…….” These are two designations for initiates: “slave” (i.e., apprentice) and “dead.” The dead designates the completed initiate who has arrived while the servant or slave refers to one who is still working on getting to the finish line. Sometimes, however, The Honorable Elijah Muhammad used “dead” when he really meant “servant” (apprentice).
The dead must be given knowledge of the truth of God. He must be washed and cleansed of the old world……. Put him on a clean garment. Give him a clean heart, and a clean thought…. put him to think of clean and righteous things. – Elijah Muhammad
Those things are needed for the apprentice not for the man or woman who has fully already died to the world and been resurrected. Such one is beyond unclean thinking for he or she is no longer a mere human mortal but is an immortal neter. By immortal I do not mean that the body lives forever, I mean the consciousness is continuous over an infinite number of lives in and out of a body. What made Master Fard divine is that he fully remembered himself, his lives, over thousands of cycles of history all the way back to that First One who manifested Himself from Ain Soph Ur’s Triple Darkness. When he became the Divine Supreme Being on Earth he totally changed (“destroyed”) the world with only a word (doctrine) that altered the global paradigm. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said that, for the initiate, all time is now. Though seemingly real, past and future are illusions. All that exists, exists now. From now I produce a picture and audio of what I say was the past and call it a memory, but that memory only exists in the present moment. From now I produce a picture of what I imagine might occur and call that the future. All time is simultaneous. I can occasionally see “future” events that have not yet happened. I could not see these events if they didn’t already exist now. There are lots of people who can see for better than me. Not only is all time now, the “past” can be changed. All you have to do is imagine a “past” event as you choose it to have been and believe it occurred and that “new past” will show effects in the present. All time for the initiate is now. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said the initiate “must be awaken”. People spend most of their lives asleep even though they think they are awake. Practices such as Dhummo breathing produce a hyper-awakeness that also can open the ajna chakra/third eye which the Messenger called “the spiritual eye”. Raising energy to the brow causes it to throb and eventually to strobe light. When the strobing occurs rapidly for a while it generates a vision screen that is a tool for clairvoyance. This is a strange, grafted artificial world of Yakub’s grafted left brain devil. It is a world where right is wrong and wrong is right. It’s a world where governments force the people to eat GMO food made with spider genes, a world where reptilian jinn rule through traitorous parliaments, where the rich rob the poor and the robbed poor say “rob me some more” It’s an illusory world that really doesn’t exist, at least not like we think it exists. A world where criminals go free and the innocent are imprisoned, and the masses are enslaved in the name of freedom. The awakened initiate sees beyond the propaganda hype and sees people as they really are. You don’t have to wait till full enlightenment to see politicians and other public people as they truly are. The means is shockingly simple. Ignore what they say and observe what they do. Their deeds reveal who and what they really are. http://www.amirfatir.com/the-time-of-the-dead-is-now.html
Fruit grows from a tree. “Fruit of Islam” was code for those initiates who were products of the Salaamic Tree of Life. The
NOI “Fruit Lesson” says: “A Fruit is best. He is constantly training
and conditioning himself to meet and overcome all obstacles in his
path.”
Instead of
succumbing to the demonic programs of Yakub’s grafted world, the Fruit
(initiate) conditions his own soul (self). He creates his own reality by
programming his own mental computer. Such a thing has to be
accomplished with consistency, patience and constancy (sabir).
An
initiate can train his animal spirit to respond like he wants it to
respond rather than allowing its appetites to be made more and more
savage by Yakub’s fake and illusory world.
The
jinn enslavers of humanity have grafted a life-enervating system that
feeds the inner beast (animal spirit) and encourages it to crave and
demand more and more sensual gratification. In scripture this is encoded
as “worshipping the beast”.
The
animal spirit is one of man’s seven spirit bodies. It is the second
densest after the physical body. All of our sensual appetites are rooted
in the animal spirit. When you feel a hunger for food, sex, violence,
excitement, pampering, maternity (“biological clock”), attention, etc.
these are pronouncements from the animal spirit.
The animal spirit is not bad, but it will cause bad results if it’s allowed to run wild and rule the individual.
The
grafted world influencers (Shayateen) deliberately feed the animal
spirit so it can dominate every other aspect of one’s being. Rather than
to allow his soul or spirit to be conditioned by Yakub, the Fruit
conditions his own mind, soul and animal spirit.
He knows two things:
1. Emotions are expressions of his animal spirit and
2. History repeats itself. Since history repeats itself, he can know and write history in advance.
This means that these are recurring emotional patterns. Someone may get nervous whenever their taxes are audited.
Knowing
that it is not him but the animal spirit that gets nervous, the Fruit
(initiate) can pre-program (condition) his animal spirit to instead of
projecting nervousness when the taxman cometh, to project calm,
confidence and peace.
This is writing history in advance. He pre-scribes (advance writes) how his spirit will respond whenever his taxes are audited.
A beneficial side effect is that such calm and peace will overflow into all his encounters with so-called authority figures.
This
training and conditioning of one’s OWN SELF (atman or soul) to function
according to divine law (MAAT) instead of according to the dictates of
the artificially enslaved world (“Yakub’s grafted devil”) is the subject
of this book. May Ra ——–Life, Health and Strength be to Him ——grant you success on your journey to liberation.
The Divinity of Master Fard Muhammad by Amir Fatir and Jamillah Muhammad
Surely there whom you call upon from Beneath Allah are initiates similar to you. SoCall upon them and let them answer you, if you are sincere.Quran 7:194
The
Quran says that “Allah is the Best of Planners”. When an individual’s
consciousness/will has become fully aligned with that plan she or he
becomes a divine being, i.e., “God in Person”.
Attaining to
such realization is achieved through spiritual cultivation which is
called “initiation”. When the scripture refers to “slaves”, it means
initiates. Most of the deified beings of antiquity were initiates who
achieved the goal of realization, i.e., divinity.
When such an enlightened one leaves the physical gross body she is called a Sheps.
Sheps
is encoded in Nation of Islam mathematical theology as “The Tribe of
Shabazz”. The word “Africa” means “land of the spirits”. The Teaching
says that the Asiatic Black Man entered Africa 50,000 years ago.
Mastery
of the 50 sound units of power allows the initiate to enter the
consciousness (land) of the Gods (Africa). Such Sheps are able and
willing to intercede on our behalf if we ask them and if we are
“Saddiq.” That word is translated to mean “sincere”, but it’s technical
word that means “true of speech” (Ma Heru), i.e., that the initiate has
passed the tests of the weighing of the words and weighing of the heart
in the Halls of Maat.
Scripture refers to this as the Day of
Judgement. If one is not true of speech, and cannot be assured of
assistance from the Sheps, the initiate who attained neteru (divine)
realization. Master Fard Muhammad was an initiate. He reached Sphere 1
(Ausar) of the Tree of Life and became God in Person, i.e., God took up
reordence in his nafs (person or sal). Another word for that is Avatar.
Fard
Muhammad was the Great Avatar of this Age of Pisces. His word
(doctrine) reshaped and directed civilization, and that is another
indicator of a God in Person.
Many concepts and theories that
guide the world were first taught by W.F. Muhammad. The ability to
genetically modify human beings is one of many Fard’s first teachings.
The Quran says “He is Allah in the asteroid belts and the earth.” The
man or woman who realizes divinity (sphere 1) is “Allah in the earth”
while others comprise Allah in the heavens.
It is called “the God
head” because they form a type of interdimensional brain or
consciousness with each realized being and analogous to a nexus of
neurons. Yet they are unified and function as a whole (holy) or one.
When Master Fard departed, the divine one on earth was Elijah Muhammad.
He
is now Sheps who can intercede on our behalf if we are sincere
(Saddiq). He is not on a spaceship and neither is Master Fard. Yet he IS
alive and so is Fard, just not in a physical body. In 2:154 the Quran
says not to refer to initiates who pass over as dead. “No,” it says,
“they are alive, but you can’t see them.”
Powerful men and women
like Master Fard, Elijah Muhammad and Queen Hatshepsut form “clouds” of
consciousness that exist after their physically “dead”.
The internet “cloud” is a grafted imitation version of the real clouds shown on some Tarot cards. You can access such “clouds” and thereby access all of the knowledge of the ancient Master scientists. It’s like spiritual virtual reality.
THE HONORABLE ELIJAH MUHAMMAD AS GURU BY AMIR FATIR
The job of a true guru (spiritual teacher) is to deflate and remove the ego because the ego is the main impediment to realizing who you really are. Because we don’t have a good guru tradition in America, nobody understood the Messenger’s guru work. Spiritually immature pundits thought he was simply “jealous” of his students. Ironically, the thing we’re good at usually is also the thing that supports and sustains our ego. So the true guru takes away our toys to dislodge the ego from its stranglehold position over the true self (the Ba or Atman). People think Malcolm X was the Messenger’s best follower, but in reality, poor Malcolm was one of his worst. He never followed Elijah Muhammad. Malcolm followed Marcus Garvey and he used the Nation of Islam’s platform and energy to promote his limited understanding of Garveyism. Unbeknownst to outsiders, much of the tension between NOI national officials and Malcolm was over that. While giving “shout outs” to the Messenger, Minister Malcolm was almost always doing his own thing, or what he imagined his late father (a Garveyite) would do in support of Garvey’s ideals. Malcolm’s daughter, Attallah Shabazz wrote:
“With the encouragement of his brothers, [Malcolm] began studying the tenets of the Nation of Islam. While the Little brothers didn’t adhere to all the teachings personally, they did believe it was the only current American- based ideology that had the potential to unify black people and teach self-pride the way their childhood affiliation with the Garvey movement had done. Also, the brothers believed that through the Nation of Islam they could finally become part of a larger family that could unite them once more”. — Attallah Shabazz Foreword to Autobiography of Malcolm X p. XV
The Little family was a family of Garveyites who joined the Nation on the rebound to experience some residue of what they nostalgically remembered from childhood. Malcolm and his brothers became NOI Ministers, but none of them really “adhered to all the teachings personally”. In other words, they faked. Does anyone who ever met Elijah Muhammad think he didn’t know they were faking? Why do you think he wrote so many papers on hypocrites? In New York, Malcolm hung out with a lot of Garveyites who gladly taught him Black history. These people further pulled Malcolm back to Garvey’s vision and away from the new possibility the Honorable Elijah Muhammad was introducing but which Malcolm never understood or embraced. Minister Farrakhan is a Garveyite too. So the two men the world most heard of Elijah Muhammad through were, deep down, Garvey’s men, not the Messenger’s.
I say and I say again, you don’t know Elijah Muhammad. You haven’t even gotten a clue. No man can serve two masters. If Farrakhan was his man, why did Elijah have to send soldiers to the Congress of African Peoples to pull Farrakhan down, physically, if Farrakhan deviated from the speech Elijah gave him? You mean he didn’t trust his own national minister? No, he didn’t. But he loved Farrakhan and Malcolm and tried to cleanse them of crippling egotism. Malcolm and Farrakhan loved him too. Yes, they did. These were not bad men. They had on the wrong eyeglasses and with those eyeglasses they couldn’t clearly see the guru they claimed they were following. The guru takes away the child’s toys Speaking in these colleges and universities was good for the Nation of Islam, I would report to Mr. Muhammad because the devilish white man’s best minds were developed and influenced in the colleges and universities. But for some reason that I could never understand until much later, Mr. Muhammad never really wanted me to speak at their colleges and universities. I was to learn from Mr. Muhammad’s own sons, he felt unequipped to speak at colleges himself. Malcolm X Autobiography, page 290
So Malcolm wanted to exert energy and valuable time speaking to the “best white minds” ——–so he believed he had a future with White people while his teacher taught they had no future. If Malcolm was the zealot for Elijah he claimed to be, if he knew Mr. Muhammad didn’t want him speaking to whites at the white colleges, why didn’t he just stop? I use to think Coltrane’s music was horrendous until my appreciation blossomed. I also use to think Malcolm and Farrakhan were better speakers than the Messenger until one day I really heard him. Those boys aren’t even in his league. But if you prefer Kenny G to Coltrane, oh well. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad did everything he could to deflate Malcolm’s terrible ego. He took him out of Muhammad Speaks. Malcolm pouted like a spoiled baby. “The very newspaper I created wouldn’t even mention me and my great works.” Hush up, ego! After Malcolm blatantly and deliberately rebelled after the JFK assassination, The Honorable Elijah Muhammad silenced him for a mere 90 days. Malcolm couldn’t stop talking and leaking to the press and giving interviews. Ego! When nothing else worked, he evicted Malcolm from the house. Malcolm was a Taurian and Taurians need their houses. The guru’s job is to strip you bare because all the pile of dooky we amass in this life only separates us from our own divinity. Quran says “Piling up diverts you until you come to the graves”. Man’s original state is bare naked, unconditioned. The guru strips us of all our “things” so we get a glimpse of who we are without the coverings of samskaras over us. At the height of Muhammad Ali’s popularity, the Messenger kicked him out of the Nation of Islam. He took Min. Farrakhan’s fiddle from him and wouldn’t let him play music. He told me to stop writing poetry. We are invested in so many things when all that matters is self. So the guru snatches them away. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad could no more care about speaking to silly white college kids than the Dalai Lama could be jealous over which kid won the most marbles in a marble game. Ironically, the two men who “got” the Messenger as guru better than his ministers were not even members. I’m speaking of Dr. Martin Luther King and Rev. Jesse Jackson. Moreso, the Messenger use to spank them but they listened to him and Dr. King’s last mission to obliterate predatory capitalism via the Poor People’s March on Washington grew out of Dr. King’s and the Messenger’s cooperative genius. Long after the NOI Ministers had abandoned the Messenger, Jesse Jackson appeared on Face the Nation to pay tribute to The Honorable Elijah Muhammad years after his physical death.
This is an article reposted from Blackdawahnetwork.com named ‘A Summation of the Arguments and Rebuttals to the Afrocentric Criticisms of Islam in Africa’ Black Dawah Network is an initiative set up in America to help to Bring Islam to oppressed Black communities. All rights belong to the author of the article Professor Shareef Muhammad and Black Dawah Network. Link to original article:http://blackdawahnetwork.com/2019/02/a-summation-of-the-arguments-and-rebuttals-to-the-afrocentric-criticisms-of-islam-in-africa/
In this article by Professor Shareef Muhammad, he summarizes arguments and rebuttals to Afrocentrist criticisms of Islam in Africa.
1.) Afrocentrist myth:Islam are that it spread by the sword, undermined traditional African cultures, and that the Arab Slave Trade depopulated Africa and destabilized those African societies. They alleged that both conquest and slavery were the principal means by which Arabs introduce Islam to Africans.
Response: These assertions are hyperbolic and not supported by either the African sources or the external Arab sources that make up the corpus of literature that are the core source of information on the subject. The events in question have been inflated to gain ground in the identity politics of the diaspora. The Arab Slave Trade was never a defining issue on the continent of Africa but was part of the normal state practices of that time. In fact, Walter Rodney in his esteemed work How Europe Underdeveloped Africa said that the term Arab Slave Trade was a misnomer since its used to describe bilateral trade agreements across a myriad of ethnic groups in which Africans had full agency.
Metanarrative: Islam south of the Sahel was an indigenous affair in which Africans controlled the terms on which Islam was adopted and practiced. It’s proselytizing, practice, and politics were entirely African. This is evinced in how unique Islam was in the sub-Saharan from Islam in the Levant and North Africa. Even in North Africa where Islam did spread by force the Arabs never made it across the whole of North Africa leaving the assimilation and practice of Islam entirely to the Berbers. Berber attitudes and behavior towards the sub-Sahara were Berber not Arab or determined by Arabs.
2.) Afrocentrist myth: The Almoravid were Arab invaders who toppled Ghana in 1076 ACE and this is how Islam was introduced to the region.
Response: This event is controversial because there is no unambiguous mention in the Ghanaian oral traditions or the chronicles of the Arab writers of this time (11th century) nor is there a scholarly consensus that this invasion happened. At most the primary sources point only to a correlation between the spread of Islam throughout the western sub-Saharan and the Almoravid efforts at doing so through what we know were missionary work not a military invasion. David Conrad and Humphrey Fisher wrote an exhaustive treatment of the Arabic sources and African oral accounts called The Conquest That Never Was. They concluded that they could find “nothing in the traditions to indicate any conquest of the eleventh-century Sahelian state known to Arab geographers as “Ghana.”” Yet, this remains a controversy among actual scholars. So, let us explore the position that the Almoravid conquest did take place. All of the sources that describe the Almoravids in sub-Saharan relate them as an African contingent of the movement that originated in Senegambia. Cheikh Anta Diop who takes the stance that there was an invasion and that they seized Aoudaghast and Ghana saying on page 163 of Precolonial Black Africa that “This was the only time white troops attempted to impose Islam through violence.” The “white” Berber to which Diop is referring took up a retreat in Senegal where he attracted Senegalese who converted and aided him in this military campaign to spread Islam through force. But their victories were confined to only the northern part of the Ghana, Sijilmasa and the Maghreb. They did not succeed in West Africa, to the east and west. The conversion of these regions was the work of autochthonous marabouts (West African Sufis) who were preaching the religion. So, even if we take the theory of an invasion we see that even that is described as an indigenous affair. The fact that the Ghanaian oral sources point to draught instead of northern conquerors as the cause of Ghana’s fall at the least minimizes this event. Diop goes on to say that “The primary reason for the success of Islam in Black Africa, with one exception, consequently stems from the fact that it was propagated peacefully at first by solitary Arabo-Berber travelers to certain Black kings and notables, who then spread it about them to those under their jurisdiction.” pg. 163.
3.) Afrocentrist myth: The Arab Invasion Destroyed Egypt and Enslaved the Native Black Population.
Response: Ancient Kemet was destroyed and compromised over a millennium prior to the 640 A.C.E when the Muslims invaded. The Kemet that Afrocentrists romanticize had been long gone. When the Muslims arrived they were entering a thoroughly Hellenized, and Romanized Egypt whose native population was an amalgam of black African, Phoenician, Greek, Roman and Eastern European. Whole population of Italians and many Vandals and Goths moved into North Africa during the time of Augustine. The Berbers were made lighter when Europeans moved into North Africa since as far back the Ice Age. The Hyksos colonization of Northern Egypt didn’t help either. The further west you went in North Africa the lighter the population. Alfred J. Butler’s The Arab Invasion and the Last 30 Years of Roman Dominion. The Baqt Treaty exposes the lie that the Arabs introduced the enslavement of black Africans. Its pertinent to this controversy because it was the first time the Arabs tried to invade sub-Sahara and they failed. The Baqt Treaty was an agreement in which the Nubians who were the victors set the terms of peace and offered to pay the Arabs slaves as a peace offering. The point here is that like everywhere else in Africa up till the 1800 sub-Sahara African states negotiated with outsiders from a position of strength and autonomy. This contradicts the Afro-centrist version of African history which insists on portraying Africans as eternal victims. They had full agency during these transactions and their encounters with Arabs who were numerically and technologically inferior to the Africans they encountered. To understand their decision to give slaves to foreigners requires that we look at African states and politics as they were and not as we want to for the purposes of our petty arguments cultural authenticity.
4.) Afro-centrist myth: Islam is an Arab not an African religion.
Response: What is the point being made here? This is a strange criticism setting aside for now whether its valid. Did Africans view themselves as African first or as their tribe first? There is no single African religion there are African religions and they do not equivocate. So, while they share similarities they have very pronounced differences. The religious practices of the Dogan would have been perceived just as foreign to the Xhosa as Islam. You cannot change tribes and therefore you cannot change tribal religions which are tied exclusively to the tribe. Since Islam was not being forced on them by outsiders and because African rulers accepted the religion on African terms and not Arab terms the indigenization of the religion was faster and more natural. However, the fact remains that Islam as a religion debuted in the Arabian Peninsula with its Prophet being an Arab, and the official language being Arabic. I suppose you could make a surface argument that based only on these facts that it’s an Arab religion. However, if you are going to look at the 30 years of Seerah (life of the Prophet (saws)) during his mission as a Prophet then one would honestly have to emerge with a different picture. Why can’t we reduce Islam to being an Arab religion?
The Arabs were the first and most vehement enemies of Muhammad (saws)’s when Africa was welcoming. The first hijra into Ethiopia led to the first free practicing Muslim community. Islam was settled peacefully in Africa before Arabia. If Islam was an Arab religion then why were the Arabs so hostile?
Many of the early companions of the Prophet (saws) were not Arab but African, Persian, and European. From Bilal to Salman al Farsi (may Allah grant them Jinnah). Most of them had been slaves within Arabia. If you were to ask them they would have said that they do not see Islam as an Arab or slave religion.
The Prophet (saws) is reported to have said in a hadith that the person who stammers trying to read the Quran because Arabic is not their native tongue receives more blessings for their struggle than the native who speaks with fluency. This is the most explicit denial of Arab supremacy.
The Prophet (saws) said in his final sermon that there is no superiority of an Arab over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab over an Arab. This is an even more explicit rejection of Arab supremacy.
In another hadith the Prophet (saw) is reported to have said that you must obey your ruler even if he be an Abyssinian slave with the head of a raison. Everyone is so focused on the phrase “head of a raison” that they completely missed the meaning of the statement. He said obey your Black African ruler. He is foretelling the rule of Africans.
The difference between Arab and West African is as vast as the difference between West African and East African and the similarly between East African and Arab is as much as the similarity between those on the coast of West Africa and those in the interior of West Africa. In other words the foreignness of Arabs depended on where in Africa you were and what part of Arabia you were from. Yemeni has more in common with Ethiopians and Somalis than Kuwaitis. The Arabness of Islam is less of a barrier to the Africans in the 11th century than it is to black people in the Diaspora who have been Westernized. Ironically the same Afrocentrists who cite the foreignness of the Arab are even less familiar with African cultures than they’d like to admit which is one of the reasons why they focus such much on ancient Egypt. It’s not a present reality (culturally) that they have to deal with.
5.) Afrocentrist Myth The Arab Slave Trade. The Arabs introduced the enslavement of Africans that paved the way for European enslavement of Africans.
Response: The trans-Saharan Trade and more significantly the Indian Ocean Trade predate the rise of Islam by thousands of years with the Indian Ocean Trade dating back to 2500 B.C.E. The spread of Islam simply made Arabs the new participants in something that was old. Africans were equal partners in their commercial relations and more often operated from a position of strength. In both the trans-Saharan Trade and Indian Ocean Trade slaves were never the central item traded. Slaves was part of a wider trade in gold, ivory, and soapstone. The Indian Ocean Trade in particular was already thousands of years old and had been controlled by different ethnicities in that region when the Arabs first came into possession of it. Why not call it the East African Slave Trade, the Greek Slave Trade, the Roman Slave Trade, the Gujurat Slave Trade, the Garamante Slave Trade, or the Persian Slave Trade? Why not call it the gold trade, the soapstone trade, or the ivory trade? Why is there only an interest the Arab period? To call the trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean Trade the Arab Slave Trade when it was practiced for thousands of years before the Arabs took possession and slaves were not even their central focus is a political decision not scholarly one.
6.) Afrocentrist myth The Indian Ocean Trade depopulated East Africa and ravaged the continent. It proves that the Arabs were the first enslavers of Africans and laid the foundation for the European enslavement of Africans.
Response: The Indian Ocean Trade predated the Arab involvement. It goes back as far as 2500 B.C.E. Before it was the Arab slave trade it would have been the Indian slave trade, the Persian slave trade, the Greek slave trade, and the Roman slave trade. It was only the Arab slave trade during the Abbasid period. During this time slave raiding occurred in fits and starts, spikes and periods but there were also places where it didn’t happen at all. The Zanji Uprising was larger and more impactful than the slave trade itself. Historian M.A. Shaban argues that the majority of participants were not slaves but free blacks and Arabs with some runaway slaves. There would not have been enough slaves to do the kind of devastation that happened. The irony is that it did more damage to Iraq than it did to the East African states that traded with them voluntarily. The aggressive slave raiding that is so often referred to belongs to the 1800s and has much to do with European activities in India and the Middle East at this time as the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade was practically over. The scramble for Africa accelerated the slave raiding in Southeast Africa. After the Abbasid period ended the Arabs were simply the face of Islamic power which had passed to the Turks. This brings up to very significant facts about Arabs, Islam, and slavery: the majority of the slaves in the Arab world were white and Persian who overthrew their Arab masters and subjugated them and eventually took African slaves from Indian and African middle men. There was no organized enterprise that principally targeted Africa for slaves to build up Arab countries. African slaves were used on an as needed basis but for the most instrumental slave labor the Arabs relied on whites.
Note: The majority of African slaves were used as servants (guards). This function would not have required millions of slaves such as was the case with the military whom the Arabs relied upon for their military campaigns that were directly responsible for their building up of wealth. Hence, there is some doubt about the number of African slaves being in the millions that are found in secondary sources on the zanji trade.
7.) Afrocentrist Argument: Arabs are just as racist towards Africans if not more than Europeans.
Response: The inferior status of Africans only appears when we examine Arab-African relations within Arab societies but between Arab nations and African nations going all the way back to Abyssinia we see that Africans were in a position of political superiority and when the Arabs interacted with sovereign African nations they did so with diplomacy and deference. African sovereignty did not make Africans or Africa vulnerable to outside opinions.
8.) Afrocentrist Myth: The Hamitic-hypothesis is the rationale that the Arabs relied on for their inferior view of Africans and it has given African’s who’ve embraced Islam a negative view of other Africans.
Response: Some Arabs involved in the enslavement of Africans employed this theory but it was not widespread either among the Arabs or the Africans. Africans who did use this used it to disparage other tribes with whom they did not get along with. This was not a consequence of the Hamitic-hypothesis but rather their decision to use this was a consequence of tribal conflicts. Ham does not appear in the Quran or Hadith. He is not a part of Islamic hagiography. The story of Ham only appears in Judeo-Christian sources and the story itself flies in the face of what Islam demands we believe about the Prophet’s like Noah. The usedof Hamitic curse to justify the subjugation of Africans began with a Syrian Christian and it was adopted by Arabs and Africans with no religious scruples. Its proliferation and impact of religious thinking in the continent was negligible. Those who in West Africa who were using it as part of the rationale for their tribal wars that predated the rationale itself were brought under control by Uthman don Fodio when he established the Sokoto Caliphate.
9.) Afrocentrist myth: Islam did more harm to Africa than good. It devastating the continent.
Response: This is a personal opinion. However, during the time of this supposed devastation Africa reached its last great renaissance. Even Chancellor Williams ruminates in The Destruction of Black Civilization when he writes: “It may not be without significance that the Renaissance in Africa occurred at the same time it did in Europe, between the 15th and 16th centuries, and that in both Europe and Africa Islamic sources were the catalyst.” So, even Chancellor Williams had to concede this point. Islam impacted sub-Saharan West Africa in two significant ways:
1.The spread of Islam brought the major overland trade routes that connected Asia with Africa and Europe. This enlarged the scope of the trans-Saharan Trade which then transformed Ghana from a local kingdom to an empire. The conversion to Islam by West African kings and notables brought these West African empires into an international association of an established trade network that made these West African empires the wealthiest of the entire continent. Mansa Musa is the heir to this reality.
2.The West African Kingdoms of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai were successively more Islamic, more literate, more erudite, politically more sophisticated, and economically more powerful concomitantly.
Islam was the catalyst for both of these as can clearly be established when comparing them to their non-Muslim counterparts. Those who wish to say that the religion of Islam was a force of bad can only do so by denying these facts.
Professor Shareef Muhammad has taught history at Georgia State University and Islamic studies at Spelman University. <img class="i-amphtml-intrinsic-sizer" alt="" role="presentation" aria-hidden="true" src="data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,” style=”max-width: 100%; display: block !important;”>He has a masters in history at Kent State University with his thesis on The Cultural Jihad in the antelbellum South: How Muslim slaves preserved their religious/cultural identity during slavery.
He has a masters in history at Kent State University with his thesis on The Cultural Jihad in the antelbellum South: How Muslim slaves preserved their religious/cultural identity during slavery.
Ma'rifatullah (Knowledge in Allah) 