The BN Village - View Single Post - African Religion... Cultural Symbolism and Spirituality

flow-unclever · (#32 (**permalink**))

Islam has always been accomodating to African traditions and African as a race. Among the first converts to Islam was Bilal who originated from Habash(Ethiopia) and was originally enslaved by Arabs. He converted to islam and was mistreated by his nonmuslims keepers. It was Arab Muslims who bought his freedom for their Muslim brother. Not only that Bilal came on to occupy a very prominent position in the later days of islam including being an army general.

Secondly Islam acknowledges that the previous faith do have some merit as 200,000 messengers of God were sent to previous nations to preach the worship of one true God the creator of everything which is the essence of Islam. And African nations do fall under those 200000. And what Muhammad came to do was to complete the message of this worship of one God.

It is possible that the so called 'African religions' were originally Islam but over the passage of time the original message was corrupted and some peo-le diverted from the path of true faith. This does not just imply to African religions but almost definately some of the Asians as well as those from otherparts of the world.

A further point is the fact that Arabs are infact an African race. Arabs dare descendents of Abraham through his second son Ismail whose mother was Hajar an Egyptian woman. Not only that I do not believe that someone has to be black to be African. Just like asians can come from many colours from tamils of South East Asia, who are darker than some Africans, to Uzbeks and persians of Northern Asia who are very light I do not see why light skinned Algerians or for that matter light skinned palestians cannot be accepted to be as African as a dark skinned Congolese. The point is not all Africans are black skinned just like not all Asians are light skinned.

Finally Geological evidence suggests that the arabian peninsula was joined to the African continet. Infact redsea is a very recent formation. years ago Africa andAsia were joiuned together, an Earth quake happened and split the 2 land masses and formed the crack which was then filled by water to form the Red Sea it was the same earth quake which formed the Rift Valley of Eastern Africa.Infact even after the formation of red sea Africa was still joined to Arabian peninsula through the Sinai and it was the construction of the Suez canal (man bad phenomena) which utlimately comleted the job of separating Africa from Arabia and it happened as recent as the 19th century.

The conlusion is Islam is as much an African relgion as Christianity and as Judaism is as the 2 religions originate from a part of the world which originally belonged to Africa. So islam is not an alien notion to Africans.

Having said all that religions are a means of someone to attach himself to his creator and this attachment is spiritual and emotional colour of the skin should not be an issue. God does not love someone based on his skin colour but based on his charachter, and his sincerety towards God. Muslims are not Muslims for Arabs they are Muslims for God. and there have been many Africans over the centuries who have been better Muslims thanArabs. I am sure a similar argument can be made about Christianity.

thank you very much for yout time