I don't mean to put down your beliefs, please don't take this offensive, but I have to ask if any of you have ever felt funny about following the religion of your oppressors? I was raised as a Catholic, but as I grew up I found it harder and harder to follow Catholicism knowing the terrible things that so called Catholics and other Christians did to my people in the name of the same God that I'm worshipping.

Although, I found what I was doing to be very contradictory and an insult to thememory of my ancestors, I understand that many of you might not view things in the sameway. So I would like it if you could please satisfy my curiousity and let me to know your reasons for why you continue to followthese religions.

the thing is many people CLAIM to do stuff in God's name..the european americans thought it was there manifest destiny their God given will. suicide bombers feel they are doing God a favour etc. but just because someone says its in God's name does not mean it is

christianity in africa is different to that of europe. africans have always been more spiritual than europeans. the romans knew this

@Ladyday

I second that...................

just like how some muslims CLAIM to act in a sinful way against another human being in the name of Allah.

but again I ask

is the reason for shunning religion due to history or CLAIMS...........

or is it.................because it involves commitment and a change of liftstyle in which you are not prepared to give up on ie drinking, pre-martial sex etc

If I could Aryek, I'd follow the original Ethiopian Christian Bible. But because I've no ideahow to get hold of it, thus meaning in turn that I have not read it, I'm not in a position to understand it so I cannot follow it.

The 'King James Version' had been the only bible thatwas thrust upon me, so because of that and because of my increasing awareness of the aforementioned bible, (and other stuff), I onlyfollow what my heart tells me to follow from that book.

The 'King James Version' to me contain lies and half-truths, (that blatantly benefits the oppressors and other people with other hidden agendas), but the majority of the book is still faithful to the original, so I suppose its a matter of discerning what is or isn't the truth.

in addition to what athaba has said. once has to know that just reading something is not good enough. you also need to conversate with God

The Anti - Christ changed up Christianity,Islam even The Roman Catholic church started in righteousness back with Severus Septimiusbut that got changed.

i dont find it odd or hard to be in Christ, simply because those whites in their time were blind, doesnt mean GOD cant raise up a people who will know and follow what HE is saying, not using it for the benefit of making their race stronger,but to worship and serve HIM,.....before black, i am first spirit & soul,

so they got the revelation wrong, men will be as they are until GOD corrects and reproves them, there could be reasons for our GOD to have let the enemy encamp us, it could have been becuz of disobedience to HIM, not seeking HIM, going about our own ways, establishing our own righteousness, worshipping our own gods,

maybe HE had to get our attention, to lead us back to him, to show us how these beast have desecrated the true WORD and used it for their gain, THE DEVIL DOES THAT ALL THE TIME,

look at this, whats a good way not to get people to see the truth?

the enemy used the slave master to try and desecrate the TRUE WORD OF GOD, to keep us from looking the right way, BRILLIANT becuz it seems to be working, this is when these so called in tune with the atmosphere and science and mother earth and planet stars quazars and afars religions move in, so that people change the truth of GOD into a lie and worship and serve the creature more than the CREATOR who is blessed forever.......

this black power and pro black stuff.....a cool, we need to be built up as a culture TRUE, but does our culture overide GOD? or is this why we say we are gods, so that would make him black, so then the science, math, motherland garments,dreds,afro's with nuts beads, salad and all that resemble GOD HOOD? NOT SO PEOPLE NOT SO,

This is more than a flesh issue, more than a color issue, THIS IS ABOUT SOUL AND SPIRIT, and making it to the life away from this one, about serving the REAL and TRUE GOD and building UP on our most holiest fAITH, SERVING THE WORD IN the VOLUME OF THE BOOK,

Aryek wrote: Speaking for myself, ISLAM FREED ME from my oppressors...both Arab and Non-Arab. By Allah's Grace, I know the difference between "ISLAM" and "Arab Imperialism DISGUISED as Islam." I have every desire to be MUSLIM, but have absolutely NO desire to be ARAB. What I am, I AM.

I am curious...What then would be your opinion of Bro. El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X), who was a Muslim til the day he died? Was he following the religion of his oppressors?

And, what would you say of the following?

Cheikh Anta Diop
Cheikh Anta Diop was one of the premier and most respected and knowledgeable Afrocentric scholars, he was also a physicist and director of the Radiocarbon Laboratory in Dakar, Senegal, and a noted Egyptologist. His most famous work is, The African Origin of Civilization and his view differs totally from those promulgated by minority Afrocentric scholars:

"The primary reason for the success of Islam in Black Africa, with one exception, consequently stems from the fact that it was promulgated 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... What is to be emphasized here is the peaceful nature of this conversion, regardless of the legend surrounding it." (Precolonial Black Africa, page 163.)

Additionally, in view of what some Afrocentric scholars claim that African peoples should 'return' to 'their own indigenous African religions', such as Yoruba, it is interesting to note what Cheikh Anta Diop had to say about this:

"African religions, more or less forgotten, were in the process of atrophying [dying] and being emptied of their spiritual content, their former deep metaphysics. The jumble of empty forms they had left behind could not compete with Islam on the moral or rational level. And it was on that latter level of rationality that the victory of Islam was most striking. That was the fourth cause of its success." (Ibid, page 166)

Cheik Anta Diop, an African himself, cannot be accused of making a racist or anti-African statement. He was giving his opinion as an African man and as a scholar of high repute. In further dispelling the charge that Islam was forced on African peoples, Cheikh Anta Diop said the following:

"During the period of our study, from the third to the seventeenth centuries, not one conquest was ever launched by way of the Nile...Nor was there ever an Arab conquest of Mozambique or any other East African country." (Ibid, page 101)

He went on to explain precisely why Africans fell in love with the religion of Islam:

"The Arabs in these areas, who became great religious leaders, arrived as everywhere else individually and settled in peacefully, they owe their influence and latter acceptance to spiritual and religious virtues." (Ibid, page 102)

Africans, as the above shows, were attracted to the spiritual and religious virtues of their Arab brothers. But wasn't Islam forced onto them by the conquering and sword-wielding Arabs? Cheikh Anta Diop said:

"The Arab conquests dear to sociologists are necessary to their theories but did not exist in reality. To this day no reliable historical documents substantiate such theories." (Ibid, page 102)

iszo, why do you include islam in the list of things changed by the "antichrist"? could you say more on what you mean?



and to aryek i must respectfully disagree with your approach to a religion. i think the religion needs to be judged in itself by itself, not by how certain adherents behaved. for example, imagine you make your own philosophy of life and people like it and start to implement it, but then a hundred years later people starting committing atrocities in the name of your philosophy. should you or even your philosophy be blamed for it? i guess the answer is that it depends. we should see if the philosophy condones or even promotes that kind atrocity. i can tell you that christians and muslims have committed atrocities but i think the problem is more with christianity than with islam. i say this because the bible seems to promote racism while the islam preaches Allah (swt) judges based on righteousness not ethnicity.