"The supremacy of Sudanese Islam over Negro society is less a reality than a semblance"

• published: 01 Aug 2009
• views: 2044

"ventured to doubt whether the whole of Persia contains a single true Musulman"! "Interview with Abolhassan Bani Sadr (First president of Iran) Part one: http://www.iran-bulletin.org/interview/BANI_S1.html AM: On the issue of individual and private freedoms, what limitations do you consider necessary? Specifically what are you views on the freedom to dress, freedom of sex, and the freedom to chose non-traditional, non-sharia forms of families which these days in many modern societies have become social and political issues of the day? Bani Sadr: I have provided detailed answers to your question in my book women and marriage. As I explained freedom has no limits. Any limit is a negation of freedom. Therefore sexual freedom is that freedom that does not place sex as a means of producing a relation of power, and its measure is love." Perry Noble The following description is the nature of religion in most African societies. http://books.google.com/books?id=vdxBAAAAIAAJ&pg;=PA62#v=onepage&q;=&f;=false Blyden, the Negro eulogist of Islam in Africa, acknowledges that its "oriental aspect has become largely modified by shaping many of its traditional customs to the milder and more conciliatory disposition of the Negro ... In succeeding a debasing heathenism it has in many respects made compromises, so as occasionally to present a barren, hybrid character". These confessions shatter his contention that Islam has not made "degrading compromise with pagan superstitions" http://books.google.com/books?id=vdxBAAAAIAAJ&pg;=PA68#v=onepage&q;=&f;=false As we see the northern lobe of Africa from the Bight of Benin to Abyssinia, with Muslim fringes in Equatoria, Somalia and Zanguebar, looped to Mecca by the girdle of Islam, it seems at first as if Reclus must be right.* But second sight shows its unity and vastness to appeal not to reason but to imagination. To assert, as did the author of Shall Islam Rule Africa? that this "half of Africa is as Islamic as Persia", is unwittingly to betray a client; it can almost be maintained that Persia's eight million Islamites do not include one real Muslim.f They are Shiites or sectarians, the heterodox and schismatic rivals of Sunnite or orthodox Musulmans. In Africa this other shape of Islam, "if shape it may be called that shape has none, or substance may be called that shadow seems", recalls Milton's picture of death: "What seemed his head the likeness of a kingly crown had on". The supremacy of Sudanese Islam over Negro society is less a reality than a semblance. If material limitations permitted, nearly a hundred tribes could be cited that have accepted Islam only in name when they have not rejected it utterly*. This fact means that the southern line is broken at scores of points. It also means that the strategic centers behind the inner in- trenchments are rotten and sapped. Earth found the Hausa, a Saharo=Sudanese folk on the divide between the Chad and Sokotu basins, animated by little zeal. Lenz informs us that the Futa highlander and the Man- dingo have adopted Islam in form or not at all. Brun= Renaud states that the Bambara and the Yolof themselves are mostly pagans. Bagirmi has merely been inoculated, multitudes of its tribes remaining pagans. Muhammad the Tunisian compared his fellow=religion- aries among Sudanese pagans to a ring in Saharan sands. In the Nile basin, from Khartum to Wadelai, Felkin and Wilson discovered the populations of Muslim Kordo to have scarcely any religious ideas; the Shilluk and their neighbors are only partly Muhammadan; and other Negroes — the Bari, Bongo, Dinka, Madi and Shuli — remain sheer heathen. If these source=regions of the Nile be under Muslim dominance, it is through Africanized Arabs extending their political power. http://books.google.com/books?id=vdxBAAAAIAAJ&pg;=PA73#PPA73 "The crowning benefit bestowed upon the benighted Negro by Islam, its advocate triumphantly exclaims, is belief in the one true God. Is not this an advance, an immense advance, upon fetichism and idolatry? This depends on the content and effect of the idea of God in Islam and in African paganism. If the two members of this religious equation prove of equal value, the answer must be: x=y and the gain is zero" http://books.google.com/books?id=vdxBAAAAIAAJ&pg;=PA75#PPA75 "Such a thought of God and man, of personality, ethical practice and spiritual principles, may rise above animistic fetichism with its magic, unmorality and witchcraft; but it rises little and stops short. The trajectory of Islam is low. Muhammad's mythology of angels and demons, of ghouls and jinns assimilates itself with Negro beliefs in good and evil spirits. The Muslim minister takes the place of the pagan medicine=man. Quranic verses replace fetiches as amulets. Musulman contempt of life is substituted for the human sacrifices demanded by fetichism. Heathen character and pagan customs remain largely unchanged after conversion"