Afrocentricism is a valid methodology of looking at history. With the idea that all history is subjective (HIStory, as they like to say), it is worth looking at history from the perspectives of Africans. However, the popularization of Afrocentricism in African American communities throughout the 20th century, and now into the 21st century, has taken a highly anti-religious tone, which has resulted in the dismissal of anyone associated with the three main Abrahamic religious paths. In this post, I will address some aspects of the methodology of those who have usurped Afrocentricism and highlight some of their fallacies using a video lecture from the 2000’s by Dr. Phil Valentine.
Classic Fallacies of Afrocentricism
In an attempt to avoid the pitfalls of religious communities, Dr. Phil Valentine, like others of his ilk, falls into a classic fallacy by regurgitating anti-religious rhetoric. His first course of action is to attack the history of the Christian Church in Europe and how it was used to colonize and enslave Africans. Then he looks at the Black Christian today, often attacking his character and psychology. Finally, he turns to other religious expressions adopted by African Americans, like Islam and the Hebrew Israelites.
Most Afrocentric thinkers make this false-equivalence, refusing to recognize: 1) the complex history of Christianity, 2) the complex history of Islam and other religions, 3) their own blind-spot regarding racial identity, and 4) their biases and prejudices.
1) Failure to recognize the complex history of Christianity
- Afrocentric thinkers do not always recognize that Christianity had “Western” versions and “Eastern” versions that diverged pretty early in its history. These doctrinal differences drew a wedge between them philosophically and geographically, resulting in completely different historical experiences.
- Acknowledgment of these various forms of Christianity are almost always along racial lines rather than doctrinal lines. However, doctrinal differences under the Roman Empire at the advent of Christianity often trumped racial differences.
2) Failure to recognize the complex history of Islam and other religions
- Islam has its own complex history that is starkly different from that of European Christianity.
- Direct experience with God was never discouraged.
- Power of interpretation was regional and lied with whoever possessed the knowledge, not upon charisma, descent, race, class, etc. (although debates existed)
- There was no wide-scale dark age and rejection of science, systematic disenfranchisement of women and minorities, or even slavery based solely on race.
- Not all societies see religion as a means for political and social control as it is imagined in the West.
3) Afrocentric blind-spot concerning race
- Almost all Afrocentrics operate on a construct of race invented in the United States.
- This is the duality of Blackness and Whiteness.
- That Blackness is equivalent to African and Whiteness is equivalent to European.
- Any noticeable amount of African descent counts as Black, except for Arabs.
- Black Arabs must choose to identify either with their “Black African mothers” or with their “White Arab fathers.”
- There is no room in this construct for a “Black” person to see oneself as possessing multiple identities or to reject them altogether. Any lack of conformity to this construct evokes ridicule.
4) Biases and Prejudices
- Most Afrocentrics are Egyptophiles and have an unquestioning reverence for Kemet (ancient Egypt). This causes them to ignore information about it that might seem distasteful to them like homosexuality, violent conquest, honor killings, etc.
- They are theoretically in favor of Blacks and Africans in all they do until their thinking and actions do not fit the mold that they have constructed. Therefore, African Christians and Muslims are all brainwashed; Africans that marry outside of their race are all self-hating; etc.
- They are prejudiced against:
- Europeans for slavery and oppression in America.
- Arabs primarily for corner stores in Black neighborhoods, secondly due to post-9/11 propaganda, and tangentially for their history of slavery in East Africa.
- They are prejudice against all Muslims for the actions of Arabs and Black Christians for the actions of Europeans.
Kemetan Exceptionalism
At one point in Dr. Valentine’s lecture, the crowd turns its attention directly to Islam and Muslims. One can observe that he does not know much about Islam and he would rather avoid the topic, but since audience members ask, he is compelled to say something. At around the (1:04:15) mark in the video, he makes the comment:
“Islam is an off shoot of the same triumvirate. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all have the same prophets. If they share the same prophets, they share the same bullsh*t.”
After being prodded with specifics, Dr. Valentine states that the Muslims took the act of women covering from the ancient Africans. He said that it was done for protection from the sun and to guard against male pheromones that would cause them to ovulate. Then he said that it degenerated into something to keep a woman down. When addressing men praying in front and women in the back, he said that was also taken from Kemet. In his interpretation, women behind men meant that they were the support. He goes on to say that when the Arabs came and saw the hieroglyphs, they interpreted it to mean subservience based on their cultural values.
While Dr. Valentine appears to confirm the “correctness” of these Islamic practices in as much as they are conform to his brand of scientism and Kemetanism, he denies Muslims the intellectual capacity for having a similar reasoning. He assumes that the Muslim woman’s veil and her praying behind men are necessarily oppressive when coming from Muslims and cannot be interpreted in any other way. One person in the crowd states that he heard from a Muslim that women praying in front of or along side men could be a distraction, but he does not address this comment.
The conversation devolves into a rant against Christianity. In the process, he mentions a hallmark that distinguishes cultural nationalists from revolutionaries. He believes that at some point in the future when all Black people recognize their true selves, only then will we live happily ever after. This grand approach is not all dissimilar from some religious dogma that posit that everyone should believe the same in order for us to live happily ever after. It can also be argued that such a unity of thought and belief is pure fantasy and has never been achieved along racial or religious lines in history.
Revolutionaries, however, tend to take a different approach. They meet people where they are at and do not obligate them to buy into a particular paradigm before attempting to make a positive impact on people’s lives. Conflicts and controversy have always existed, and religious movements have historically helped people wade these waters. In waiting for an imaginative collective consciousness, Afrocentrics and other cultural nationalists fix a permanent chip on their shoulders and ensure that they will always have a reason to not take action.
The Maurchives 
Introduction Part 13 Of Book Two Of The Final Prophet:
The Nation Of Islam At Yathrib
“Inordinate Cultural Love”
True Love is a virtue given by The One Who Is Neither Mother, Nor Daughter, Father, Nor Son. He’s Eternal And Infinite. He’s Unique. There’s No Equal One.
And He Made All The Virtues Even Before The Making Was Done. Love Is Arguably The Greatest Virtues Under The Sun. So Love Is A Virtue That’s Not Easily Won. Selfless Desires Must Be Embodied To Be A Beloved Servant Of Ever Present Loved One.
The Creator Of Love Created All of Us. He Made Everything, Everywhere In Ways True and Just. And All Praise Is Due Him, So Praise Him We Must. But there is a creature called Satan who hates all of us with disgust. He works to distracts us so we’ll forget Allah, and believe that what’s unjust is just; like arrogance, greed, and damned doggish lust.
God’s Guidance Is Best For Mankind To Pursue. Chasing other than that is not a wise thing to do. However, Satan sends wrong longings to tempt, and pursue you… With blasphemies sold as religiously True, and immorality sold as a progressively right view. And the egocentric unlearned who have less than a clue buy into their culture’s askew point of view, though it’s toxic, and ugly, and wrong through and through.
Understand. Satan’s goal is to control and command you to do or not do. So Satan hates all rules that restrict you from joining his culturally fooled crew. Yet this enemy works hard to enslave then restrict you from religious convictions that won’t let him afflict you with falsehood and poisons, that Will Curse And Convict You.
The God Calls His Lovers To Submit to His Guidance to know right from wrong, and embody God’s Message with total Reliance That He Will Make one’s will self critically strong… Backed by an innate morality we call Mother’s Wit, to uncover the deep seeded wrong that foolish cultures permit. For though one can learn that one’s culture is religiously unfit, Satan works to devalue what’s right arguing that religious opinion is superstitious and counterfeit, while working to make depravity culturally normal, and legislatively legit.
But Loving God And His Prophet Insures that one’s character is safe in God’s Refuge From Satan’s most tempting lures. And God’s Love Is Also A Pharmacy Of Miraculous Social, Economic, And Political Cures. So, though The Power Of True Love Is What Culture-Worship Pridefully Obscures, this great moral virtue perpetually endures despite Satan’s vicious assaults, and tempting allures. For We Love That God’s Rules Imprison Our Faults, And True Love It Secures.
So We Love What God Imposed On Us As Muslim Duties Done Right… Following Muhammad’s House Of Great Beauty; Guiding-Light-Upon-Light… God’s Messenger, His Kin, The Foremost In The Fight… Most Beloved, Freed From Sin… Moral Compasses Calibrated Right By Their Masoomeen Insight.
But love for Satan is a curse that’s cultivated early on… Perpetuated by Shaytan turning foolish families from what’s obviously revealed by Al-Islam’s rising dawn. Beloved corrupt cultures are very hard to purge when right and wrong lines are egocentrically drawn… when weak minds are shut by a deep set family urge to protect a tradition that is obviously a scourge.
False familial feelings that make people hate God’s Guides and His Guidance, is not love at all. It’s False Pride’s Foolish Loyalty, and it royally blocks thought, and binds minds to a Satanic induced thrall. So Fools follow the party line’s self destructive devilish call like lemmings, grand and small, who plainly see one after one of those leading them march off the edge and unceremoniously fall.
They keep going not because they didn’t see the edge of the cliff until it was too late. It’s because they refused to stop to see that might is not right, and crooked is not straight. So they never break free from the Satanic slavery of blind loyalty’s wickedly magical mandate. Even when they’re fresh out the gate, they’re enculturated by parental dictate to follow trans-generational cultural foolishness like a runaway freight that eventually leads nearly everyone over the edge straight to fall into all late Satanically enthralled persons’ Ultimate Fate.
Love feelings for tribe, race and (or) a place, should never trump God’s Divine Guiding Grace that can motivate The Faithful to vigorusly negotiate the steps of virtue’s steep, soul-bettering staircase. Yet sometimes culture can cause us to neglect then mentally displace certain God Sent disciplines, the lack of which may not cause an Ultimate disgrace. But religious neglect can still leaves ugly blemishes on an otherwise religiously beautified spiritual face.
Culturally enthralled religionists are still somewhat egocentric, and those egos are easily bruised, because they have often confused singing the ethnocentric blues with paying the dues of striving to make sure that Islam’s ideals will not lose to The Devil’s distracting, psychologically impacting anti-religion-crews.
For though decent folks religiously stand in salat or sit in the pews, they never critically examine their very shallow, self righteous, ego-centric views. God Gave His Messenger His Unerring Guidance, And An Archangel For A Muse. But mommy, and daddy’s egos were culturally schmoodzed with ethnically prideful alternatives, from which they wrongly decided, which groove to religiously choose.
Our nostalgically warm familial feelings aren’t really a wrong take. But wrong covered in love feelings are the hardest wrong doings to religiously break. We’re not to hold tight to what’s wrong so we still can belong, or our faith won’t get strong, if for our warm feelings’ sake, we revel nostalgically in wrong so that our faith becomes fake.
Dig it. Loving what’s wrong is a hellified scourge. It’s self destructive, and a thing God Is loathing. But these wrongs are the hardest for the ethnically religious to sacrificially purge; wrong eating, wrong mating, wrong clothing.
So who’s to judge how people should act? Who for certain can judge right culture from wrong? What code perfectly contains God’s Orders Intact? What safe guards our freedom yet right-guides the throng?
The will of The People will rule. But freewill can be hijacked by wrong. What man loves can be Hell Fire’s fuel, Lit by sin-loving, that makes wrong becomes strong.
But some Muslim’s erred cultures’ boats manage to stay afloat, but are still kind of sinking. Their faith is a bit hypocritical, weak, and pitifully unthinking. They believe some bad is good. So their good competes with what’s best. They’re proud to be Muslim. Their wealth they’ll invest. But when called they contest, refusing to follow the best of the best. Thus, they’re provably on Wrong’s side of life’s self development tests.
For Allah does not allow us to invest in cultural compromise. Our minds
must idealize, and never compromise with edicts that are provably Quranically dogmatized, except those latent with leniency… God’s Mercy Dogmatically dramatized.
But leniency must not give Evil free rein. Because when you do, Devils will then take control. They will mildew your heart and muddle your brain, and in the end they will enslave your soul to unworthy worldly gain. So why do we study? What should we be trying to gain and maintain?
Mankind’s knowledge is constantly scheming to bend nature to genuflect
to his will. But in Truth Man is best off transcending his nature to bend to God’s Will. And until those values are prioritized and instilled, we humans continue to be wrong, strong willed, and psychologically miserable, for we’re spiritually unfulfilled.
This is why Islam’s commands and restrictions are religiously drilled. For until our Satanic leanings, and each raw character flaw is through our own consciences identified, culturally shunned with free will, and then psychologically killed, our souls can be subject to the Satanic wrong that our cultures from The Beginning Insidiously Instilled.
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