The charge that “orthodox” Islam is Arabism or Arab Islam is based on ignorance and prejudice. It’s based on an ignorance of Islamic history and prejudice against people who identify as Arabs. On top of that, it is based on ad populum rhetoric, which is a type of logical fallacy that seeks to sway people to their opinion, not by engaging the merits of the ideas, but by stirring up prejudice against a people that they know their audience might dislike.
The facts, however, are against Kemetian. Some of the greatest scholars of Islam throughout history have not been Arab. Someone like Sībawayh, who wrote one of the most definitive works on Arabic grammar, was a Persian. Likewise, Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī who wrote on numerous subjects such as philosophy, Islamic law, and Sufism was also Persian. Al-Buṣīrī the poet who wrote the Sufi Burdah poem in honor of the Prophet Muhammad was a real Moor from the Ṣanhājah Berber tribe.
Kemetian conflates a traditional understanding of Islam from its historical sources with Arabism. He does this to make you doubt its veracity while promoting his non-historical personal understanding of religion. Traditional Islamic scholarship has a system of checks and balances to ensure no one makes up deviant doctrines according to their own preferences based on scriptural and textual evidence. The MST is in shambles precisely because they have no such mechanism. Yet, this is the nature of Sabianism. As the Christian heresiographer, Irenaeus, said of the early Christian Sabian groups:
…many offshoots of many heresies have come into existence because many-or indeed all -of them wish to be teachers and to leave the sect in which they were ; composing another doctrine from another opinion, and then another from another, they drive onwards to teach in a new way, describing themselves as the discoverers of whatever opinion they have concocted.
As for Kemetian’s prejudice against Arabs, it is indicative of many in the so-called conscious community. They match a contemporary post-9/11 image of Arabs with their misreadings of history. The truth is that the Arab identity is much like the Latin identity, in which people of different races, ethnicities and geographies are connected through a common cultural-linguistic identity. Ignorant Blacks who only know the racial constructs of the United States often do not understand this fact and constantly try to force others into their own racial paradigm. Furthermore, these so called conscious folk have no sense of the religious, ethnic, and linguistic diversity in the Arab world, which consists of Nubians, Copts, Berbers, Kurds, Armenians, and Chaldeans to name a few. All Black Americans can see is black and white.
Additionally, there is nothing inherently wrong with being Arab no more than there is anything wrong with being African. Anyone who has ever lived in or visited regular people in the Arab world would know that the vast majority of them exhibit manners that the average American can only dream about. They are very hospitable, generous, and genuinely friendly. Perhaps the marketplace, in traffic, or politics are not the best places to witness these good manners, but they are there. They are not without their prejudices, but their prejudices are commonly directed at other Arabs, Jews, and SubSaharan Africans. Yet when Arabs are confronted about their prejudices, they usually back down.
Much of the Muslim world might hold Arabness in some esteem because of their love for the Prophet Muhammad and his family, who were Arabs. That aside, the Muslim world has not been dominated by Arabs since the Umayyad dynasty. it must be noted that only 20% of the Muslim world is Arab. The majority of the world’s Muslims are in Asia and their scholars have had a great influence on the Muslim world for centuries. Why aren’t the pseudo-Muslims decrying an Asian Islam?
The erroneous idea that Arabs run everything in Islam just like Europeans run Christianity is a false analogy and just plain wrong. For instance, black and white orientalists talk about an Arab slave trade, but never a European slave trade. They think that because Arabs were involved, they must have run it. Ignoring the fact that slave trading has always existed in the region and involved Arabs, Africans, Persians, Indians, Turks, and more. Moreover, the enslaved were not only black, but from these various races as well. This does not excuse any atrocities committed by Arabs or other people. It only serves to disrupt the narrative that so-called white Moors (i.e., Arabs) enslaved black Moors. Dark skin people are not the perennial victims of history.
The charge from Moors, NOI, Nuwaupians, Afrocentrics, and other so-called conscious groups that orthodox Muslims follow an “Arabized Islam” is baseless, which exposes their lack of knowledge and bigotry. It is simply a flimsy argument they use to keep from discussing Islam on its own terms. If anything, orthodox Islam reflects intergenerational, interethnic, intercivilizational, and international networks of knowledge that is not rivaled by any religious system today. In the next part of this series, I will address some of the specific fallacies Neo-Sabians fall into when approaching Islamic concepts, which cause them to completely misunderstand the religion.
The works of Dr. Nadim al-Sayyar are crucial to the discussion about the connection between Islam and the Ancient Mystery Schools (i.e. the ancient religion of the world). Though his first book on the topic, Qudamāʾ al-Miṣrīyīn ʾAwwal al-Muwaḥidīn (The Ancient Egyptians the First Monotheists), was published in 1995 and its second part, Laysū ʾĀlihah wa Lākin Malāʾikah (Not Gods, But Angels) in 2003, and had an impact in the Arab world, English readers are largely in the dark about his research. His works address the nature of ancient Egyptian religion, which was the major religious center of the ancient world, and seeks to dispel myths and misinterpretations concerning their worship of the pharaohs and multiple gods. George G.M. James and other authors have made this assertion, but none of them have performed studies with the same rigor of Dr. al-Sayyar’s works. I recently purchased his two publications at the Cairo International Book Fair and thought it would be worth sharing some thoughts about them.
“Knowledge Is the Lost Property of a Believer…”
There is a saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ to the effect that “knowledge (or wisdom) is the lost property of the believer; wherever he finds it he is the most deserving of it.” I preamble this discussion with this because many who might be intrigued by this topic may be stifled by their prejudice against Arabs and/or Muslims who speak on this topic. The arguments of the so-called Afrocentrists are that:
the current Egyptians, especially those light-skinned Egyptians, are not the direct descendants of the ancient Egyptians
Arab Muslims, who are supposedly the majority in Egypt, are a colonizing force that supplanted the ancient Egyptian religion
the Qur’an, like the Bible, appears to condemn “Pharaoh” and the ancient religion of Egypt
Egyptian Ancestry
To the first point that current Egyptians are not descendants of the ancient Egyptians, this is not completely true. Egypt is a very diverse society. Its location in northeast Africa has always been a site for migration and traveling between the three continents of Africa, Asia, and Europe. Likewise, the Nile River and its yearly flooding made the land particularly fertile and ideal place to settle. The civilization that resulted from these environmental factors was also attractive to settlers from different places.
While the first inhabitants of this land were undoubtedly dark skinned people, they frequently intermarried with other groups that relocated to the region. In addition to this contact, Egypt also experienced many waves of migration and conquest: the Hyksos, Persians, Greeks, Arabs, Turks, etc. Egypt, during the middle ages was ruled by a myriad of Eastern European and Central Asian slaves… Today, most metropolitan Egyptians can count all these groups among their ancestors in addition to their black ancient Egyptian ancestors. Therefore, their offspring would not be cut off from the greatness of their black heritage merely due to the fact that some of their ancestors were from other places.
I understand that this runs counter to popular belief in Afrocentric thought. Unfortunately, Afrocentric thought relies too heavily on a contemporary American concept of race, which does not always allow for multilayers and ways of constructing identity. This is a major fallacy of Afrocentric thought alongside methodological issues in their research. I do, however, find it useful to approach subjects such as African history from a truly “African-centered” perspective. That is, to center the voices and perspectives of Africans on their own histories, which I think is important in the case of Dr. Nadim al-Sayyar.
Arab Muslims?
To the second point, a discussion of what it means to be Arab is beyond the scope of this post. However, it suffices me to say that Arab identity is not a racial identity, but rather a cultural-linguistic identity that includes a number of ethnic, racial, and genealogical groups, similar to the Latinx identity. Though the majority of Egyptians are Muslims, the majority are not “ethnically” Arab (if that is truly a thing), meaning that they track their lineage back to the Arabian peninsula. They are Arab in the sense that they adopted the Arabic language and ascribe to an Arab culture. Since the majority of Egyptians are not “Arab-proper,” we cannot say that they have colonized the land of Egypt. It is ludicrous to suggest, as many Afrocentrics think, that a small group of warriors from Arabia came and conquered all these lands, and changed the majority of people’s language and religion by force and continue to take on this identity to this day.
Furthermore, before Egypt and Nubia became Muslims they were Christian with a minority Jewish population. The same holds true for much of North Africa and the Levant. Why then are Muslims implicated as the ones who supplanted the ancient Egyptian religion when there were other religions that dominated Egypt prior to its spread?
Muslim Views of the Pharaoh
To the third point, which characterizes Islam as being antithetical to the ancient Egyptian religion, the aim of Dr. al-Sayyar’s work is to dispel this myth among other things. For instance, Dr. al-Sayyar holds that pharaoh was the title given to the ruler of Egypt, no matter what their ethnicity. He then finds that the pharaohs of Moses’ day was actually a ruler of foreign Hyksos extraction and that the religion they promoted and their practices was not representative of the ancient Egyptian religious practices. In addition, he brings to the reader’s attention the number of prophets and other noble figures recorded in the Muslim tradition who were from Egypt. One of the aims of his research is to clarify misunderstandings that Muslims have acquired about ancient Egyptian religion based on their reliance on Jewish and western sources.
Laysū ʾĀlihah wa Lākin Malāʾikah (Not Gods, But Angels) published in 2003. Chapter 1: Egypt and the Prophets, Chapter 2: The Myth of Multiple Gods, Chapter 3: The Myth of Worshiping the Neter, Chapter 4: The Myth of Worshiping the Pharaohs, Chapter 5: God in the Beliefs of the Ancient Egyptians
Dr. Nadim al-Sayyar
I challenge my Afrocentric brethren to consider Dr. al-Sayyar’s works on its merits and not simply his ethnic, national, and racial background. He was originally a poet and oud player and later obtained a degree in medicine. Fused by the Naksa suffered by Egypt at the hands of the Israeli army in 1967 he began to bury himself in the reading of Egyptian history, which eventually led him to the study of Comparative Religion. In 1985, he traveled to Iraq to live amongst the lasting communities of Sabians (the name of the ancient Egyptian religion) and to study their ways. He would later acquire degrees in Islamic Studies from al-Azhar University and Coptic Studies from Ain Shams University, where he studied a number of languages such as Coptic, which includes Greek, Hebrew, and Ancient Egyptian, as well as Akkadian, Syriac, Armenian, and the ancient Yemeni language. The result of his studies are the three works he published on the topic of Ancient Egyptian religion. He passed away in 2018, but his daughters have since republished his first two books and plan to republish his third book, Al-Maṣrīyyūn al-Qudamāʾ ʾAwwal al-Ḥunafāʾ (The Ancient Egyptians, the First Hanifs) soon.
Al-Sayyar’s Description of the Egyptian Mystery Schools
The works of Dr. Nadim al-Sayyar firmly establish the connections between Islam and the Ancient Mystery Schools. He does this in Qudamāʾ, by taking a retroactive examination of the prophets and other notable religious figures from Egypt. He starts off discussing tawhid (monotheism) in Egypt under Greek rule by examining the likes of Plato, Herodotus, Luqman, and Akhenaton. Then he discusses prophets mentioned in the Qur’an who were either from Egypt or had a relationship with it such as Ibrahim, Hajar, Isma’il, Ya’qub, Yusuf, and Musa. He examines the misunderstandings about the pharaoh in the time of Musa, which he attributes to distortions propagated by Jewish scholars over centuries. He follows that by giving examples of monotheistic beliefs across various pharaonic dynasties. He concludes the book by discussing the prophethood of Idris and his impact on Egyptian beliefs.
In Laysū, he establishes that the original religion of Egypt was that which was brought by the Prophet Idris, who Muslim exegetes have believed since the early days of Islam to be the first prophet sent by God after the creation of Adam. That religion, according to al-Sayyar, was called the Saba’iyya (Sabianism), which is alluded to in the Qur’an on a few occasions. If you were like me, then the first time you came across the verses (Quran 2:62, Quran 5:69, and Quran 22:17) when Allah mentions the different Peoples of the Book, you probably glossed over the mention of the Sabians. While it was known to be the Mandeans of Southern Iraq, it was first the religion of ancient Egypt, according to al-Sayyar.
He then shifts into a rigorous linguistic and historical analysis of the Neter. There are many jewels regarding his analysis, in which he illuminates his hypothesis that the Neter referred to in the Book of the Dead are actually what Jews, Muslims, and Christians would deem to be angels. He starts off by making it clear that although Wallis Budge and other early Egyptologists translated this word as “god” (and Neteru as “gods”), they did not have a consensus on how to translate it, nor did they believe that god was the best translation of the word (42-45).
Starting from the premise that we have received mistranslations and misinterpretations, he begins to unravel the meaning of “Neter” linguistically. Then he performs a careful comparison between Egyptian perceptions of the Neter and contemporary beliefs about angels and spiritual beings. In each comparison he examines historical sources in their original languages. He concludes the book by examining the ancient Egyptian belief in God by their attributes for Him, which he found to correspond with common Islamic beliefs concerning the attributes of God.
In many ways, Dr. Nadim al-Sayyar has done a great service to those of us interested in the connections between Islam and the Ancient Mystery Schools. Before we can benefit from this scholarship, we need to overcome hurdles of language and prejudice with regards to scholarship coming from the Arab world. Likewise, as Westerners, we have been conditioned to devalue scholarship produced in other languages and overestimate the accuracy of Western scholarship. By overcoming these hurdles, we can gain greater access to the knowledge being produced in the world beyond our own intellectual borders.
The Maurchives 