Currently, Africa is awash with conmen and conwomen in the name of God as they make a killing from our desperate and ignorant people. Today's piece I want to shed some light on religion and the way it has duped Africa to self denial and exploitation by foreigners. When it comes to the concept of religion, ironically, those profiteering and depending on abusing Africa said that we worship unseen and dead things as if their deities are alive and seen. When you oppose them they call you an iconoclast, infidel, kaffir, atheist and other bad names so as to intimidate you. If their deities were alive why haven’t they ever shown up at least once to prove their existence? Anything that is not subject to biological rules is dead arguably. All Gods may be regarded as that due to the fact that they do not share common patterns and rules of living with the living things. This is why all Gods and gods have always spoken through living human beings but not through animals or anything if we put myths and folkloric tales and the likes aside. They are unable to speak by themselves. I know this argument can be seen misconstrued–as it has always been the tendency of pro-God believers and thinkers–who reply with vitriol and other intimidation. Again, if we face it, is there any power under the Sun that can prove the living existence of its God or god without depending on belief but not understanding based on naked truth? Sometimes, those who defend faiths tend to bombard us with blurry arguments and myths so as to be cowered and buy into unrealistic things such as their versions of God as opposed to our versions of the same. Why can’t it be agreed that nobody knows what is ahead of her or him as far our perception is concerned? How can we know such secret with all these many limits especially when it comes to future things? Why should we depend on belief instead of naked and pure understanding of God’s existence and messages purported to have come from God?
Again, those who sell these dogmatic merchandises want us to just believe in their truth which, sometimes, ends up being otherwise. How can you be sure of anything that you do not know as if believing is being sure of what you are not sure of as if you are sure of? Ask yourself. Am I sure of what I believe in? The good answer is a big negative. Why don’t we agree to differ that we know our faiths and we do not know the faiths of others the same they do not know our faiths but they know theirs especially in making money and colonizing others? Is it possible for the creature that does not know all parts or organs (and their state and functions) of his or her body, environment and universe to be able to know God who is so much gargantuan that cannot be accommodated by our weak brains? Then why do we pretend to know God while we know nothing (that we make something wantonly) for the aim of fooling and controlling others? Your God is your God and my God is my God just as it is your wife or husband and your uniqueness of being who you are. Your faith is your faith and my faith is mine. Sometimes, I wonder to see people differing over simple things such as the nobleness of their books. A Muslim will tell you that the Quran is the only book that has no distortion. Some of them accuse the Bible (which I am not aiming at defending) to have a lot of fallacy while there was no way the Quran would have come into being or can make any sense without the Bible. One question that has always tormented me without getting anybody to answer it rightly is: If Prophet Muhammad, for instance, claimed to have received the message from Allah directly, what was the logic, if at all, the books so referred to such as Zabur (Psalm) Tawrat (Torah) and Injeel (Gospel) were revealed a long time before he was born?
I think knowing the controversies of religions and faiths is the reason why Africans did not bother to proselytize their faiths to others knowingly that faith and religions are personal issues that do not need conversion or propagation. Another thing that differentiates African religions and neo-religions namely Islam and Judeo-Christianity is the fact that Africans did not complexify their religions in order to threaten, dupe or attract others. Again, time for defending our lost ways is now. I believe that if those who abused and felled our ways of life have the right to propagate their faiths, we, likewise, have the right to defend our ways of life regardless if doing so will annoy those who annoyed us without making us revenge the way others do when we oppose their ways superimposed on us. In fact, religions are not supposed to be something to be exported to Africa given that the concept of God even the awareness of religion is not new. All African languages have the names for God just like any other societies to signify that God is not a new thing or concept like a computer or a robot that is supposed to be imported or exported. What Africans did not have are conditions and controversial things such as faith, angels, trinity, gory and Holy Ghost, and such sorts of things neo-religions invented.
In sum, most of African religions did not have such controversial baggage due to their simple nature and applicability that served one purpose namely righteousness as opposed to neo-religions that ended up becoming business. However, African religions just like any other ones had their own baggage such as making priesthood a highly-guarded secret. It must be clearly noted that what we are trying to put forth is the fact that there is no saintly society as far as human beings are concerned. Every society has both strengths and weaknesses almost in everything including religions and the likes.
Does Africa still need foreign religions that paved way to colonialism, neocolonialism and contemporary cultural imperialism?
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