Only a fool would argue that the soul – that elusive thing – doesn’t need spiritual nourishment and renewal. Such edification comes from both the physical world and the metaphysical one. That’s why scholars of identity sometimes talk of “spirit murdering” by which they mean the killing of being through the nullification of the essential “other”. For example, if I call you ugly or stupid, or some other epithet, I cut into your soul and render you nugatory in small ways, however proud you might be.
Religion, whether organised or not, is an important vector of spiritual nourishment. But as we’ve seen recently, it can also be abused with catastrophic consequences. That’s why it’s sometimes called the opium of the people.
The things that constitute a people’s soul include religion, culture in its broadest sense, and history. That’s why a people without a culture can’t be wise; for culture is the accumulation of a people’s wisdom. But religion and matters of the spiritual world stand as key pillars of a people’s identity.
If other people give or impose their religion on you, then they have stolen your soul. Often, a people who have been spiritually conquered by others are culturally unmoored and usually adrift. Adopting another’s religion is the clearest sign of intellectual surrender and domination of one people by another. It’s the murdering of the spirit of one by the other. It’s spiritual imperialism of the most pernicious kind.
Sometime back, I wrote a column entitled ‘Why I killed Robert’. That’s right – I killed a fellow called Robert. That fellow was me. Or a version of me. I was born into a Catholic family. Both of my parents had forsaken the spiritualities of their Akamba forefathers. Both my mom and dad had been forced into Christianity without which certain services would’ve been denied them by the colonial state.
Theirs, they argued with me when I grew up and confronted them on the matter, was pragmatic conversion. But they didn’t give me a satisfactory answer when I inquired why they didn’t stop being Christians when the colonial state was vanquished. In fact, they became more zealous Catholic penitents.
At that point, I visited Mbiti wa Mbele, my maternal grandfather, who had flatly refused to become a Christian. Mbiti had seen the first white man come up the hill and try to convert him. According to Mbiti’s telling, he told the white man he had a religion already and since all religions were good, he didn’t see why he should forgo his for the white man’s.
Nugget of wisdom
Armed with this nugget of wisdom I returned to my parents and confronted them again. This time they told me I would burn in hell if I continued to raise the matter. They told me some things couldn’t be discussed. I dropped the matter but decided to drop Robert, my baptismal “Christian” name.
The name Robert was given to me by the Irish priest who baptized me. I had tried to argue that I could be baptised with an African name but was told African names weren’t Christian names. On that day a little of my spirit was murdered. So I revived that part of my murdered spirit when I dropped Robert.
Later, after I became a scholar, I often marvelled at the profound decision I had made at such a young age to “liberate” myself from white European psychosis. He who names a thing is the owner of the thing. This spiritual surrender is the lot of many black Africans who carry Arab and white European names under the guise of religion.
Nothing can be more fundamental than giving up your spirituality or religion for another’s. At the root of such conversion is the innate assumption that there’s a hierarchy of cultures, religions and spiritualities. That some cultures and spiritualities are superior to others. That there are dumb cultures and that there are intelligent cultures.
In this context, the argument is that African cultures and spiritualities are dumb but white European ones are intelligent. You forsake that which is inferior for that which is superior. I remember as a kid Catholic mass in Kitui being conducted in Latin, a dead white European language. None of us spoke or understood Latin! It doesn’t get any more terrible. Worshipping in a language you don’t understand.
Muslim prayers are often conducted in Arabic. Black Africans learn to recite the Quran in Arabic although they can’t speak the language. I don’t understand why the world has to be ordered this way. Why can’t Kamba Muslims recite the Quran in Kikamba, or there’s no Kikamba Quran?
Is there any essential connection between Islam and Arabic, or Christianity and things European? Is that “essential” connection spiritual? These aren’t small matters. They are essential to identity and to the decolonisation of the African mind. Methinks what we saw in Shakahola and Mavueni is a symptom of the crisis of spiritual identity.
Makau Mutua is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Margaret W. Wong Professor at Buffalo Law School, The State University of New York. @makaumutua.
Source: Sunday Nation today.
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