What is Religion: A Deep Critical Study

Religion in Africa is the culture surrounding spirituality. But not so long ago someone came up with the word religion (as a construction) and then the Masai went from having just a culture with an integrated concept of God to having a culture and a separate religion. Someone in Europe decided to create a dichotomy (Classic Eurocentrism). This was just as true for Hindus. They never separated them, Europeans did so because they separated it for themselves back in Europe. The ways of Europeans have become the ways of the world.

Jonathan Z Smith:

Religion is NOT a native term: it is a term created by scholars for their INTELLECTUAL purposes” Religion, religions, religious.

Anyone familiar with the Arabic language knows the closest word to religion is DEEN. (ن,_) But Deen does not mean religion. It means way of life. People use it today to mean religion but for most of the history of Islam it meant something totally distinct from the word “religion”.

My Deen- My way of life, my culture of living.

Some of our ‘separations’ are trapped in linguistics not reality. Where does Islam start as a religion and end as a culture? The interaction between the two is natural and only by creating a dichotomy does it become ‘real’

Pasquier, Michael (2023). Religion in America: The Basics. Routledge. pp. 2–3. ISBN 978-0367691806. Religion is a modern concept. It is an idea with a history that developed, most scholars would agree, out of the social and cultural disruptions of Renaissance and Reformation Europe. From the fourteenth to the seventeenth century, at a time of unprecedented political transformation and scientific innovation, it became possible for people to differentiate between things religious and things not religious. Such a dualistic understanding of the world was simply not available in such clear terms to ancient and medieval Europeans, to say nothing of people from the continents of North America, South America, Africa, and Asia.

See our article

Europeans showed up with their version of Christianity and told Africans that a component in their culture that deals with divinity is called “a religion” and we want to replace it with ours. That thing attached to your identity /culture that is not dealing with the divine is your culture and we want to also replace that with our culture. Someone chopped up identity into Identity, culture, and religion. It has PROFOUND consequences for how we discuss religion in Africa in antiquity.

People say Islam and Christianity have a book, while ATR doesn’t. Well, European civilizations have books, does that now mean that African civilizations without a book are no longer civilizations? You see that is the Eurocentric argument. Do you see the danger (self-imposed) this line of thinking can lead to? Having books or not is not a criterion of a “religion”. They then say African religions do not have prophets. So they don’t have holy men, Sangoma, Juju priests whatnot? From an anthropological perspective, what is the difference between social and cultural? ATR does not have strict rules! Yes, they do. quite a lot of complex gods and ceremonies that must be observed. and NO for the 1000s times, they are not all the same, nor are the traits of ATR unique to Africa. Libation is poured all around the world. So in conclusion all these debates are moot. People who choose to see “difference” will naturally see “difference.” And remember within Islam there is so much diversity on its own. Watch this video for starters.

One of the biggest reasons they had a poor chance against Islam and Christianity is because both Islam and Christianity transcended the “ethnic” limits of African-initiated (ATR) religions. Which meant that your religion was your “tribe.” Some advocates of ATR try to add a value judgment to that because they did not proselytize. But what lens are we using to add or take value from that fact? From a development perspective, it meant the religions could never advance and take on new ‘cultures’ compared to Islam and Christianity. And by extension could never form vast national polities including a plethora of ethnicities. That is a massive disadvantage politically. I am not sure that is something to boast about. And while some of us have this extremely simplistic view that religion brings conflict the truth from the historical record seems to indicate people bring conflict, and resources bring conflict. They most certainly did not need Islam in any part of Africa to start a resource war. They all equally do that. Or should I say any group that has an advanced civilization (using the proper usage of the word) engages in warfare?

See Thornton’s “Warfare in Atlantic Africa”if there is any confusion

BETTER AT DOING WHAT?

When religious advocates talk about better I have to wonder what better they are talking about. If you set up metrics to favor the traits of your religion then of course it will be better. Islam is better because Islam does not have in intermediate. Christianity is better because all sins are washed in the blood of Christ. ATR are better because they are African. All nonsense, because being African has never made anything you use in your house important. Does it work well would be the most important thing. That is why we have Samsung and Apple phones and not African ones. But the point is these are all subjective criteria.

The unfortunate non-PC truth is when we break down religions we can identify both objective good and bad. If your religion needs people’s heads to appease the deities then I think we can say “not a very good ritual”. If you need to eat people to get their power– not so good. 3

So we can as serious scholars objectively go through every single one of those religions (not treating any as a block) and investigate objective good against our modern ethical standards. I promise you, you will not find much joy. 2 What ATR advocates do is just ignore all of this while flagging Islam for castration and Christianity for boiling Africans in oil. Eating albinos for power, all kinds of horrors associated with native beliefs must then be added to the ATR list of horrors. Why are we cherry-picking? or applying different rules for different religions? Because never do they see the widespread heinous unGodly practices done by these “traditional healers” like cannibalism all across Africa, including the slaughter of children and albinos for ritual purposes.

No one would accept these practices today. So when you open Pandora’s box and accuse one religion of evil, just know you also have to be investigated by the same standards. As stated 1000 times none of them, Abrahmic or local had any taboo when it came to taking slaves. So this nonsense about “Slave master’s religions” is also moot. It was the African religions that had policies to help the process of making their captives their slaves. But this is outside of the scope of this discussion.

THE UNORGANIZED RELIGIONS OF AFRICA

I have to state this because we have been brainwashed into thinking there is something called Unorganized religion and added to that some of us believe there is something flattering about having unorganized religion. With varying levels of complexity, all African religions are organized. I is so funny to go to these ATR spaces and hear them boasting “Oh, in Africa, we do not have organized religions like Islam and Christianity” and “We did not have sacred books” LOL. This is boasting! This is why we say a lot of what is paraded as conscious and progressive and anti-Eurocentrism is Africans embracing Eurocentric concepts without even knowing. When someone is trying to destroy our history and culture they call us black, sub-Saharan, black African, backward, primitive, illiterate, pre-history, and unorganized, you are not conscious by adopting these terms. That is internalizing Eurocentrism. So what is the point in saying “We had spirituality in Africa and not a religion” when both are rooted in Eurocentric thought?

This whole new “spiritual” movement is not an African construction but a liberal smoke weed and get-doped-out one from the 60s movement. And we run from one form of Eurocentrism (organized religious nonsense) to another form of Eurcentrism (Hippy spiritual nonsense). Europeans were bored with structure and looking (party inspired by Eastern religions) for their new thing in a selfish system that feeds their random desires. Their motives were a rejection of order and establishment, religion (along with government and authority) was seen as not cool. This is 5 minutes ago history, why would a conscious person take these concepts an impose them on our Ancient Motherland? Because nowhere in Ancient Africa could you show me a religious system that was private, removed from communal worship. Not one single instance in the entire historical record.

Going deeper no one in Ancient antiquity bothered with this type of conversation as religion was tied to ethnicity. To the point where to be Zulu was to have a Zulu culture and integrated into that culture was a Zulu supernatural belief. Same with the Samburu. But today, the time in which we live and the only time that accepts our work there is a word called religion which includes everything in Africa. There is no true value in the statement “we did not have religions in Africa” since religion is just a word with a meaning attached to it. And if Ancient Egypt’s spiritual system has all the characteristics of Judaism (which it influenced) then if Judaism and Islam are religions, then Ancient Egyptian religion is the greatest spiritual system to come out of Africa.

Anyway, the other serious confusion (which I struggle to get) is that these African indigenous faiths were “more spiritual” huh? What does that even mean? Is there like a spiritual meter that you put next to someone praying and get a reading? How would you go about knowing that?

This device measures spirituality and shows that African-initiated religions have a lot more than Abrahamic religions. making Africa the most spiritual place on Earth 😂

BELIEF REQUIRES BELIEF

All religion, however, requires belief. And there is no point in expecting someone to believe In the religions of Benin or the religions of Senegambia if they do not believe. You have to actually believe God’s spirit is in trees to hold that belief. You have to actually believe in ancestors have a special place in the hereafter and you can talk to them. You have to believe that deities need offerings. That animist culture has value.

I personally hold no such beliefs and only believe that none of these things have protected us against the 21st-century challenges we face. No religion in West Africa or East Africa protected us from the Eastern or Atlantic slave trade. And that is the only belief I have. If Islam nor Christianity can create better-educated people, and rebuild Africa then I have no belief in them either.

THE PROBLEM WITH ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY

Anything from somewhere else has the potential, when we lack agency, to come with the culture of the places we take it from. Thus when Africans take Christianity from Italians it has a Catholic Christian Italianesq flavor. It puts their culture high, and our culture low. We see this with Islam also, where Africans become culturally Arab. We see Africans adding value to skin whiteness and thinking their God is white.

So the dominant cultural issues express themselves inside of religion.  But religion is certainly not the only way we get these issues as a trip to Benin would find the same levels of cultural displacement as in Ghana, despite having a predominant African religious foundation vs Ghana’s colonial Christian setup. And these are agency issues because Islam in West Africa, like Christianity in Ethiopia, oozes with an African personality.

WHAT REALLY MATTERS

There is this guy from Nigeria, a kind of friend, who rejects Abrahamic religions and said he prays to his ancestors. Sounds cool on paper. His friend prays to Jesus. One of them I would not trust my girl child near for 2 seconds. One calls their religion “African” the other call their religion “Christianity” me nah care what you call it. Because we are looking at what qualities the practitioners has that can take us forward. What would be the point of any religion by any name when I cannot trust you? What is the point of “religion/spirituality” when it is stopping me and you from doing work? So if blaming Islam is more important than unity then keep it up because there are way more Muslims and Christians than anyone else on Earth. So who do you plan to unite with then?

CONCLUSION

If someone was to bring some stats that showed that those who practice ATR have better societies then I would be interested. I have seen such stats for Saudi, so clearly that is working out for them.

If it can be shown that they are more Pan-African, that also would have some meaning. They have more humanity and compassion, which would be useful. They were collectively anti-Slavery, and they created Wakanda-like civilizations. They have solutions for all of our modern problems and you can run a country with them— that would be something.  A cure for our social disease today perhaps? The benefits then seem to be limited to “being African” and that does have a value. But that on its own will not cut it. I have seen no evidence that they create people with stronger modern African identities.

What we find is that every religion (that I can think about) regardless of where it comes from has a core message. Every religious belief has something special and does at least something right. But no belief is all of that if its adherence is deaf to the message. So who would I rather live next to? The religious person who adheres to the best principles of their belief— does not care what they call that belief system. And as far as African economics goes the people who support are of the good religion, the people who study their history and raise their kids right and practice marriage and good morals are of the good religions.