By Babatunde Jose
A few weeks ago, I had cause to engage Prof Adebayo Williams in an intellectual masturbation over his article on the place of African philosophy. The discourse led to the need to revisit the issue of the African God and the obliteration of African philosophy in the process of colonization.
Africans were late in the development of a philosophy to encapsulate their thoughts and values and never had time to evolve the requisite idiosyncrasy with which to uphold that philosophy. Unlike the Vedas, the primary texts of Hinduism which also had a vast influence on Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. The Rig Vedas, the oldest of the four Vedas, was composed about 1500 B.C., and codified about 600 B.C. It was finally committed to writing around 300 B.C.
The Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Sumerian Enuma Elish, the I Ching or Ancient Chinese ‘Book of Changes’, and the Avesta of Zoroastrianism, are among the most ancient religious texts still in existence.
Though Africa is the cradle of man as confirmed by archaeological findings, we do not have anything compared to the Vedas. Though Africa would later sprout great empires such as Zimbabwe, Kush, Zulu, Ghana, Mali, Songhai and Kanem-Borno, the continent never had the luxury of developing religions and philosophies comparable to Buddhism.
The reasons for these are not farfetched. Africa’s development was truncated my external factors of slavery and colonization. The intrusion of foreign peoples, Arabs from the East, and North, Europeans from the West and all along to the Cape did not allow Africans to develop a systematized philosophy of religion. The result was that in the event of the clash of cultures that ensued, African cultures were unable to withstand the onslaught. Cultures were destroyed and altered in the process and historical development were truncated. The base and groundswell of most African cultures became polluted.
In West Africa, for example, the peoples had not yet evolved alphabets nor writing before the onslaught on their cultures. Therefore, it was not possible to systematize or codify such philosophies as Ifa in Yoruba land before it became supplanted by Islam and Christianity. Even though there were notable political empires in West Africa, their histories were meshed in Islam which determined their rise and fall. Secondly, they were trading empires that relied on the trans Sahara trade. But sadly, they never developed a philosophy of life on the same level as the Greeks or Romans.
Africans are also a deeply religious and artistic people. But they never developed or evolved an epistemology that defined their traditional religions. Timbuktu produced many accomplished African scholars such as Mohammed Bakayoko; Mohammed Al Kaburi; Muhammad Ibn Uthman; and Ibn Aqit, a Supreme Judge of Timbuktu, Imam and the Dean of Sankore University. But they were not philosophers or exponents of African religions.
In the forest kingdoms of Ashanti and Old Oyo, there never developed any notable center of knowledge or systematized philosophy by the time the Malians and Europeans arrived with Islam and Christianity respectively. Though they were not tabula rasa, there had not developed a system of religious thoughts that could be compared with Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. African religions were too variegated and unsystematized. They were therefore unable to withstand the colonizing religions. In the words of W. E. B. Du Bois, ‘Sudanese civilization fell before the triphammer blows of two of the world’s great religions, Islam and Christianity.’
Colonialism had a total influence on the society and the life of the colonized. Not only did it affect their culture and values, but it also engendered a lasting influence on the mindset of the colonized, especially their values and religious orientation, especially their conception of God.
Powerful kingdoms, beautiful sculpture, complex trade, tremendous wealth, centers for advanced learning — all are hallmarks of African civilization on the eve of the age of exploration.
The empires of Ghana, Mali, And Songhay are some of the greatest the world has ever known. Timbuktu, arguably the world’s oldest university, was the intellectual center of its age, but it was not a center for African philosophy or religious thoughts. It was Islamic in all its coloration.
The slave trade that uprooted millions of men and women to America unwillingly, attenuated Africa’s development. The slave trade brought ruin to West Africa. Entire villages disappeared. Guns and alcohol spread across the continent. Tribes turned against tribes as the once-fabled empires were sent jolting back into the limbo of history.
Unfortunately for the evolution of African philosophy and religion, the slave trade attenuated such thoughts only for it to spring up in the diaspora as ‘cargo-cults’ exemplified by the relics of African religions in Brazil, Haiti and the Caribbeans. Thus, we have a resurgence of Ogun, Oya and Obatala worship in the new world. But in the old country and continent, the old African philosophy and religions were no match for the Maxim guns and muskets of the invading white colonialists and the Bible of their missionaries. The damage Islam failed to do to African religions, Christianity finished it off and, in the end, nothing was left. It is therefore too late in the day to talk of any meaningful African religion and philosophy.
As an attempt to reassert African religious ways, notable schism was caused in the Church with the emergence of syncretistic movements such as the Aladura and its variants. There was also the rebellion of Africans who formed the African Church with emphasis on the Africanness of the liturgy and other practices including polygamy.
All these did not cause the resurgence of any African philosophy that could be written home about. Even the African language suffered a coma and remained there.
In Yorubaland, Ifa which according to late Professor Sophie Oluwole, is a philosophical tenet comparable to the philosophies of Aristotle was attenuated and became relegated and consigned to a practice referred to in unprintable epithets and associated with ‘pagan’ rites. Yet, you find many of our elite searching for philosophical fulfilments in such esoteric undertakings such as Rosicrucian’s, Grail Message, Freemasons, and others. They cannot be regarded as philosophical societies by any stretch of the imagination. But they all espouse non-African based religions.
What then is left? Nothing.
Yet the societal values and sanctions of the old religions have proven to be more effective than the new faiths. Despite our Bible thumping and Quran mouthing, there is more corruption, crime, delinquency, and waywardness in our society today. Our religiosity has become a transparent sham, and our supplications an opaque sham.
Our leaders do not fear God anymore. They are today more brazen in their thievery. We continue to live a lie and our whole lives have become truncated; our education, progress and development as a people are stunted.
Yet, we have the capacity to rethink and start a process of reorientation. Professor Adebayo Williams wrote: It seems to me that both the Black person and his philosophy need to be reinvented. We should return to our indigenous language and culture and take the advantage offered by science and culture to leapfrog into the 21st century; our culture and language are already dead but hasn’t disappeared. We need an urgent reawakening and the sooner the better.
Our disenchantment with the religions of our colonizers and enslavers is belated, seeing as it were, we were born and raised into them, and we continue to socialize our children into them. We are therefore, stuck with them, their values mores, and foibles.
It is the great misfortune of colonized people who failed to free their spiritual life as the Chinese and Indians did. Not only did we allow our land and resources to be purloined, but we also allowed our God to be stolen.
We are therefore left with no alternative than to extol the qualities of the foreign God. It’s a great pity. But all is not lost. There are still innumerable good precepts in the Eastern religions that could be followed to live a good life. The Ten Commandments are universally applicable, even when devoid of who collected the tablets on which they were etched from God. So too are many others foremost of which is the dictum,’ love thy neighbor as yourself’. Islam devoid of Arabism is a veritable way of life which if followed would make us better human beings. Islam is a life coach from cradle to grave.
Barka Juma’at and a happy weekend
Babatunde Jose
