Black Divinity
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Black Divinity

Institutes of the Black Theocracy Shahidi Collection Vol 1

Shahidi Islam

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eBook - ePub

Black Divinity

Institutes of the Black Theocracy Shahidi Collection Vol 1

Shahidi Islam

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About This Book

Black Divinity exposes the intricate beauty and complexity of the New York City street culture to allow those outside to see that those in the United States street life actually do have a very respectable, while yet Afro-centric, doctrinal system (including a pneumatology, psychology, ethnology, anthropology, sociology, eschatology, soteriology, Christology and ecclesiology) and how it applies to the real world. It is also an attempt to fulfil the mission of the early Afro-centric movements and resurrect an Afro-chic culture that connects black people the world over with the souls of our ancestors in ancient Kush.

As a veteran of the 1990s United States gang wars and champion of the Brooklyn, New York Crips Tony Saunders was accepted by the 5 Percent Nation as Shahidi Islam in 2014 after a life in the gangs of his community. Prior to that, though not officially joining he maintained an outside affiliation through the godbody and learned heavily from their ciphers and building sessions. Being an experienced member of the 187 Gangsta Crips and New York’s Christian Life Center Church he also helped organize and promote the expansion of both Christian and Crip membership and development in the Flatbush, Brownsville and East New York areas of Brooklyn. Shahidi also travelled the length of the United States in communion with numerous ghetto communities across the country before doing time in prison for assault and getting deported to London. While in London Shahidi joined the Stop the War movement, the Fair Trade movement, the Make Poverty History, Live Simply, the Campaign Against the Arms Trade, the Socialist Workers Party and the Afrikan Co-operative Union, before connecting with, and this time properly joining the 5 Percent Nation, that exists in London promoting the development of an Afro-chic and Afrosensual culture in the black community.

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Year
2019
ISBN
9781646696543

The Legacy of the Apostle Paul

Following I will be exploring what I consider to be just concerning the name of Paul, even as the misuse and twisting of his teachings and very revolutionary ideas by that which is called the Pauline school has led to his current notoriety in the world as of capitalistic sensitivities. Choosing instead to consider what in Paul’s life and work contains the kernel of his reality and avoiding all otherworldly debates and ideological controversies, I will be, in essence, trying to recapture that social theory that Paul implanted, or tried to implant, into his early followers and associates. It is my hope that in doing this I may return us to the core reality of Paul’s general vision for Christianity as a movement and as a society.
Many Christians, especially among Evangelical Charismatics, use the apostle Paul as an excuse to justify their greed. Of all the apostles he has been considered the most liberal, and certainly he needed business affairs to run smoothly as he was also a tentmaker (Act 18: 1-3). But was Paul a father of capitalist thought as many prosperity preachers claim he was?
The West has built a system tailored to imperialistic ends. Fear of failure and fear of having to trust in a mystery god has caused them to seek insurmountable wealth to maintain a healthy and productive lifestyle. They grow fat with material possessions and offer no real help to the poor. They preach prosperity through faith to a poverty ridden mass so that if they do not gain prosperity they obviously do not have the faith to believe they can. They are the rich slavemakers of the poor, who may understand some of the truth but use it to their own advantage, shaming the true and living by claiming they are serving him when they are serving only themselves.
As far as history goes the world cannot afford to maintain the West’s system of implacable wealth creation. Competition inevitably turns into conflict, now open, now hidden conflict. It cannot but cause ruin because it is so disorderly and filled with contradictions. As István Mészáros points out, one of the contradictions which will prove to be, and has proven to be in the past, one of capital’s absolute limits (capital being the means of production and exchange); is the contradiction between capital’s national protectionism and its need to create transnational markets. Capital is of necessity private, personal and nationalistic yet it needs to become international to maintain a prosperous existence. The imperialistic tendencies within capital cause its national manifestation to seek the overpowering of other national capitals; yet it must itself maintain this international dominance to keep from competitive obsolescence.
This contradiction existed during the time of colonialism. At that time, capital’s nationalist tendencies triumphed over its internationalist tendencies to a certain extent; which caused the liberation movements to fight for national sovereignty instead of international anarchism. But this internationalist tendency within capitalism has not gone away; instead it has re-emerged as globalized capital; a globalization that has provided fuel for the fire of its critics hostility. This has made the West’s agenda for liberal, and indeed neoliberal, politics very difficult.
In the twenty-first century Western civilization has had only two substantial opponents: 1. Post-colonialists and 2. Religious fundamentalists. The post-colonialists are usually anti-imperialists as they were at one time subject to the Western empires in the form of colonialism. For the most part they fear a neo-colonial advance from the West as they hear them preaching globalization, but practicing the subjugation of smaller countries under the national capital, rules and power structure of more modernized countries. Based on the practice of the West, and not their preaching, these countries, having nationalized their governments, go on to nationalize a number of big properties for the native population of their location.
These countries, mostly anti-imperialist, usually believe that all national capital should be held within the nation and shared out among the people of that nation. They are unfortunately too small or weak to fight a substantial war with the neoliberal neo-colonial powers, so as potential profit margins and the possibility of gaining some desired resource could always cause the West to fight if diplomacy ceases to work, threats of overthrow or assassination are usually more than enough to keep them in line or from going too far against the wishes of their Western overlords.
With religious fundamentalism it is a different story. At this time the expansion of Western morals and the globalization of capitalist economies into religiously different countries; and liberalism’s extreme lack of morality by the standards held within that country, are causing, and have been causing, the religious communities of those countries to react. So far this has led to Islamist wars between America, the bearers of Western standards, and certain Muslim nations, the keepers of religious purity. They war with America because of liberalism’s lack of moral purity, and America fights back because of terrorism’s potential threat.
This may explode into world war in the current clash of ideologies; and though America may be the stronger nation, in a battle over morals it cannot win. The immorality of the neo-colonialism and white supremacy they uphold will one day have to give way to a new morality. The ‘gods’ of the current system are lost in an ideological struggle with each other. Western civilization must snatch up as much of the world in an imperialistic scrabble for territory as it can before these territories begin their own fight back in the form of global war.
If we are to fully understand the apostle Paul in this context it is important to first recognize two things. First, the Judeans of Paul’s day were not like the Jews of today. Virtually all Muslims and some enlightened blacks know that the original Judeans were black. Not necessarily dark black, but definitely a kind of dusky bronze black, as it was said by the prophet Ezekiel, “In visions of God brought he me into the land of Israel, and set me upon a very high mountain, by which was as the frame of a city on the south. And he brought me thither, and, behold, there was a man, whose appearance was like the appearance of brass, with a line of flax in his hand, and a measuring reed; and he stood in the gate” (Eze 40: 2,3). Now the word translated here as brass is nekhosheth, which actually means copper, thus being in similitude to mahogany, and nowhere near the olive colour most Israelis have today. The implication from this Scripture is that the man is either a man of Israel or an angel of the God of Israel, either way he would have been the colour of the people of Israel.
But if that is the case then why are the current Jews white? According to Arthur Koestler, himself a Hungarian Jew, the majority of Ashkenazi Jews converted in the eighth century from a Turko-Caucasian tribe called the Khazars, and so went on to outnumber the original authentic Jews. Sections of this tribe then migrated to “Poland, Lithuania, Hungary and the Balkans, where they founded that Eastern Jewish community which in its turn became the dominant majority of world Jewry.” Many nineteenth century historians and anthropologists knew about the Khazars for decades, but some of them only used this knowledge to further their white supremacist agenda.
However, there were eminent anthropologists like Roland Dixon who had this to say of them, “The Khazar being converted to Judaism in the eighth century, thereafter seem to have spread far and wide to the west and northwest, their modern descendants probably forming the preponderant element among the east European Jews.” Moreover, there is further proof that the Ashkenazim were not authentic Jews and thereby had no right to call themselves Semites, as it is written in the Scriptures: “Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth: and unto them were sons born after the flood. The sons of Japheth; Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras. And the sons of Gomer; Ashkenaz, and Riphath, and Togarmah.” (Gen 10:1-3.) Ashkenaz was of Japheth.
At the same time, the Sephardim Jews: which are the Jews of Spain, Portugal, the Middle East and North Africa, represent the Jews most likely to have been the stock from which the Messiah and the first century Christians came. These Jews, although being darker than proper Europeans and Arabs, were most likely even darker that is, they were most likely that bronze black of Ezekiel’s vision in the first century when both Paul and the Messiah walked the earth, as mingling with the Tuareg, the Berbers, the Arabs and the Europeans over the centuries would have definitely lightened their complexion; just like the Egyptians, after centuries of mingling with the Berbers and the Turks, particularly after the migration of the Turks into Egypt in the twelfth century, also lost their much darker complexion seen on the walls and in the paintings of Egypt.
The second thing that must be acknowledged is that the apostle Paul was born a citizen of Rome and therefore had an affinity to the great city and its people. Being born a citizen of the imperial city gave him privileges that would not be afforded to most other people, even white people. The apostle Paul’s devotion to white people over against his own black people may make him seem a rather strange subject to start from in defining an already existing black divinity (one that probably would have an aversion to me teaching on this man in the first place) but I feel that the apostle Paul’s anti-imperialism is an astonishing example for all black people to begin their own knowledge of self journey.
The apostle Paul’s journey to self-discovery is an interesting one. From the biblical accounts we can gather a little information about Paul’s life before he became a Christian. Paul was born Saul in the city of Tarsus in modern day Turkey, a Benjamite Judean, who was most likely black; and a citizen of the city of Rome. From this information we can gather that Paul was bought up in a middle class family from two places; the fact that he was born a citizen of Rome even though he was Judean and the fact that Tarsus was famed by early authors such as Strabo for being a very wealthy place filled with intellectuals as well as aristocrats. Saul then obviously went on to learn Judaism as well as philosophy in school, which we can gather from his letters’ almost Platonian style. Saul was bought up a Pharisee. And although he was born in Tarsus, the accounts in Acts say he was bought up in Jerusalem and was taught in the way of the Torah by Rabbi Gamaliel. So Saul apparently had a good Judaic upbringing from Tarsus to Jerusalem. And from Paul’s own testimony we find that he also persecuted the church when it first began in Jerusalem.
This same Saul, as most Christians would know, was converted because while he was on his way to Damascus to persecute the Christians there, he received a vision of the risen Messiah and was blinded. Then, it was a Christian who opened his eyes to see again, and who converted and baptized him. Saul, after that moment, went through a real humbling. It is very reminiscent of the conversion of Malcolm X, a pimp, a hustler and a thief, who went on to found several Muslim temples in America for the Nation of Islam.
Malcolm’s conversion story is a little less well known than that of the apostle Paul’s. Malcolm Little was arrested in Boston for theft and was given a ten year sentence. During the majority of his time, of which he served seven years before being paroled to his brother, his family was able to convince him they could get him out of prison. At this time Malcolm had become so depraved that the other inmates called him Satan. He would argue with the correction officers and chaplains and would pretend he forgot his prison number to get put into solitary. Malcolm’s Damascus experience is when his brother told him he knew a man, a black man, who had 360o of knowledge. Soon, in a vision Malcolm would see this man as Master Fard Muhammad, the founder of the Nation of Islam. Like with Saul Malcolm was humbled and devoted the rest of his time in prison to studying and learning about the Nation of Islam. By the time he was released he was still not ready yet to preach, but, just like Saul, when the time was right Malcolm could not be stopped.
Malcolm Little was given the name Malcolm X by the Nation of Islam just as Saul was given the name Paul by the messianic community. This messianic community, predominantly black Judeans, predominantly peasant farmers and non-industrialized workers, shared similarities with the early Nation of Islam. Christianity as a movement started out in the lower classes, then it grew to gain aristocrats and merchants, and soon people from all walks of life. Paul became a poor righteous teacher in the early messianic movement even as Malcolm would become in the Islamic nationalist movement. But none of Paul’s teachings say the kind of social system he believed God would approve of. To him the kingdom of God (or Nation of God) was imminent Malcolm also shared a similar feeling of imminence about the Nation of Islam so his form of anti-imperialism was not a violent sedition but an ethical progression.
At the height of his influence he wrote to the Roman Church, “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek” (Rom 1:16). As, in the apostle Paul’s time, the Jews were still predominantly black, when Paul says things like, “to the Jew first, and also to the Greek”, he is actually saying to the black first and also to the white, he is naming the full spectrum of racial orientation. The apostle Paul was a black man and as a black man he understood the realities of a black struggle. The sufferings he experienced as a Judean in imperial Rome were the sufferings of a black man in a white world system.
Malcolm X’s understanding of the racial dichotomy is relatively different. Though Malcolm X accepted that in the struggle of the races, the black was first, in his consideration of the white man he felt more sure of their overthrow and judgment. Malcolm X wrote, “The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that since Western society is deteriorating, it has become overrun with immorality, and God is going to judge it, and destroy it. And the only way the black people caught up in this society can be saved is not to integrate into this corrupt society, but to separate from it, to a land of our own, where we can reform ourselves, lift up our moral standards, and try to be godly.” Thus, the kingdom of God for him was in a separated land where black people could practice Islam freely in unity and godliness.
The apostle Paul’s insistence on justice and ethics was also based on his idea that with an imminent kingdom of God judgment w...

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