Prophet Muhammad’s War Against White Supremacy and the later Aryanization of Islam According to a Classical Arabic Source

By Wesley Muhammad, PhD (c) 2012 

The famed Egyptian scholar Taqī ‘l-Dīn Abu ‘l-‘Abbās Aḥmad b. ‘Alī al-Maqrīzī (d. 1364-1442) wrote an important work entitled Kitāb al-Nizāʿ wa ’l-takhāṣum fīmā bayn Banī Umayya wa-Banī Hāshim, “The Book of Contention and Strife between the Banū Umayya and the Banū Hāshim.” Written long after the fall of the Umayyads and the rise of the Abbasids, this work reflects the anti-Umayyad bias and polemic that was current in al-Maqrīzī’s day. Nevertheless, the work is equally critical of the Abbasids, as the author wrote long after the fall of that dynasty in 1258 CE. There is in this work a profoundly insightful and honest passage that affirms so many of the historical developments that I have been documenting, and al-Maqrīzī’s seems to share my evaluation of these developments. In the passage quoted below al-Maqrīzī discusses the influence on Islamic tradition of the Abbasid caliph al-Maʿmūn (reigned 813-833) and his successors al-Muʿtaṣim (r. 833-842), al-Mutawakkil (r. 847-861) and al-Mustaʿīn (r. 862-866).  

   

“This fellow al-Maʿmūn …left one of the worst possible reputations in the whole history of Islam. This arose from the fact that he had books on philosophy translated into Arabic, to such a pitch that heretics and deviationists used them to pervert Islam and to trick the Muslims…He removed from the pay-registers the Arabs, the Messenger of God’s people, the race through whose agency God had established the religion of Islam…In their place, he relied on the Turks. He abandoned Arab dress and clothing, put a crown on his head and wore the dress of the Persians, that race which God had sent his prophet Muhammad to slay and to combat. With al-Muʿtaṣim, and through his deliberate agency, the rule of the Arabs came to an end; henceforth, during his reign and under his political regime, the Turks, upon whom the Messenger of God vowed to make war, assumed power. After him, they (viz. the Turks) secured an ascendency in all the lands. God gave the Turks dominion over al-Muʿtaṣim’s son, Jaʿfar al-Mutawakkil, so that they eventually murdered him. They also murdered al-Muʿtaṣim’s grandson, Aḥmad al-Mustaʿīn. They treated the religion of God as a plaything and established a reign of terror throughout all the provinces of the caliphate.”

In this brief quote al-Maqrīzī alludes to a number of critical developments within Islam during the Abbasid period (750 – 1258 CE):

1. Al-Maqrīzī notes the deleterious impact on Islamic tradition of al-Maʿmūn’s program to translate Greek philosophical works into Arabic and thus making them available to Muslim thinkers. The result has been the ‘Hellenization’ of Islam, i.e. the shaping of Islamic tradition by Greek philosophical ideas and arguments. The most damaging aspect of this ‘Hellenizing’ of Islamic tradition, as I have documented, was the eventual replacing of the anthropomorphic God of Prophet Muhammad and early Islam with the Platonic and Aristotelian ‘Spook God’ of Greek Philosophy and later Islam.

2. Al-Maqrīzī alludes to the Fall of the Arabs: both al-Maʿmūn and al-Muʿtaṣim affected the final demise of the Arabs and the rise of the Turks. Here we thus have the early stages of the “De-Arabization” of Islam and its ‘Turkifaction’ and ‘Persianization’. Both of these processes constitute what I have called the ‘Aryanization’ of Islam, i.e. the later re-shaping of Islam by White (viz. Aryan) converts to Islam: the Persians, Turks, Byzantines, etc.  

3. Next al-Maqrīzī makes a startling admission: that the Prophet Muhammad – whom we now know was a Black Arab – was sent by Allah to SLAY the Persians!!! Those who have followed my work know that Sassanian Persia was one of two pillars of White Supremacy in Late Antiquity, the other being the Byzantine Empire. The Black Arabs conquered and destroyed the Persian Sassanian Empire in 650. According to al-Maqrīzī the prophet Muhammad also vowed to make war with the Turks. This is an amazing matter-of-fact confession which suggests that Prophet Muhammad was an early warrior against White Supremacy.

4. According to al-Maqrīzī these transgressions against Islam by these Abbasid caliphs earned them the chastisement of Allah, who allowed these very Turks to gain tyrannical dominion over the caliphs, whom they eventually kill. The Turks, al-Maqrīzī notes, only superficially embraced Islam and treated the religion as a plaything.

These allusions within this important Classical Arabic text cohere with the reconstruction of Islamic history as I have been documenting it, ma sha Allah.   

Islam, Black Power and the End of White Supremacy

By Wesley Muhammad, PhD (c) 2012

The height of imperial 'Black Power' in the ancient world was probably New Kingdom Kemet, which was very imperial. However, Kemet managed only to extend east into the Levant and south as far as the 4th-5th Cataract. 

On the other hand, this is the Islamic empire at its height (in extent).

Robert Goldston, Sword of the Prophet (1979):  72:

“The domain of Islam stretched from the Pyrenes to the Himalayas, from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, from central Asia to Central Africa. Not only had the Arabs conquered this huge area, but they had remained to govern it…In all of recorded history their accomplishment remains unique.”

David Levering Lewis, God’s Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215 (2008): 3:

“the Arabs accomplished the greatest revolution in power, religion, culture and wealth in history”

The “Arabs” that achieved this “unique” accomplishment were black-skinned Arabs, descendents of the Africans who settled in Arabia several millennia prior. This is documented in Arabic, Latin, Chinese and Persian sources. The Islamic Empire was the work of the Black Rashidun caliphs of Medina (Abu Bak, Umar, Uthman) and the Black Umayyad caliphs in Damascus and Al-Andulus. Dana Marniche, in her important article “Fear of Blackness: Descriptions and Ethnogenesis of the original Afro-Arabian tribes of ‘Moorish’ Spain,“ affirms :

“Although the Arabians were not the first to be called Moors, it was the color of the people leaving the peninsula of Arabia that was mainly due the use of the term ‘Moor’ for black and woolly haired people in Spain, France, Italy and other parts of Europe in Islamic times. When the Chanson de Roland which speaks of the time of the Moorish battles in Gallic France speaks of ‘those hordes and hordes blacker than the blackest ink – no shred of white on them except their teeth…’ it is no mere exaggeration. Anyone familiar with the Arabic writings of the Syrian, Iraqi and Iranian historians up until the 14th century knows that this is also their description of the early ‘pure’ Arab clans of the Arabian peninsula.”

Authentic Bedouin of the Arabian Peninsula 

Sir Roland and Saracens, Battle of Roncevaux. Miniature from Charles V’s, Grandes chroniques de France (ca. 1370s)

Never since the rise of White Supremacy and the sleep of God’s people has there been such a display of ‘Black Power.’  In order to achieve this global empire of Black Power, these black-skinned Arab Muslims had to demolish the existing white power structure which consisted of the Byzantine and the Sasanian Empires. 

Byzantine Empire (330 CE - 1453)

Sassanian Empire at its apogee (224–651)

The Byzantines and Sasanians ruled much of the known world, including Africa, for centuries prior to the rise of the Islamic Empire. The Black Muslims demolished the southern portion of the Byzantine Empire, freeing Africa, and totally decimated the Sasanian Empire.  Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth of Reality(1967): 119 notes:

“Except for the Islamic breakthrough, Europe has ruled Africa down to the present day.”

This Islamic “breakthrough” that temporarily freed Africa from Europe’s rule was a “Black Islamic breakthrough”. 

Where else in the annals of recorded history for the last 6000 years can one document a comparable display of Black Power? The coming of Master Fard Muhammad (TWAPID) initiated the process that will eventually eclipse this, but that process has not fully played itself out yet. We still have a long way to go, I believe.   

The guardians of White Supremacy since the rise of the Islamic Empire continue to acknowledge Black Islam as its cheif threat.  After overthrowing the Byzantines in North Africa the Muslims (Black Arab and African) headed to Europe and, after defeating the Visigoth army and killing the last Visigoth king, Roderick, in 711 they added the Iberian Peninsula to the Islamic empire. For 800 years Black (and mulatto) Muslims called Moors ruled southwest Europe. As a consequence, in the psyche of White Christian Europe the Black Muslim incarnated evil itself. As James Brunson and Runoko Rashidi note in their articel, "Moors in Antiquity":

"because of his dark complexion and Islamic faith, the Moor became in Europe a symbol of guile, evil, and hate."

The material coming out of Europe during this period leaves no room to doubt that the Black Muslim was perceived as thegreatest threat to White Christendom. This fact is probably illustrated by the 11th century coat of arms commemorating Peter III of Aragon’s victory over the Moors in 1096. During the battle four Moorish princes fell. On the coat of arms their black heads surround a Christian cross. This was updated on a gold coin after 1700 by King Charles of Hapsburg. These Black Muslim heads on this European Christian coat of arms undoubtedly symbolized victory over the perceived chief threat.

Hapsburg gold coin of Aragon coat of arms. From Sertima, GoldenAge.

Theodore Lothrop Stoddard (d. 1950) was an influential American political scientist and white supremacist. He was also an historian with a History degree from Harvard University. As an historian he was a keen student of Islamic history in particular as his book, The New World of Islam, clearly displays. Stoddard was concerned with the fall of White Supremacy and rise of the world of color. HE documented this trend and his fears of it in his work, The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy. In it he makes an important confession:

"Concerning Islam’s steady progress in black Africa there can beno shadow of a doubt. Every candid European observer tells the same story. ‘Mohammedanism,’ says Sir Charles Elliot, ‘can still give the natives a motive for animosity against Europeans…’Twenty years ago another English observer, T.R. Threlfall, wrote: ‘…The rapid spread of militant Mohammedanism among the…tribes to the north of the equator is a serious factor in the fight for racial supremacy in Africa…’ Islam is as yet unknown south of the Zambezi, but white men universally dread thepossibility of its appearance…"  

Black Islam continues to be the cheif threat against White Supreamcy. 

Cartoon from 1964 edition of Esquire Magazine depicting the former late president of France, Charles de Gaulle , speaking to white world leaders including Moshe Dayan and others from Israel and other places, pointing to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and declaring: "Were it not for this man, we would have a glorious future." 

Newsweeks Magazine anouncing that, once again, the face of 'Islamic terror' is Black. 

“There is no good in Black people”: Racism and the Fabrication of Islamic Tradition

Br Wesley Muhammad, PhD

The Muslim world today, and its Islam, is characterized by profound misogyny/sexism and a rabid White Supremacy and anti-black racism. Neither characterized early Islam, however. It is a myth that Jahili (pre-Islamic) and early Islamic Arabia was racist and that Black people were ill-treated on account of their blackness. In fact, Arabia and the Arabs were themselves still black on the eve of Islam.[1] To the existent that there was any racism at all, it was certainly anti-white racism.  Al-Mubarrad (d. 898), the leading figure in the Basran grammatical tradition, affirmed:

“The Arabs used to take pride in their brown and black complexion (al-sumra wa al-sawad) and they had a distaste for a white and fair complexion (al-humra wa al-shaqra), and they used to say that such was the complexion of the non-Arabs.”[2]

That these indigenous Blacks of Arabia took pride in their blackness is noted also by Al-Jahiz (d. 869), who declares in his Fakhr al-sudan ‘ala l-bidan: “The Arabs pride themselves in (their) black color (al-‘arab tafkhar bi-sawad al-lawn).”[3]

As Dana Marniche points out:

“As if the world has been turned upside down, blackness in the early Arab culture as in pre-Ptolemaic Egypt and early Dravidian India (according to Marco Polo), was revered as representative of what was archetypically good, holy and powerful, while in European culture even in early times it appears to have been the exact opposite.”[4]

That Jahili and early Islamic Arabia were free of anti-black racism has been pointed out by several Western scholars. John Alembillah Azumah,  Associate Professor of World Christianity at Colombia Theological Seminary and former director for the Centre of Islamic Studies at the London School of Theology, in his The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa, affirms:

“in pre-Islamic Arabia blacks were held in high esteem and did marry Arab women … the discrimination against the (blacks) on account of the colour of their skin is a development within the Islamic period.  “In pre-Islamic Arab poetry and historical narrative blacks…were usually referred to as Habash…There is hardly any trace of antagonism or discrimination on the basis of the skin color in pre-Islamic and early Islamic Arabia. In line with this pre-Islamic and early Islamic period, the Qur’an, apart from one instance where the colours black and white are used in an idiomatic sense to depict evil and good respectively, express no prejudice in matters of race or colour…    In social life in pre-Islamic and early Arabia there were black slaves as well as white slaves, mainly captured during war, and there is no evidence that the former suffered any specific discrimination by virtue of the colour of their skin. On the contrary, the Habash, who were active in the sixth-century Arabia as allies of the Byzantines, were usually regarded as people with a higher civilization than the Arabs and respected during early Islamic times as people with a revealed religion. It was partly due to the high esteem with which the Habash were held in the early Islamic period that Muhammad advised his persecuted followers to seek asylum in Abyssinia in 615 CE.”[5]

The late St Clair Drake, who created at Roosevelt University one of the first African American Studies programs in the United States, noted also:

 “In early Islam, there were positive associations with blackness…The rabbinic and midrashic stories that interpret black skin as a curse was apparently not part of early Arab oral tradition…However…they became known after the seventh-century Arab conquests, among scholars in Mesopotamia who were developing Islamic religious thought. The scholars…some [were] Arabs, [most were] Persians.”[6]

The absence of racism in early Islam and the creation of it in later Islamic texts is affirmed also by Prof Bernard Lewis of Princeton University, who has done the most to expose the racism that eventually took root in Islam:

“the Qur’ān expresses no racial or color prejudice. What is perhaps most significant is that the Qur’ān does not even reveal any awareness of such prejudice…The evidence of the Qur’ān on the lack of racial prejudice in pre-Islamic and the earliest Islamic times is born out by such fully authenticated fragments of contemporary literature as survive. As in the Qur’ān so also in the ancient Arabian poetry, we find awareness of difference…We do not however find any clear indication that this was felt in racial terms, or went beyond the normal feeling of distinction which all human groups have about themselves in relation to others…There are verses (indeed many verses) attributed to pre-Islamic and early Islamic poets which would suggest very strongly a feeling of hatred and contempt directed against persons of African birth or origin. Most if not all of these, however, almost certainly belong to later periods and reflect later problems, attitudes, and preoccupations. Such projection backward into early Islamic or pre-Islamic times is a very common feature, and a recurring difficulty in Islamic scholarship.”[7]    

The role that non-Arab converts, particularly Iranian, played in the manipulation and fabrication of Islamic tradition has by documented in my God’s Black Prophet’s: Deconstructing the Myth and the White Muhammad of Arabia and Jesus of Jerusalem (2010). This ‘Aryanization’ of Islam introduced anti-black racism. This racism was falsely attributed to the Prophet Muhammad (who was himself black-skinned) in fabricated hadith reports. Shaykh Abdullah Faisal, in his work, 100 Fabricated Hadith, discusses the most notorious of these racist fabrications. I reproduce here Shaykh Faisals full discussion of this.

“Hadith 35      There is no good in black people; when they are hungry they steal and when their stomach is full they commit zina (fornication/adultery). However they have two noble characteristics, which are generosity to their guests and perseverance at times of hardship. Related by Tabaraani and classified fabricated by Imam Bukhari and Ibn Jawzee. This fabricated hadith…is detrimental to the Islamic brotherhood and sisterhood because they create a feeling of nationalism and racism, which are both unbelief. Ibn-ul-Qayyim al Jawzia said all ahaadith cursing black people are fabricated. Bilal (ra) the Muathin of the Prophet was black and the Prophet (saw) said: “Bilal is from my household.”
 Our father Adam (s) was black hence Allah (swt) said:
 “And indeed, We created Mankind from sounding clay of altered black smooth mud.”
 Prophet Musa (s) was also black, If the people who fabricate hadith say those were Prophets so it was expected for them to be good; we say that Luqman the wise and Bilal were black with good character and they were not prophets. How could the above-mentioned khabar be authentic when the Holy Prophet (saw) said to Bilal: I heard the sound of your shoes in Paradise just in front of me.” If Black people didn’t have any good in them how was it possible for Bilal (ra) to be promised Paradise by the Holy Prophet?
 Narrated by Jabir Ibn Abdullah (ra): “Umar used to say Abu Bakr is our chief and he manumitted our chief, meaning Bilal.” In the Arab world people do not call their sons Bilal (ra) even though he was a prominent Sahaabah; all this is due to racism on their part.”

  

Notes

---

[1] See Wesley Muhammad, “Were the Pre-Islamic Arabs Racist? The Evidence of Bilal ibn Rabah,” @ http://blackarabia.blogspot.com/2011/09/bilal-b-ribah-not-first-black-muslim.html

[2] Apud Ibn Abi al-Hadid, Sharh nahj al-balaghah, V:56. 

[3] Al-Jahiz, Fakhr al-sudan ‘ala al-bidan, I:207.

[4] Dana Marniche, “FEAR OF BLACKNESS PART II: EARLY DESCRIPTIONS OF THE CENTRAL ARABIAN TRIBESMEN WHO COMPRISED THE ‘MOORS’ OF SPAIN,” http://www.africaresource.com/rasta/sesostris-the-great-the-egyptian-hercules/fear-of-blackness-part-ii-dana-marniche/

[5] John Alembillah Azumah, The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa: A Quest for Inter-religious Dialogue (Oxford: Oneworld, 2001) 139, 112.

[6] St Clair Drake, Black Folks Here and There, 2:85, 152.

[7] Bernard Lewis, Race and Color in Islam (New York: Harper & Row, 1971) 7, 8-9. 

Egyptian Sacred Science and Islam: A Reappraisal (Free Ebook)

To access the Ebook go to:

http://www.drwesleymuhammad.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/Egyptian_Sacred_Science_AND_Isalm_Full.90135027.pdf

The Ka’ba, the Qur’an and the Black God of Kemet: Part I

By Wesley Muhammad, PhD. 

1. Fruits of the Same Tree

Baba Rafiq Bilal (d. November 28, 2008) and Thomas Goodwin's 1987 publication, Egyptian Sacred Science in Islam: The Sacred Science of Ancient Egypt as revealed in Al-Islam,” was groundbreaking.  Professor Dr Wade Nobles, who wrote the forward to the book, called the work a “thoroughly supported bridge between Islam and the Ancient Kemetic understanding of the most Holy of Holies.” Egyptian Sacred Science in Islam was certainly a trailblazer not unlike Dr Yosef Ben Yochannan’s, The African Origin of the Major ‘Western’ Religions. According to Bilal and Goodwin’s research, “a serious study of the ancient religion of Egypt and the religion of al-Islam reveals the two to actually be different expressions of the same truths”.[1] The study of these two traditions convinced Bilal and Goodwin that:

“God Almighty presented essentially the same truths to the pre-historic Egyptians who built the fabulous civilization upon the principles of the Sacred Revelation, as He presented thousands of years later to Prophet Muhammad Ibn Abd Allah in the Holy Qur’an. Holy Qur’an is the purification and refinement of this ancient system of knowledge. The truth from God is one truth. In order to convey the body of knowledge which they received, the ancient Egyptians developed the most elaborate educational system in the history of man. Prophet Muhammad, the unlettered Prophet (the Umi Prophet) received and transmitted the same body of knowledge through revelation many thousands of years later…”

Bilal and Goodwin set out to document the nexus between the Qur’anic lexicon and historiography and Kemetic Sacred Science, arguing that:

“Within the pages of the Holy Qur’an, wrapped in the ancient Arabic language are preserved the following aspects of Egyptian history and sacred science (among others): 1: Concept of God, Nature and Knowledge [etc.]…”

I fully concur with Bilal and Goodwin. A close examination of the religious literature of ancient Egypt and Qur’anic/Islamic tradition confirms that the two traditions (Kemetic and Islamic) share a basic understanding of God. This concurrence of Kemetic and Islamic theology goes a long way in demonstrating that Ma’at and Islam are cognate traditions and spring from the same African Tree of Spirituality.    

2. The Ka’ba and the Black God of Kemet

Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop had already pointed out some of the parallels between Kemetic and Islamic traditions.[2] These were primarily ritual parallels: the Muslim ablution, the ritual prayers, the 30-day fast, the abstention from pork, all find precedent in ancient Egypt.[3] To this list may be added the seven-fold circumambulation around the sacred temple.[4]

But the theologies implied behind these rituals were equally similar. Diop hints at this fact:

“It is remarkable that many Arabic religious terms can be obtained by a simple combination of the three Egyptian ontological notions, Ba, Ra, Ka. As examples we can cite:

KABAR (a) = The action of raising the arms in prayer

RAKA         = The action of placing the forehead on the ground

KAABA      = The holy place of Mecca”[5]

Our focus here will be on the last point: Islam’s most sacred “house of God” and also its central religious symbol (i.e. the Black Stone or Al-Hajar Al-Aswad) housed therein are both called Ka’ba. In order to fully understand and appreciate this verbal assonance between Kemetic ontological notions and Islamic religious terminology and sacred architecture – and thus appreciate Diop’s insight - we must have a clear understanding of the relevant Kemetic concepts.

2.1.  Ancient Egyptian Ontology

Kemetic ontology recognized different aspects or modes (upwards of nine) of divine and human “being-ness,” usually identified by such terms as: khat, ab, ren, ka, ba, shut, akh, sahu. However, regarding the gods the emphasis was clearly on but three of these:

“Your ba is in the sky

Your body (khat) is in the netherworld

Your statue (=ka) is in the temple”

This recurrent tripartite theme has been elucidated by Egyptologist Jan Assmann.[6] The ba, theka, and the khat of the gods were often the focus of the theologians of Kemet. The Khat was the mortal body of the god, liable to decay and thus becoming a corpse and a mummy (sahu). Theka, on the other hand, was the immortal body of the god. It is a perfect replica of the khat or mortal body, without the mortality of it. In a famous depiction, the god Khnum who created humans on his potter’s wheel is shown creating the khat and its twin ka simultaneously.  Contrary to popular Western notions, the ka was not the immaterial “soul” or “spirit” of man/gods. It was as much a spiritual-material mode of being as the khat was, but it was a more transcendent mode of being. It is identified with the cult statue of the god in the temple, which itself was understood to be the divine body of the god on earth.

Khnum on his Potter's Wheel

The ba, often described as the “soul,” is better described as the Kemetic notion of vital force or the essence of the gods. According to Eberhard Otto, in humans the ba represented the embodiment of his/her vital forces and in the gods the embodiment of divine powers.[7]  It was this vital force/power that was ritualistically called down by the Egyptian priests to inhabit (!) and thus enliven the cult statute. As Prof Emily Teeter of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago explains:  

  

“The divine statue was provided as a physical form (ka) in which the ba could reside so that human beings could communicate with it…Once filled with and enlivened by the ba of the god, the cult statue became the ka, or physical form of the god.”[8] 

How does this relate to the Islamic Ka’ba (=Ka + Ba)? The Black Stone in pre-Islamic Arabia served the same purpose as the cult statue did in Kemet.

“A principal sacred object in Arabian religion was the stone. . . . Such stones were thought to be the residence of a god hence the term applied to them by Byzantine Christian writers of the fifth and sixth centuries: 'baetyl', from bet'el, 'the house of god'.”

Like the ka-statue of the Kemetic deities a baetyl was regarded as “the container of the god.”[9] And as Warwick Ball points out, this characteristically Arabian/Semitic tradition of the cultic stone finds its great expression today in the Ka’ba of Mecca:  

“Abstract representations of deity in the form of a square or cube was common throughout the (Pre-Hellenic) Semitic Near East…This was the baetyl, or stone cult object, the focal point of

so many temples not subject to Classicising influences…Indeed, the ancient Semitic idea of the sacred cube reaches culmination in the center of Semitic worship today: the Ka’ba…at Mecca.”[10]

Tremendous light was shed on the Arabian/Islamic Ka’ba and thus on its similarities with the Kemetic ka-statue by Prof Hildegard Lewy (d. 1969), Romanian Jew from Klausenburg and Semitics scholar and Assyriologist from Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati. In her exceptionally important article “Origin And Significance of the Magen Dawid: A Comparative Study in the Ancient Religions of Jerusalem and Mecca,”[11] Lewy documented an ancient Semitic tradition – out of which the cults of Jerusalem and Mecca evolved – centered on a black stone that was considered to be both an embodiment of the primordial waters and a piece of the body of a deity, the divine body being made from those dark waters.  Lewy noted:

“the Black Stone…was thought to be…a part of the body of a great god…(I)n the form of a black meteorite a piece of the deity’s astral body was visible to the congregation at all times…”[12]

This stone, through which the deity was worshipped, was anciently housed in a cubed temple or shrine covered in black curtains. The ‘blackness’ of this pre-Islamic Arabian/Semitic deity and his cult inspired associations with the astral deity Saturn, the ‘Black Planet,”[13] whose temple was also made of black stone, draped with black curtains, and featured a black stone representing the deity or an anthropomorphic statue of the deity made from black stone. Both al-Masudi (d. 956) and al-Dimasqi (d. 1327)578 report identifications of the Meccan Ka’ba with the cult of the black deity Saturn, as did the Dabistān –i Mazāhib.

The black stone of the Meccan Ka’ba, Lewy has well argued, must be understood against the backdrop of the broader Semitic cult of stones. While the shrine or temple itself was feminized and therefore identified with a goddess, the stone inside the shrine is identified with the male god, Allāh. This point is explicitly made in a Muslim tradition according to which al-Zubayr b. al-‘Awwām (d. 656), famous companion of the Prophet Muhammad, was digging in al-Hijr while rebuilding the Ka’ba and found a stone on which was written: innānī Allāh Dhū Bakka, “I am Allāh, Lord of Bekka (=Mecca).”[14]

We have every reason to believe that the cult of the Ka’ba had the same significance for the prophet Muhammad that it did for the ancient Arabians: it was the cult center of the Black God, Allāh. As Lewy well argues in her study of the cult of the Black God in Mecca and Jerusalem:

“the Black Stone…was thought to be…a part of the body of a great god…(I)n the form of a black meteorite a piece of the deity’s astral body was visible to the congregation at all times…It was…no break with the ancient religion of Mecca when Mohammed…set up the Hajar al-aswad  (Black Stone) in a place where it was accessible to the eyes and the lips of the worshipers…It is…pertinent to recall that, before designating…the Ka’ba as the qibla… Mohammed ordered his followers to turn their faces in prayer toward the sacred rock in Jerusalem. The significance of this command becomes apparent if it is kept in mind that the qibla is an outgrowth of the belief…that man can address his prayers only to a being visible to the eyes[15]…when praying…the worshipper turned his eyes either to the heavenly body itself or, in it absence, to the stone or statue representing it on earth. If, however, he was not present in the town where a sacred stone, assumed to be a part of the deity’s astral body, was visible to the congregation, he still turned his eyes in the direction of this sanctuary, it being supposed that, having visited and inspected the deity’s body on the occasion of the annual pilgrimage, he could visualize it and thus address his prayer to it even from a distant point or locality.”

While Muhammad, upon conquering Mecca, destroyed most of the 360 pre-Islamic idols that had been housed in the Ka’ba, he not only kept this pre-Islamic idol, i.e. the Black Stone, but he made it the center of Islamic ritual. Muhammad’s reported interaction with Al-Hajar al-Aswad or the Black Stone is equally suggestive. He is known to have circumambulated the Ka’ba on camelback while pointing to the Black Stone with a staff exclaiming, Allāhu Akbar (Allāh is the greatest).[16] He was observed touching the stone with a stick and then kissing the stick. According to ‘Abd Allah b. ‘Umar, son of the second caliph, Muhammad would touch the Black Stone, kiss it, and weep for a long time. He reportedly said to ‘Umar: “O ‘Umar, this is the place where one should shed tears.” It is not made clear why interacting with the Black Stone was a source of such sadness, but that the Prophet made some intimate, deeply emotional association between the stone and Allāh is quite evident from these reports. In this regard, a famous hadith of the Prophet is relevant:

“The Ka’ba (stone) is the Right Hand of Allāh and with it He shakes the hands of His servants as a man shakes the hand of His friend.”[17]

“Right Hand” here seems to be synecdoche (a part of something standing for the whole). In the history of religious symbolism the Hand symbolized a transmitter of spiritual and physical energy.[18] This is an apt description of the black body that the creator-god made for himself in order to be able to transmit his divine luminosity to earth without scorching it. As the Indian Islamic scholar Muhammad Hamidullah summed up the meaning of the Black Stone: “The right hand of the invisible God must be visible symbolically. And that is the al-Hajar al-Aswad, the Black Stone in the Ka'bah.”  

Diop’s insight is thus well-founded: Islam’s Ka’ba is the Kemetic ka and ba, the ka or divine body/cult statue in which resides the ba or divine essence of the god, Allah.  

Ma'atic Islam, or No Islam At All

Notes

[1] Rafiq Bilal and Thomas Goodwin, Egyptian Sacred Science in Islam: The Sacred Science of Ancient Egypt as revealed in Al-Islam (n.p.: n.p., 1987)147.

[2] Cheikh Anta Diop, Civilization or Barbarism: An Authentic Anthropology (New York: Lawrence Hill Books, 1991); The African Origin of Civilization (Westport: Lawrence Hill & Company, 1967); The Cultural Unity of Black Africa (1963/1989).  

[3] See also Emily Teeter, Religion and Ritual in Ancient Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Serǵe Sauneron, The Priests of Ancient Egypt, New Edition (1957; Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000).

[4] See Heinrich Brugsch, Religion und Mythologie der alten Aegypter (Leipzig: J.C. Hinrich’sche Buchhandlung, 1891) 346; Hugo Greßmann, “Tod und Auferstehung des Osiris nach seiner Festbräuchen und Umzügen,” Der Alt Orient 23 (1923): 23.

[5] Diop, Cultural Unity of Black Africa, 89.

[6] The Search for God in Ancient Egypt (Cornell University Press, 2001).

[7]  E. Otto, "Die Anschauung vom B3 nach Coffin Texts Sp. 99-104," Miscellanea Gregoriana(1941), 151-60. For more recent discussions see Louis Vico Zabkar,  A Study of the Ba Concept in Ancient Egyptian Texts (University of Chicago Press, 1968); R.B. Finnestad, “On transposingSoul and Body into a monistic conception of Being. An example from Ancient Egypt”, Religion 16 (1986): 359-373.

[8] Teeter, Religion and Ritual, 44.

[9] Healey, Religion of the Nabataeans, 157.

[10] Warwick Ball, Rome in the East: the transformation of an empire (Routledge, 2000) 379-380.

[11] Hildegard Lewy, “Origin And Significance of the Magen Dawid: A Comparative Study in the Ancient Religions of Jerusalem and Mecca,” ArOr 18 (1950): 330-365.

[12] Lewy, “Origin and Significance,” 345. 348, 349.

[13] The Babylonians called Saturn Mi “The Black”. See Robert Brown, The Great Dionysiak Myth (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1878) 329. According to the Dabistān –i Mazāhib or “Schools of Religions” Saturn’s temple was constructed out of black stone as was his statue that stood there. In addition, Saturn’s officiating ministers were all black complexioned persons, Ethiopians, etc. The Dabistán or School of Manners, trans. David Shea and Anthony Troyer (New York and London: M. Walter Dunne, 1901) 22.

[14] Al-Azraqi, Kitab Akhbar Makka, apud Die Chroniken der Stadt Mecca, ed. Ferdinand Wüstenfeld (Leipzig, 1858-61) 42-3; Tabari, Tafsir (Cairo ed.) III:61.

[15] We are here reminded of the famous “Hadīth of Jibrīl” in which Muhammad defines ihsan as “to worship God as though you see Him, and if you cannot see Him, then indeed He sees you."

[16] Bukharī, Sahih, II, 697.

[17] Ibn Qutayba, Ta' wil Mukhtalif al-Hadith (1972) 215 (=1995 ed; p. 198, 262); Al-Qurtubi,al-Asna fi Sharh Asma' Allah al-Husna, II:90-91.

[18] Jack Tressidder, Symbols and Their Meanings (New York: Barnes and Noble, 2006) 22.