Universally Speaking
Rahim Islam is a National Speaker and Writer, Convener of Philadelphia Community of Leaders, and President/CEO of Universal Companies, a community development and education management company headquartered in Philadelphia, PA. Follow Rahim Islam on FaceBook(Rahim Islam) & Twitter (@RahimIslamUC)
Rahim Islam
Over the past three years, I have written nearly 150 articles about the issues that plague the Black community in America primarily due to the legacy of the American institution of slavery.
The issues are challenging, but they also represent opportunities for this generation of Black people to step up and distinguish themselves. By writing these articles, I hope to encourage our leadership to have a greater sense of urgency and to organize themselves to begin to build the infrastructure needed to address and defend the Black community.
While I do believe that some progress has been made, it’s not nearly enough, especially when you consider the magnitude of our dilemma.
I know that most of us want to do something, but very few have figured out what to do and why progress remains so elusive.
It is my fundamental belief that the Black community, as a group, are paralyzed, conditioned to depend on someone else to do for us what only we must do.
There is no sustained, organized movement underway.
I call this paralysis being spiritually fragile and unable to use our spirituality to affect change for the Black group.
I’m not talking about individual progress.
We can have that all day and night and our group will still fall deeper and deeper into despair and closer to permanent second-class citizenship (we really need to look at individual success compared to 45 million).
This is not an attack against any one religion. Blacks suffer from a society of white supremacy and Black inferiority and no religious thought has been able to free us from the group paralysis.
I believe that a large part of the conditioning, however, has come through religion.
Religion has played and continues to play a tremendous role in American life.
The influence of religion is everywhere and is imbedded within all of our institutions (i.e. law, education, family, community, etc.).
The biggest and most damaging lies are the early images of God and the God-like as being white.
While you would be hard pressed today to find a Black church with Jesus Christ portrayed as a white man, after years of indoctrination and a whole host of white supremacist tactics, media stimuli, for the average Black person the damage has already been done and the image of Jesus Christ (the son of God) is consciously or subconsciously believed to be a white man, which further supports white supremacy in America (by deduction this also supports Black inferiority).
We can’t say that this doesn’t matter or doesn’t have an impact. For one, most white Christians still hold these images up high. My own mother used to hang a large picture of a white Jesus Christ in the vestibule of the house.
It was the first visual you would see when you came into the house.
The portrayal of a white man as the son of God and interchangeably as God, was the image that my mother believed in.
Now, I’m not a theologian and I’m not even a student of religion, but I feel that this representation has been very damaging to the Black community and has, in many ways, supported the concept of white supremacy and black inferiority.
I believe that when the Creator created man in His own image, that image wasn’t anything physical because physical reduces the discussion to limitations and the Creator has no limitations.
The image of the Creator is the characteristics of His “Spirit” and His “Will.” –These are the things that men are supposed to emulate.
The white man has abused his position by portraying God as the likeness of himself and has led men down a poisonous path that supports hatred of other humans and the destruction of the earth (how else was the American institution of slavery reinforced).
Too many Blacks have received the wrong concept of God.
They have been made to look for the God that they can see with their physical eyes, which is impossible and, since the image of a white man was put on the cross as Jesus, Black people identified white physical flesh with God, which has made them more amenable to accepting and loving white people more than their own group.
Let me ask you, what would be the impact on white children if, for hundreds of years, a Black man was portrayed as God, the Creator of the Heavens and the Earth.
How much would that white child love, hate or dislike themselves while loving someone else?
This lie has been devastating to the overall psyche of Black people, especially our children.
The myth that young children are blind to race has been debunked repeatedly, and studies have found that the self-esteem of our youth is easily influenced even before they hit puberty.
The domination of this image of a white God is also consistent with America’s world domination and the influence of religion exists no matter what religion you profess to believe in.
No matter what religious institution I attend in the Black community, the spiritual message doesn’t usually empower Black people to address their issues nor does it celebrate Black achievement, or place the responsibility of addressing the plight of Black people on the current generations of Black people.
There is too much focus on the past and not enough focus on the present and the future.
In addition, many institutions spend a significant amount of energy and focus on aspects of the next life and not enough focus on planning, strategizing, and working on the perils of this dimension of life.
Why should we spend so much energy on something that we have absolutely no control over and not commit to this life and what we absolutely have control over?
This approach paralyzes our abilities when we place more attention on the past versus theories of change today.
Unlike whites, who have used their religion to conquer and rule, the Blacks’ style of religion isn’t as aggressive and empowering.
In fact, it’s more of a comforting type of spirituality that is geared towards accommodating suffering.
This ideology was very reasonable given that Blacks were allowed to accept religion during the enslavement of Black people by white so-called Christians.
During this period, many of these same white Christians were unleashing the worst of human atrocities and terror against Black people with brutal beatings, tortures, and mass killings in the name of religion.
As a result, the psychological and emotional state of Blacks was in need of comfort and healing and religion provided a relief.
In many cases, given the current crippling state of affairs of the Black man in America, he is still in need of comfort but he is also in need of a message that will inspire him to fight back.
While I don’t profess to be an expert on religion, in my humble opinion, the legacy of this message is prevalent, though subliminal, today and Blacks are stuck in a “waiting” status – waiting for the Judgement Day when a final righting of all wrongs will take place. Yes, it is believed that at this time, those that are in power will be humbled to their knees and those that have been abused and mistreated will be empowered.
What a great day, especially for the Black people who have suffered under the rule of white supremacy, but who really knows when that day will happen and how many generations of whites will live a heaven on earth while so many Blacks live in a hell on earth?
The Black community has lost its ability to be proactive change agents, masters of their own destiny. Blacks have NOT taken responsibility for their future and instead await the final reckoning.
Many Blacks believe that the issues we face are beyond our human control and our human ability and we, therefore, need God to intervene in our affairs to fix this mess for us.
I don’t believe that any other group in the world has a spiritual message that doesn’t support them and their ability to be the best and the strongest. Blacks appear to be waiting for a superman, a supernatural phenomenon that will do the work that fundamentally they, as humans, must do for themselves (self-determination).
Blacks suffer from a society of white supremacy and Black inferiority and our spiritual teachings don’t address this.
How is it that white Christian Americans have a completely different social and economic experience than Blacks?
Sure, there is an historical advantage, and that advantage would requires Blacks to work harder and closer together.
Blacks don’t have the luxury of making excuses, nor can we wait for the future to correct the present.
After nearly 150 years of freedom, there is little evidence that Blacks have the capacity and the ability to chart their own determination and I believe that the spiritual message must be more aggressive.
My belief is that much of our spiritual relationship with the Creator has placed too much emphasis on prayer, worship, and a divine intervention.
From my perspective, like whites who are enjoying every aspect of this world, God has already given man everything needed to compete in this life yet the Black community remains in a subservient position. Our spiritual message should focus on correcting this.
Yes, I do believe in the power of prayer and reflection, but I don’t believe in praying for things that God has already given us.
We have all of the capacities that others have.
However, because of our past in this country, Blacks suffer from group inferiority.
The ritual of prayer should produce real action that will fix and/or change our predicament. Instead of “pray baby pray”, our slogan should be “build baby build”.
The message must be about one’s personal responsibility in the Black struggle and, more importantly, the message must evoke Black group responsibility in providing real cures for the ills and challenges that the Black community faces.
The spiritual message must address the carnage of the l American institution of slavery, the socioeconomic impact of the mass incarceration of Black men, and the unbelievable deterioration of the Black family and the Black community. This is no time to be just praying and waiting.
This is a doing matter. The things that have been done to Blacks by white so-called Christians (white supremacists) were done by design and the design was to ensure that the Black community would forever be subservient to the white community, and its working very well.
We can pray and worship but we must accept that the issues we face will not only NOT go away, but they will get worse for future generations of Black children.
“God, give me grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, Courage to change the things which should be changed, and the Wisdom to distinguish the one from the other”.
Yes, I’ve shortened the prayer because the point that I want to address is in the first sentences and that is “praying for the courage to change things which should be changed”.
Sure, there is a role for prayer and reflection, but after that, there must be action and that action must be informed, scientific, and organized.
If you don’t believe that things can be changed, your prayer should be for more courage.
I haven’t seen much from the religious leadership on strategies to win in this life.
Nor have I seen religious leadership that instructs our community on how to go from dust to industry; how to go from poverty to prosperity; how to go from collective weakness to collective strength; how to get our fair share of this life NOW and how we can make life better for future Black children and Black families. Many Black people have become so spiritual that we are unable to address the real and hard issues.
They focus on the low hanging fruit of life while the more demanding levels of spirituality go unattended.
Being spiritually drunk has crippled our ability to fight back.
This is very problematic when you consider the lives, the missions and the purposes of those historic figures that we say we follow (i.e. Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad, etc.)
These great men were not pacifists; go along to get along; assimilators; or cowards.
These men were fighters, builders, and warriors, etc. What would they do today?
Would they allow the demise of their own people to happen without doing something radical?
How would they address the institutions that perpetuate poverty and oppression?
How would they address the mass and unfair distribution of wealth in America?
What would they say about our government and its domestic and global policies? What would they say about you as the spiritual leader?
These great men were radical leaders. They weren’t in the church or the mosque praying all day and all night.
They weren’t overly focused on rituals when the people were poor, hungry and dying.
They weren’t spiritually drunk (intoxicated with the elementary meaning of spirituality). They were the ultimate doers and their spirituality was transformational and long-lasting.
It appears that Black leadership seems impotent to deal with and/or tackle the real issues of today, which is the outright oppression and unjust treatment of the Black man in America especially by our religious white so-called Christian brethren.
Some question whether the impotency is because of the betrayal of those that practice and/or teach religion today or if there is an inherent weakness in the overall message.
I don’t have those answers. I’m an outcome type of person and the outcome we currently face is not one that I want for our people and I’m calling the religious community to do what all leaders in our community must do to have a fighting shot – work together to save the Black family from becoming a permanent second class citizenship in America.
The originators of all religions were not about what they said but what they did and if judgment is reserved to actual outcomes, there is yet much room for improvement. Why?
Because Muslim, Christian, Jew, Hindu, etc. are just labels.
You can take a can of human waste and place the label of “cream” on it.
Does adding a nice label now change the human waste into cream? No, it’s still human waste and unless we begin to examine the contents, you might be drunk enough to believe that human waste is cream.
The label says cream, but the content (outcome) is completely different. There are severe disparities between White, Arab and Black people that practice the same faith.
I used to say that Christianity is for white People and Islam is for Arabs.
I’ve revised my comments a little more and now I say that Christianity has helped whites more than it has helped Blacks and Islam has helped Arabs more than it has helped Blacks.
Brotherhood is supposed to be at the core of both religions, along with the protection and advancement of humanity, but nothing could be further from our reality.
There is just no connection to the practice of brotherhood with the reality of so-called religious leadership.
No matter what religion you practice, Blacks need a Black liberation theology.
Black liberation theology must take under consideration the plight of Black people in America and all over the world.
Black liberation theology must recognize the power of the Creator and equally the gifts that the Creator has already given man – the ability to ponder, to think, to dream, to imagine, and the power to question.
Black liberation theology must produce more for those that suffer the most injustice and produce more direction for self-determination for those that need it the most.
Black liberation theology must be elevated and grow to become strong for good and the defender of what is good (there is a real war going on in the world between the forces of good and the forces of evil) and not be like bystanders in a parade.
Black liberation theology must be correcting to what is wrong starting with hating the wrong in our hearts; speak out against the wrong.
This is taking your hate of the wrong to a higher level and the highest and the hardest is to change the wrong with our hands.
This is much more than voicing your opinion; this is seeing a wrong and correcting it.
You become a representative of the Creator because you are doing God’s will on earth.
