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Hampate Ba (36) (Gracias, Susan!) Amadou Hampate Ba Aspects of African Civilization: Person, Culture, Religion Translated by Susan B. Hunt http://www.ee.upenn.edu/~rabii/toes/BaAspectsTOC.html Chapter 3: Reflections on the Islamic Religion (Continued) (Dialogue with the students of Niger) 5. Human beings are of different colors, and one yet speaks of the unity of man. Is this a scientific question or a religious truth? I had a hard time grasping this question. I do not see how color, which is only skin deep, can stand in the way of the unity of man. All cattle are of the same species even though they don't all have the same color of coat. There are red cattle, white cattle, white cattle with yellow spots, black cattle, etc. Science will explain one day the reason for the color of the skin. But it will never be able to deny the unity of man as human being, everywhere subject to the same natural laws, inhabited by same essential feelings, and capable of reason and wisdom -- or evil -- regardless of his origin. The unity of man is a religious truth, confirmed by science. A verse of Qur'an says: "We (i.e., God) created all of you starting from a single being. Then you were grouped into families... " 6. What is the origin of belief in a single God? It is not easy to determine, using modern methods of research, the origin of belief in a single God, and I am certainly not the one who will be able to do it. In any case, I would like to point out that because the idea of God is fundamentally linked to an attitude of faith, desiring to discuss it or to reason about it in a "Cartesian" manner is like wanting to fill a perforated barrel with water. Everything that has to do with God belongs to the realm of the Sacred, i.e., pertains to a world which eludes our instruments of analysis and ordinary human thought, which are essentially secular and quantitative rather than qualitative. Whereas thought proceeds by analysis and deduction, separating the elements to better examine and compare them, faith proceeds by combination and integration and is born of a certitude of the heart, or a certitude of the being, whichever you prefer. Faith places man before a mystery whose existence he senses, whose grandeur he can keenly feel, and whose mysterious Presence he can even sometimes, either spontaneously or after a long religious discipline, discover and taste, even though no external physical law is able to weigh, dissect and explain this phenomenon. Could an external and purely physical quantitative law ever explain the mystery of Love? Belief in a supreme God seems always to have dwelt at the heart of humanity, and one finds echoes of it in all traditions, even polytheism. There is often a question of a "father of the gods", or a "God of the gods", or of a "Supreme God" too distant to be addressed directly, so one addresses intermediate powers. (1) Perhaps this belief is like the echo, the reflection, of the unity of origin of mankind? Perhaps this is even a "pre-existential" memory? The Qur'an teaches us in fact that well before descending to Earth, the souls of men were summoned into the presence of God, whose existence they witnessed. God called to these souls: "Am I not your Lord?" "Yes, certainly," they answered. "We bear witness to it!" This memory is in us but our "corporeality", it could be said, obscures it. The noise of our thoughts, of our desires, of the forces which run through us, prevents us from remembering it, from hearing its echo. The heaviness of matter numbs us and carries us far from this center of our being. It is this primordial echo, perpetually forgotten by humanity, that divine Revelation periodically comes to remind men of through the voices of its Great Messengers. In the Qur'an, Revelation is called the "Great Reminder", and one of the meanings of the word "dhikr" is "recollection", recollection of God. The notion of a single God -- or monotheism properly so called -- is distinct from religious forms where one implicitly recognizes a unique or supreme God while acknowledging the existence of other gods. The pure monotheistic perspective does away with intermediary forms and powers, or rather renews them at their origin by integrating them into the sole Power of God, of which they become, for example in Islam, the "Attributes" of God: the Mercy of God, the Generosity of God, the Justice of God, etc. Judaism and its two branches -- Christianity and Islam -- are, theologically speaking, the true monotheisms. Abraham is the Father of monotheism. He transmitted it to his descendants through Isaac and Jacob. The one God of Abraham is the same one who appeared to Moses, blessed Jesus, and sent Muhammad (transformed into "Mahomet" in the French language) to complete and conclude Revelation in the current cycle of human history. __________________________ (1) Chapters 1 and 4 of this book treat traditional African religious concepts. 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