Announcing the Death of Dr. Maya Angelou

The death has been reported of one of those rare human beings who made the world far better than it was when they arrived in it - Dr. Maya Angelou. Memory of her will glow.

 

Gun Violence, Taboo, and Purification

The recent senseless killing of college students in California has once again set the American media abuzz about mental illness and gun violence, with an added twist - America's treatment of women (given that many of the students killed are girls). However, the focus of this post is the question of conceptualizing gun violence as resulting from mental illness. The NRA seems to have trumpeted this dogma so much that when something like this happens there is hardly any other way of thinking about it. When the focus is placed on mental illness, the issue then becomes an individual problem so that the solution seems to lie with building more mental health hospitals. Now, while building mental health hospitals is helpful in these matters, what I am aiming at here is a perception of gun violence that is not as individualistic as a focus on mental illness. After all, it does not appear to me that Americans are the most mentally ill people in the world so that mental illness does not justify the frequency of gun violence in this country. The perspective I want to present here is the perception of gun violence as taboo that pollutes the land.

Among the Vengo people of Cameroon, as among many African peoples, it is taboo for one person to kill another, especially in circumstances where the victim is innocent. Because killing an innocent person pollutes the land, the solution is not only looked for in the mental capacity of the killer. Even if the person who commits the murder is seen as mentally ill, the blame is not placed only on the mental illness. The issue is seen as a societal issue not only because the murder affects the whole community but also because the murderer is a product of the community. Thus, in order to address the issue, both the community and the individual are cleansed from this pollution. Failure to do this will guarantee the occurrence of similar events in the future. The purpose of cleansing the community is for the community to recover its lost spirit of harmony that has been destroyed by breaking a taboo.

Many in America reject the idea of community because they have been trained to think only in individualistic terms. However, when it comes to gun violence, thinking in individualistic terms will not do. After all, when looked at closely, mental illness is not just an individual thing. As Michel Foucault has shown, the definition of mental health is a function of the mental health of a society. Thus, focusing on individual mental health to the neglect of the mental health of the whole society will be to miss the point. Perhaps understanding gun violence as societal taboo that requires purification will alert us to the gravity of the situation. Perhaps this land to be purified. It is unnatural for parents to be burying their children, especially when the cause of death is gun violence. What do we need to do in order to purify this land?

Christianity, Islam, and Religious Violence in Africa

The arrival of Christianity and Islam to Africa has bred a phenomenon which is unfamiliar to adherents of African Indigenous Religions - religiously inspired violence. Africans, like people everywhere, have often fought against each other. However, such fighting have hardly been based on metaphysical or religious ideas. The struggle for natural resources has often been primary in African conflicts. With Christianity and Islam, however, things have been different. Adherents of these religions have often found metaphysical or religious reasons for violence against Africans. Central to this is the idea that Africans are/were pagans, that is, not Christians or Muslims. Thus, they needed to be made Christians or Muslims by all means necessary. Better for Africans to be made Christians or Muslims through violence than for their souls to perish in the fire of hell, they have claimed. A primary reason why European Christians supported the enslavement of Africans, which resulted in their transportation to the New World, was that enslaving Africans would expose them to Christianity and so save them from eternal damnation in hell. Apartheid in South Africa was defended on grounds that it is God's will that people live separately (which is the meaning of apartheid). These religiously sanctioned worldviews exposed Africans to unspeakable suffering.

Islam first came to Africa riding on the back of violence, as violent jihad was waged against Egyptians, the first people to become Muslim in Africa. Egyptians who did not become Muslims were made to pay more in taxes. The Berbers of the Maghreb became Muslims under duress. Even though Islam came to West Africa through trading routes, the expansion of Islam in Africa, especially in what is called Nigeria today, was based on violence. Usman dan Fodio established what is the spiritual center of Nigerian Muslims today, the Sokoto Caliphate, through a violent jihad. This violence continues today with Boko Haram, whose explicit intension is to overthrow the Nigerian government and establish an Islamic state in Nigeria. Boko Haram's contemporary activities are in line with the vision of Usman dan Fodio. Thus, the first thing Boko Haram did when it kidnapped the Nigerian girls was to convert them to Islam.

Perhaps there is something inherently violent in totalizing worldviews that can only make peace with the Other by converting them.

The Huffington Post and Pictures of Starving Africans

Pictures of starving Africans became the mainstay of Western media outlets in the 1980s because of the famine in Ethiopia. These pictures were later replaced by pictures of genocide in Rwanda and Burundi in the 1990s. There was then a lull in the 2000s. With the current wars in South Sudan and Central African Republic, pictures of starvation and genocide are returning. The Huffington Post retrieved the respected tradition of imaging the starving Black child in Africa today. And so the monological portrayal of Africa continues. Africa needs help!

Boycott Qatar's 2022 World Cup of Death

Even though Fifa President, Sepp Blatter, has said that it would be a mistake to hold the 2022 soccer world cup in Qatar, his reason for saying so should be seen as minor compared to the main reason the competition should be pulled from Qatar. Blatter said that the heat is the main reason why the world cup should not be held in Qatar. However, the main reason the tournament should not be held there is that Qatar is building the venues for the tournament on the backs of dead people, literally. An ESPN report suggested that by 2022 over four thousand migrant workers from India and Nepal would have died in the process of building the venues to host the tournament. It would be a disgrace for Fifa to allow a country like Qatar to host the world cup when it is clear that its preparation is based on slave labor. Qatar has virtually become a killing field and a slave plantation for many who have risked their lives to travel for work in a place they thought would make their lives better. Fifa would be contributing to making many widows in Southeast Asia if it does not pull this competition from Qatar. Sepp Blatter said that it was a mistake to award the tournament to Qatar because of the heat. It would be a bigger mistake to host the competition there because doing so would make Fifa complicit in the murder of migrant workers in Qatar. If Fifa does not pull the plug on Qatar's hosting of this world cup, advertisers should boycott the event.

 

Globalization and the Triumph of Darwin and Nietzsche

When Charles Darwin put forward his idea of the evolution of species through natural selection, many conservatives latched on the claim that humans evolved from apes and swore that Darwin was a liar because he contradicted the Bible. However, what is actually going on is that our world, especially in the time of globalization, is living by one of the important insights of Darwin, namely, that the strong survive while the weak perish. This idea is also known as the survival of the fittest. It is this insight that led Nietzsche to argue that morality is basically the will of the strong and that life is about strength rather than weakness. All pleas to the contrary notwithstanding, the structure of the modern world shouts that Darwin and Nietzsche have won because the world is actually structured according to their insights. In fact, the West has taken Darwin and Nietzsche far more seriously than Jesus Christ even though it is claimed that Christianity is important to contemporary Western civilization. Many of those who preach Christianity are actually the ones who live by the insight of Darwin and Nietzsche as they hoard much of the world's resources while the weak of the earth die of want. Whenever it is suggested that the world is not supposed to be structured in ways that make the rich richer and the poor poorer it is often those who believe that they are following Christ who take the side of Darwin and Nietzsche by shouting about socialism and suggesting, falsely, that wealth is a reward for hard work. Thus, today, both individual nations and the world as a whole are structured in a lopsided way where the strong, as Darwin and Nietzsche argued, are the ones who are flourishing while the weak perish. This is especially evident in the place of Africa in the modern world. While many in the West talk about Jesus, Jesus is actually losing the argument in the way people live. As one of my colleagues insightfully points out, we should listen to what people say but we should pay more careful attention to how they live because it is how they live, not what they say, that tells us what they believe. The hoarding of the world's wealth in the West to the detriment of the poor, especially the poor of Africa, is a telling sign of the triumph of Darwin and Nietzsche. 

Being Gay in Africa: A Film From Namibia

The Struggle to Define Africa

There has been a long struggle to define what passes for the continent of Africa today. Historians tell us that the name of the continent itself is of complex provenance and has been applied to many geographical regions, from Roman North Africa to the geographical landmass called Africa today. However, the struggle has not only been about naming the continent but also about describing what it is. This struggle especially increased when the continent encountered Arab/Islamic and then Western/Christian adventurers and colonizers. On the one hand, the continent has been described as a despicable place made up of people who are not to be automatically recognized as humans. On the other hand, some are describing the continent as a place that has undergone significant unjust suffering, a sleeping giant that is about to awake. Africa has been defined as darkness and as light, as cradle of human civilization and as the uncivilized. With every single word spoken/written for or against the continent, this battle for definition continues. What is Africa? What would Africa be? Our only hope is that defining Africa should not include violence. Violence is the work of people who are unable to argue their point of view. Is it possible to say what Africa is without inflicting violence on the continent?

On the Similarity Between the Nigerian Government and Boko Haram

In the tragedy of the kidnapped schoolgirls in Nigeria one may think that the Nigerian government and Boko Haram are on different sides of the matter - with Boko Haram blighting the futures of the girls while the Nigerian government want to give them a better future. This would not be an accurate way to see the two sides in this matter. The main difference between the Nigerian government and Boko Haram in this case is that the Nigerian government is not the direct or immediate perpetrator of the abductions. It should now be clear to all that just as Boko Haram does not appear to care about these girls so too does the government of Nigeria have no interest in their well-being. This is clearly seen in how the Nigerian government was only dragged by international attention to take the matter seriously. In this callousness, the Nigerian government is similar to Boko Haram.

There is, however, another striking similarity between Boko Haram and the Nigerian government: their anti-Western discourses. As many have pointed out, Boko Haram means Western education is forbidden. Thus, the group is staunchly anti-Western and its goal is to erase all Western influence in Nigeria by taking over the state and turning it into an Islamic state. This anti-Western stance is also demonstrated by the Nigerian government and, in fact, by many governments in Africa. This anti-Western stance stems from the historically asymmetrical relations that has existed between Africa and the West. In this context, African intellectuals and politicians have often advocated for African agency, the fact that Africans should take charge of their destiny rather than bowing to Western machinations. The Nigerian government's initial rejection of help from America to deal with the current tragedy should be placed within this context. African political and intellectual elite do not want to often be seen as being controlled by the West, at least not in public. Negotiating Africa's public relations with the West is still a significant problem in African studies and polities. This relation has to be carefully negotiated if legitimate governments would seem different from terrorist groups like Boko Haram.

Jon Stewart Goes to Nigeria

That Boko Haram Video of Kidnapped Girls

The video below is said to be of some of the girls Boko Haram recently kidnapped in Nigeria. The video is said to have been shot in an undisclosed location. This is a strange claim, given that any government that claims to be a government of the people should know every part of the country it governs. It is strange that a large group of over one hundred girls could be hidden in a location inside Nigeria (Cameroon has denied claims that the girls have been taken to Cameroon) with the Nigerian government having no clue as to where this large group could be. This shows that the government of Nigeria is not a government of the country, as it might claim to be. It is rather a government of those parts inside Nigeria which it controls. This is the bane of many African countries that are made up of many places over which the government has no control. A government which has no control over certain parts of its territory should not be called a government of that territory. Goodluck Jonathan is therefore not the president of Nigeria but the president  of that part of Nigeria which his government controls. The part Boko Haram controls is not under the authority of his government. If he wants to be the president of the whole country, he should work to know where these girls are and bring them home.

 

The Return of Africa, the Chaotic?

For a little while now, there has been a lull in the portrayal of negative images of Africa in Western media. We even began to see images of a rising Africa and the cleanliness of Rwanda, that poster child of world genocide.

All that is now changing. With the wars in South Sudan and Central African Republic, and the instability in Nigeria, Egypt, and Libya, the images of conflict ridden Africa is back with a vengeance in the Western media. We now see dead African bodies lying in the streets of Central African Republic and pictures of helpless parents pleading for the return of their kidnapped daughters in Nigeria. Nigeria that appeared to be a rising giant is now begging America to help it fight Boko Haram. Plus ca change . . . .