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From Omowale Pan-African Library, posted by Dwayne Wong (Omowale)

John Henrik Clarke on religion before Judaism, Christianity and Islam

Dwayne posted this archival recording of the historian John Henrik Clarke to his channel. He does not speak in it. Watch it on his channel, where the comments are.

The historian John Henrik Clarke says Africans were robbed of their original religions so long ago that their original forms have been forgotten. He describes a period before Judaism, Christianity, and Islam when people sensed a force in the universe without using the word God, a stage he calls “pre-God” religion, closer to spirituality than to any single god-word.

He says the religion built by Africa’s river civilizations touched every part of daily life: morality, dress, diet, marriage. It was not a Sunday or weekend religion. Because of that totality, there was no word for jail, orphanage, or old people’s home, since no one was ever discarded. He says the trouble began once outsiders organized and misused Nile Valley thought for political and military ends.

He closes on Islam, saying people moving into a new religion assume it has always existed, when it is in fact the newest of the world’s religions and hard to separate from Arab culture.

Transcript

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Transcribed by We Them Media from the audio Dwayne posted, with his permission. Speaker letters mark turns, as the model separated them.

These are the speakers’ own words. We have not checked their claims.

0:00ANow, my point is that we were robbed of our original religions so long ago, we have forgotten what those religions were. And once we go back to the original base of our religions, before Judaism, Christianity, or Islam, And under -- when we go back to those religions, those religions were based on spirituality. And the God concept of those religions, of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam, came out of what I refer to as pre-God religions. I don’t use that anymore because people don’t understand What I mean about pre-God religions, they are so accustomed to the word God, they cannot understand that there was a time when man thought of a force in the universe presiding over the universe.

1:12AAnd while he meant God, he did not use the word God. And man had more spirituality before he consistently used the word God. He used the God force and the God concept without using the word. He meant the same thing, and ultimately Western man interpreted that as meaning the same thing. But doing at this period when everything was all-encompassing, all-conclusive. Man had not created -- the Africans in the great river civilizations had created a religion that was so all-conclusive. It was not a weekend Jimmy Swaggart type of religion. It was a kind of religion that touched your total being. It wasn’t a Sunday religion, a weekend religion.

2:24AIt was part of your totality, your morality, your dress, your diet, your marriage, your total human being. And it dictated Everything. And this is why at this period in human history, man did not have a word for jail, because no one had ever gone to one. Amen. No word for orphanage, because no one had ever thrown away any children. That’s right. No word for old people’s homes, because no one had ever discarded Grandma and Grandpa. Indeed. Man was truly religious, too religious to shirk his responsibility in any way. I’m saying that that was a truly great religious period of man. But once these foreign clowns began to organize and misinterpret what the great Nile Valley African thinkers had and began to slap names on them and began to make political and military use of them.

3:42AThat’s why the whole thing went wrong. Now, when we look at Islam, where the brothers go wrong That every time they move from one religion to another, they think the new religion has been with us forever. It is the newest of the world’s religions and the last one to come into the mainstream of historical consideration. And when you separate it from Arabism, if you can, and it is difficult, I must admit,

That was the whole recording.

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