Freedom and A Little Something Left Over...That's All I Ever Wanted

[wlotus]

A young lady I used to mentor has taken on a "Queen" name and joined The Nation of Gods and Earths (also known as The Five Percenters). She seems happy in the photos and posts I have seen on her Myspace page, and she currently lives among other Five Percenters. While I do not embrace their beliefs, I respect and appreciate that this conversion appears to have given her a new focus and possibly raised her self-respect, at least from afar.

I asked her what drew her to that sect of Islam. She said she studied it for about a year before converting, and all of her questions were met with warmth, respect, and information. (The movement is big on black people having knowledge.) She found that was a sharp contrast to the, "It is so because I say so now stop questioning me and just believe!!!!" mentality she had encountered in the Black Pentecostal Christian movement she was raised in. I know that mindset all too well; it is part of what drove me from the movement, too. Being respected rather than treated like a pesky, unwanted child for daring to doubt is appealing. I am not surprised she was drawn in by that...and by the guy she is dating, ahem.

Where does this unwillingness to accept questioning come from in the black community? I think it is part cultural. People whose ancestry includes a few centuries of American slavery no doubt have passed down to their subordinates (whether their children or the membership of the churches they pastor) some of the same mentalities the slave owners beat into them. Questioning authority is frowned upon and, in some cases, is punishable by violence (verbal and/or physical). Believe what the master/mistress says, or at least put on a damn good act of doing so, simply because they said it. The maddening nature of those expectations was enough to make countless slaves risk their lives and the lives of their loved ones to escape. Many of us are still taking considerable (social and familial) risks to escape, today.

It is this desire to be free that may be driving my insistence that there is no true choice without justice, without an evening of the playing field. Mere survival--going along to get along, making so-called choices within the limits of the master-slave relationship--was not good enough for the slaves who escaped, and it is not good enough for me, either. I can do it to survive, but I don't expect to be happy doing it.

Comments

[iswari.livejournal.com]

I'd never heard of that sect. I'm not sure I understand how those professing to be following Islam would say that any person (regardless of color) is god/Allah? Or do they believe the traditional Islam/Qu'ran has got it wrong? Just curious.

Anyway, interesting post.

[wlotus.livejournal.com]

I had never heard of them, either, before her sister told me about the family drama her sister's conversion was causing. (Their Black Pentecostal mother does not approve, by any stretch of the imagination.)

They are an offshoot of The Nation of Islam, so I expect their teachings would be different from NOI teachings, which are (if I recall correctly) different in some ways from traditional Islam.

[wlotus.livejournal.com]

They do not profess to follow Islam. (http://www.allahsnation.net/What.html) They are called an offshoot/sect of Islam by others because their founder came out of the NOI, but I probably misspoke by calling them that.

[iswari.livejournal.com]

I figured something like that, but was confused when they mentioned something in their "what we believe" about how Islam is a natural way of life.

[wlotus.livejournal.com]

Interestingly enough, this NPR story (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5614846) says the NOI believes it's founder, W. D. Farad Muhammad was God. The founder of the Five Percenters doubted that, because Muhammad was bi-racial, not "pure" black. Traditional Islam, on the other hand, teaches God is separate from man.

What is interesting to me is the NOI offshoot of traditional Islam claims the divinity of a human, as does Christianity. I never realized the two religions share that similarity.