Five Dumb Statements About Islam by the UK’s “Counter-intelligence Agent” Sa Ra Garvey Refuted
Five Dumb Statements About Islam by the UK’s “Counter-intelligence Agent” Sa Ra Garvey Refuted
The YouTube pseudo-intellectual and fake Pan Africanist Sa Ra Garvey is a Hodge-Podge of all clichés of the conscious community. It’s as though white colonists were in a room somewhere trying to come up with the perfect government agent to dispense in the black community in a futile effort stop the rise of Islam but ended up with their caricature of a pan-Afrikanist.
Ala Sa Ra Garvey. There’s no bio on this guy. It’s like he has no history. Almost as if the information about him is being controlled by someone beyond his pedestrian profile.
One of the clichés that is common for these prolific social media actors is to disparage Islam. The religion of Islam is one of the cornerstones of pan-Afrikan legacy. Still many like Sa Ra want to see this connection broken. Here are five of the dumbest lies that Sa Ra Garvey has said over the span of his internet presence and why they are lies.
Sa Ra Garvey’s Claim #1: The Arabs forced Islam on Africans
This is a favorite of the British counterintelligence, oh, I mean Sa Ra Garvey’s. What Garvey and the others who repeat this falsehood still have yet to do is to name a single African tribe who were forcibly converted to Islam. This challenge has existed since the lie began and has not been met since the lie began. So, either they answer this question or drop it altogether.
Those who make this claim are always at a loss for detail. They can never tell you the year(s) these forced conversions took place. Where they took place. Or, with who were converted. Always generalities. The fact of the matter is that Islam enters sub-Sahara by trade and is first adopted by the merchants and then the aristocracy who then disseminated the religion among the people. This is was a lengthy process and occurred within the African societies without interference from Arabs or even North African Berbers. Historians and anthropologists have moved on from the Islam conquered by the sword myth. Even though it was the myth that they created self-proclaimed pan-Afrikanists like Sa Ra Garvey repeat it with the same careless ignorance he’s made all of his other claims.
Sa Ra-Garvey Claim #2: Islamophobia is a Myth
Sa Ra Garvey has repeatedly asserted Islamophobia is a myth. Saying Islamophobia is a myth is like saying anti-blackness is a myth because the two are inextricably linked.
In The Rising Tide of Color Against White Supremacy, white colonist Lothrop Stoddard identified Islam as the chief threat to white supremacy in Africa. He wrote that “in so far as he is Christianized, the Negro’s savage instincts will be restrained, and he will be disposed to acquiescence in white tutelage. In so far as he is Islamized, the negros warlike propensities will be inflamed…” Stoddard advocated sending Christian missionaries to non-Muslim areas of Africa fearing that if Islam reached those areas of Africa first then the European colonization of Africa would be impossible.
At the top of the priorities for Stoddard stopping the spread of Islam among Blacks, he writes, “Islam is as yet unknown south of the Zambezi, but white men universally dread the possibility of its appearance, fearing its effect upon the natives.” In their mind, Blackness within Christianity came to represent Blackness tamed and unable to resist the anti-black world, whereas blackness with indigenous African faiths came to represent blackness in a savage, bestial, and primitive state but one that could potentially be open to Christian civilizing.
Thus, Blackness with Islam represented something untamable and irredeemable. Blackness in opposition to white dominance and an amplification of the inherent warlike qualities they believed were already inherent in Blacks that would fiercely threaten their agenda for racial supremacy.
The white colonial opposition to Islam continues with the likes of individuals like Tommy Robinson. He fears the rise of Islam entails the end of white supremacy. Tommy Robinson has recruited a black agent in order to do his bidding. His name is Sa-Ra Garvey.
Sa Ra Garvey supports the “Islamophobia is made up rhetoric” because it is the manufacture of the people he serves. Tommy Robinson is Britain’s very own nationalist and white extremist.
Sa Ra Garvey Claim #3: Islam is inherently anti-Black because it promoted slavery and the castration of black people and The Prophet Muhammad (SAWS) personally endorsed trading black slaves.
The irony is that Islam rejects racism. fact that Sa Ra Garvey and others like him routinely ignore is that most of the slaves in the Muslim world were white. Most of the black people (Ethiopians) in Mecca during the time of the Prophet (SAWS) were not slaves but migrants from Ethiopia and they were free. Any careful study of the history of blacks in the Islamic world even during the height of the Arab slave trade shows that black people occupied seats of power over the Arabs in sultanates throughout the Islamic world. A careful study of history will also show that the African Islamic states were thoroughly African in nature and not dominated by Arabs or other outsiders.
The world of Islam has produced more black world leaders than any other religious-based tradition (including traditional African religion). Bilal (ra) who was the closest companion of the Prophet (SAWS) whom the Prophet (SAWS) said he heard his footsteps in paradise in front of his own. Zayd ibn Harith was the Prophet’s (SAWS) general. Tariq ibn Zayd who led the Moors into Iberia, and Yusuf ibn Tashifin who ruled Spain, and Mulai Rashid who was the emperor of Morocco from 1631 to 167 is described by Abbe Busnot, a Frenchman who met him as an emissary described him as “almost black” are just a few examples.
Sa Ra Garvey Claim #4: The Prophet Muhammad (SAWS) marriage to Aisha(Ra) was Immoral.
Sa Ra Garvey takes the name Sa Ra in reference to ancient Egypt which he affectionately calls Kemet. Yet everything he criticizes Muslims and Islam for applies to ancient Egypt in greater measure. The most lazy of these criticisms is the marriage to Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W.S) to Aisha (ra) at a young age. He has routinely brought up in his debates with Mohammed Hijab and Ali Dawah. We the Muslims say to the Afrocentrists, if your decision to reject and denigrate Islam is based upon the betrothal age of Aisha (RA) cited in hadith collection of Sahih Bukhari, then you have an even greater reason to reject, denigrate and apostate from Kemetic spirituality.
Pharaoh Akenaton married not only just a nine year old but his own daughter by the name of Nefernefruaten Tasherit. He also married his other six daughters and even granddaughters including Meritaten and Ankhensenpaateen who were around 11 or 12.
Ankhsenam, an Egyptian princess is believed to have had a child by her own father, Akhenenaten before she turned 13. That’s right. Sa Ra Garvey’s ancient Egypt royal figures were not only serial pedophiles by his own standard but incest was their cultural norm. The Kemetic scribe Qunherkphasehef was 53 when he married a 12 year old girl. Princess Ankhsenamun married her own father Akhenaten and bore a child by him all while she was under thirteen. Does Sa Ra Garvey consider the royalty of traditional African societies like ancient Kemet and Nubia to be serial incestuous pedophiles?
Nubia girls can be found in history to be pregnant as young as 10. The Koailib people would marry their women off as young as eight, and the Igala people married their girls off at 4. So, by the traditional African cultural standard what basis would they have to condemn Muhammad (S.A.W.S) marriage to AISHA(ra)?
Hell, in the very country he works as an agent for, the U.K. the royal family practiced what Sa-Ra Garvey would have to consider pedophilia and inbreeding for centuries. Thirty-three year old King John of England married twelve year old Isabella.
As for Aisha bin Abu Bakr(ra) preponderance of evidence taken from hadith literature suggests that Aisha bint Abu Bakr(ra) was between 18 and 20 at the time she married Muhammad (S.A.W.S). She was between 6 or 8 when the Muslims fled to Ethiopia to escape the persecution. This was at the fifth year of Muhammad’s (S.A.W.S) mission. Hijrah or the flight to the city of Medina happened in the 13th year of his mission which was about eight years later. The hadith states that she married the Prophet (S.A.W.S.) after the Hijrah which puts her around 18 or 19 years. Arabs did not keep meticulous record of their birth date and so many of them estimated. However, if Sa Ra Garvey and his European colonial masters still wish to use 21st century Western standards for adulthood to judge and condemn societies in antiquity then he should start with his own and the one he loves so much.
What Sa Ra Garvey loves to indulge in is anachronism. Anachronism is an historical fallacy where some one attributes a thing, saying, or belief to an earlier period where it doesn’t apply. Casting moral aspirations against Muhammad(S.A.W.S) for his marriage Aisha(RA) when she was young when she reached the age of puberty (which was the age of adulthood in mostly all of ancient societies) is like saying Muhammad (S.A.W.S) was a bad driver.
Sa Ra Garvey Claim #5: Islam is incompatible with pan-Afrikanism
This is ahistorical and is another piece of evidence that proves that Sa Ra Garvey is not a pan-Afrikanist. The pioneers of pan-Afrikanism are Muslim or had a tremendous respect for Islam. Up to the time of Kwame Nkrumah Sierra Leone was to be the international headquarters of pan-Afrikanism. Edward Wilmont Blyden, Martin Delany, Henry McNeil Turner, Marcus Garvey conceived of an Islamic-centered pan-Afrikanism. Blyden wrote: “it[Islam] strengthened and hastened certain tendencies to independence and self-reliance which were already at work.” Pan-Afrikanist John Henry Smyth described the African Muslims of Sierra Leone “These races represent a very high and unique type of Mohammedanism and Arabic training. They have adopted the religion of the Prophet and made it conform to themselves….They are not controlled by the Arab, the Persian, or the Turk, as to their conception of the Koran.” Henry McNeil Turner upon visiting Sierra Leone wrote:
“These black Mohammedan priests, learned to kill, walking around here in their robes with so much dignity, majesty, and consciousness of their worth, are driving me into respect for them. Some came for hundreds of miles from the country-out of the bushes-better scholars than in America. What fools we are to suppose that these Africans are fools!”
Then there is Duse Muhammad Ali. Muslim, African, pan-Islamist, pan-Afrikanist, and mentor to Marcus Mosiah Garvey. He believed that “after anti-imperialism, the cause that most united these diverse factions was that global Islam as a form of resistance to Western domination.” Marcus Garvey’s U.N.I.A. was pro-Muslim to such an extent that a resolution came up in the U.N.I.A. to make Islam the official religion of the organization. Garvey himself was very open in his praise for the Prophet (SAWS) who Sa Ra tries so desperately to disparage. Garvey even state the Prophet (SAWS) was his role model. The U.N.I.A wrote in their flagship newspaper, Negro World:
“The prophet of Allah, concentrating his inexhaustible incandescent energy on the spiritual-material liberation of his people and the Herald of the New Dawn, Garvey stressing with equal zeal the material-spiritual redemption of his race.”
Garvey himself said “Mohammed stuck to his faith and ultimately triumphed and Mohammedanism was given to the world. And as Mohammed did in the religious world, so in the political arena we have had men who have paid the price for leading the people toward the great light of liberty.”
And of course the true Prince of Pan-Afrikanism, Malcolm X, El Hajj Malik El Shabazz. This man was the last great pan-Afrikanist in the world and certainly in the West. He was unapologetically Muslim and he was black. He created two organizations: Muslim Mosque Inc. and the Organization of African-American Unity which reflected his belief that not only were Islam and pan-Afrikanism compatible but that pan-Afrikanism could not produce actual results without a unifying moral code and metanarrative which he believed Islam supplied.
Don’t Be Hoodwinked by Sa Ra Garvey’s Claims Against Islam
Whichever government agent chose the name Garvey thinking that this would give him credibility to people they he was ordered to spy on did not research the history of pan-Afrikanism. If they had they would know that they were creating a walking contradiction in the person they call Sa Ra Garvey.
We who want to see the true liberation of black people must be wary, not just of charlatans, but of agent provocateurs who have been sent among us to look like the very ones we are fighting against. We must not make it so easy for people to dress the part and get by. We must understand the West is at war with Islam and that Western powers have always disseminated anti-Islamic propaganda in an effort to stop the spread of that which they see as a threat to their colonizing aims. They will use a black and brown face to do this.
