Umar Johnson has stated that he should not have to speak to God in Arabic in order to speak to God. His statement was part of a viral podcast video titled ‘Why Umar Johnson Says He Left Islam’. In the video he rattles off a litany of objections to what he feels is the Arab-centeredness of a religion that purports to be universal. How can a religion that is not African be at the center of black spirituality? How can the African soul express itself through a “non-African” language such as Arabic?
Arabic was never a racial language as the Arabs were never a race. They are more practically an ethnicity made up of a collection of tribes united by a common language–Arabic. If we’re going to insist on racializing them–Arabic is considered an Afro-Asiatic language that shares more with the languages of East Africa than the native tongues of West Africa. And here’s why Umar’s pan-Africanism is shallow. There has never been a hard break between the Arabian peninsula and ancient Kemet, Nubia, or ancient Abyssinia.
What about the larger question which is why should Arabic be the lingua franca of black spirituality? Particularly because of the perceived exploitative relationship the Arabs have had with Africans? Johnson’s attacks presume several things that are false. The first is that an African tongue would solve the problem when it fact African languages are tribal and therefore foreign to one another. If God had revealed His final message to all of humanity in Bantu this might not sit well with the Massai who historically have been in conflict. How would choosing one of thousands of African languages and dialects satisfy the cultural puritans of pan-Africans?
The fact is that Umar can afford to be rhetorical because his objections are raised in bad faith. If Johnson wants to chastise Muslims for making ritualistic prayer in Arabic then why does he not learn, speak, and teach a traditional African language? His concept of God is as nebulous as his pan-Africanism. The reality is that African tribal religions and their languages were never intended to be world traditions. They do not scale globally. This isn’t a defect of their Africanity as the same is true of many many tribal European, Asian, Native American languages and religions.
Islam sits above the tribal differences inherent to traditional African societies. What Umar Johnson doesn’t tell us is that the reason we know so much about Africa’s history in the first place is because it was preserved in Arabic. The manuscripts in Timbuktu were written by African authors who committed the oral tradition of the griots to Arabic. Traditional African languages that were spoken but not written like Hausa adopted the Arabic alphabet. Arabic was not just the language of the Quran but it preserved the intellectual output of African people without the baggage of colonialism. African tribes adopted and wrote in Arabic under sovereign and uncompromised African kingdoms.
It is worth noting that there is not a single Sub-Saharan African country today where the official language is Arabic. This is because Sub-Saharan Africa was not colonized by Arabs. More so than religion, language is the indicator of colonization. There are countries that have retained their native religions such as Ghana and Senegal whose people speak fluent English and French. With Islamization the African languages were not extinguished. Arabic was liturgical and scholastic.
Still, why would God choose Arabic over all the other languages for His final revelation? The answer is because God chooses those who are despised and negligible in the eyes of the world to manifest His power. If Islam can take a people from the sand deserts of Arabia from nothing and make them into something, what can Islam do for black people in the concrete jungles of America?
Lastly, it is false for Umar to insinuate that because Arabic is the language of the Quran that Muslims believe that this places the Arabs closer to God. Umar Johnson failed to mention the hadith where the Prophet Muhammad (saws) said: “And the one that recites the Quran and it is difficult upon him or her and they stutter, for them is two rewards.” The foreigner has the greatest opportunity for blessings.
