12/26/2007
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Raila is Not ‘Pagan’, not an ‘Atheist’
(Copyright©)
(Dedicated to all Kenyans at home and abroad)
I was shocked to read that Hon Raila Odinga had to prove that he is a Christian, that he had been baptized a Christian. I am equally astonished to keep on reading similar observations including some submissions on jaluo.com website.
Being asked to produce a baptism card or details of faith reminds one of a police asking you to produce “Kitambulisho”… late at night, or otherwise, “Towa kitu kidogo…”
400 plus years ago the colonialist Mzungu called Africans ‘pagans’, ‘atheists’, because Africans were not ‘Christians’. Because Africans lived differently.
Remember the colonial days you could not take your child to school unless your child had a ‘Christian’ name? The so-called ‘Christian’ names turned out to be European names, at best names with Jewish origins.
Now in 2007 self-imposed shepherds of concocted religious philosophy stand at the gates of metaphysics and call Hon Raila a ‘pagan’, an ‘atheist’.
Let us go to the beginning of the word and concept of ‘pagan’ and paganism respectively. This will also help us understand the true meaning of ‘atheism’.
The word ‘pagan’ has a colonial history, just as the English language does have a heavily colonial legacy.
We must learn the historical roots of words otherwise we risk using them without knowing that they still have their historical ancestry, camouflage, and original bad smells.
I would like to argue that the same reasons that the colonialist called Africans ‘pagans’ are the reasons why the colonialist Mzungu ‘discovered’ Africa, and the Nile, and Nam Lolwe (later called Lake Victoria), and other places where full-blooded human beings existed long before the so-called ‘age of discovery’.
It is the same underlying reason why the colonialist called Africans (Kenyans included) ‘savages’. Africans were ‘savages’ and the colonialist was ‘man’, much closer to God… He was ‘white’, and Africans ‘black’, African were ‘uncivilized’ while the colonialist was ‘civilized’. The full story of an entrenched blasphemy has never been really told…
The so-called ‘discovery’ of Africa and many other so-called ‘new worlds’ could only be possible if one significant pre-condition was assumed; the non-existence of the people who lived in the places which were ‘discovered’. These ‘discovered’ places were later colonized. The partition of Africa (in 1835?) served to consolidate colonization.
Do not forget; there was no ‘Kenya’ before the partition of the continent by the colonialists. They cut it up the continent like you would cut up Pizza, or a cake.
Africans are trying to put it back together with varying degrees of success.
In some cases the effects of the ‘discovery’ were so serious because the colonialist Mzungu not only denied the existence of the human beings who lived in those lands ‘discovered’, but the ‘discovery’ also led to the colonization of the lands under such mundane ideas like ‘terra nullius’ which translates to something close to ‘Empty land’-the ‘discovered’ lands were assumed to be empty despite the fact that there were full-blooded human beings walking the ‘discovered’ and subsequently colonized terrains.
The ‘discovery’ of the lands and claims of ‘emptiness’ in spite of human existence (then) provided justification for subjugation, the massacres, summary execution, and even slavery. There is no so-called New Worlds’ where these events did not take place-New Zealand, Australia, North America, Canada, etc.
The word ‘pagan’ and ‘atheist’ forms part of the justifications behind the subjugation and subsequent colonization of the people who inhabited these lands . This is the reason why these labels need serious historical and philosophical analysis.
We are dealing with serious matters here, and serious matters need serious analysis.
Let’s tread gently and look back before we start calling people ‘pagans’ or ‘atheist’.
Raila Pagan? Ahteist?
The name-calling and label branding is sad pretentious mimicry of the misguided colonial European metaphysics. The endurance of this misguidedness is evidenced in the labeling of a fellow human being a ‘pagan’, an ‘atheist’, and fellow African a pagan, an ‘atheist’?
Atheist?
To use Chinua Achebe’s imagery; these received colonially-grounded meanings are the lizards of semantics and connotation that Africans have brought into their homesteads after collecting the firewood called English language from the forest of colonial experience.
Let us turn to and examine the fundamental question: can a human being really be an ‘atheist’? What precisely is an ‘atheist’ or ‘pagan’?
I submit here that it is virtually impossible for any human being to be an ‘atheist’-especially if such ‘atheism’ refers to belief in a deity, or an overall deity.
This is because such atheism is an inverted admission of the possibility of the existence of a god, or God for that matter.
Atheism is also self-denial, ‘suicidal’ in essence and effect, because it denies the existence of the very conceptualizing human self that denies the existence of deity and, effectively, denies humanity.
For if there were no such a god or humanity, then an atheist would not find it necessary not to believe in one.
The act of non-belief, or suspended faith, is an act of inverted declaration of the possibility of existence of the one you deny in the first place. That is why the colonialist could not continue denying the full human existence of the people s/he had ‘discovered’ in Uganda, along river Nile, in the Amazon, in India, in China, and the Americas in general.
Do you see my point?
To put it simply; you cannot deny the existence of something that does not exist.
Such denial is the inverted admission of the possibility of existence. The atheist is a victim of his own selective consciousness and conceptualization of existence.
Any persistence of denial is then a circular self-contradiction and the ironic flip-flop spider web soon catches up with the atheist just as it caught up with the colonialist.
If the ‘object’ (or ‘subject’ whichever vision you prescribe to) of denial did not or does not really exist then the ‘atheist’ would not find it necessary to deny its existence in the first place.
The denial is the affirmation of existence, or at least the possibility of existence of the denied humanity or deity, or both.
So who in reality is a ‘pagan’, who really is an ‘atheist’?
The real ‘atheist’ and ‘pagan’ is one who does not recognize the existence and Being (as fact of existence) of a fellow human being; ‘atheism’ could never meaningfully refer to the denial of deity.
The denial of deity is a circular absurdity like the dance of a dog trying to escape its shadow by chasing its tail. That is atheism which goes hand in hand with paganism.
Atheism (then) is the deliberate suspension of recognition (in spite of any sensory perception to the contrary) of one’s fellow human beings.
Atheism and paganism then is the intellectual worship of a substitute surrogate ‘object’ that replaces the atheist’s denied reflection of humanity-his fellow human beings.
The substitute surrogate object can be anything or nothing at all, but even if it were nothing, that nothing is the something that anchors the illusory ontological conceptualization of the atheist.
Remember that having selectively denied the existence of humanity or deity, or both, the ‘pagan’ has to find something else to anchor his/her faith upon.
The denial of the existence of another human being is the real denial of God, of deity. The denial of God is as absurd as the statement of a child denying the seminal presence of parents-even if the parents are only surrogates.
It is worth noting that denial is not a statement of the mouth, a word of mouth, no.
Denial in this case is an act, an act of non-recognition of the existence of humanity-your fellow human brothers and sister; the denial of their humanity.
That is atheism, which prepares the ground for paganism-which in turn is the worship of an alternative surrogate object of one’s illusory ontological conceptualization.
For if it is true within the framework of Judeo-Christian religious philosophy that the existence of a higher deity is reflected in the image of humanity-as my close Christian religious friends do tell me-then the recognition of a fellow human being is the subsequent recognition of the Deity that presumably caused the existence of the human reflection of the deity in all its/his/her cosmic complexity.
I do not know what pronoun to use for deity (its/his/her?), you choose the pronoun you fancy-I know languages like the Luo language which does not have gender distinction in the classification of humanity by sex. Therefore the (nominalization, verbial, and adjective) prefix “O” is a pronoun for everything, just about everything, including nothing. Thus words like ‘Omera’, ‘Olwenda’, ‘Oonge’, etc.)
It is interesting too that ‘God’ in Luo language is Obong’o Nyar Kalaga-‘Obong’o the daughter of Kalaga’. But does that mean that the Luo worship a female God?
Of course not, unless you choose to slaughter and eat the literal entrails of an otherwise idiomatic and metaphorical semantic goat, or sheep for that matter.
Anyway, never mind…, let us turn our attention to the other side of the question; belief-faith.
To believe in a god is an act of skepticism. Religious belief and indeed belief in a god or a representative of a god is an act of desperate undeclared cynicism, a hesitant doubt… an act of spiritual and psychic resignation.
Belief is an act of despair. I am told by my close Christian friends that even the ‘devil’ can believe… so in Christian religious philosophy there is nothing particularly spectacular about believing in a deity, in God or a god. Even stones can believe…(My Christian friends tell me that the God of Israelites threatened to turn stones into believers in the desert…)
What really seems to count then is actional recognition (not tolerance…) of your fellow human beings. That is what will distinguish one as a spiritual being, and affirm (your) belief in the deity that created the human being.
And what is the central theme of Christianity? Love.
Love of your fellow human being. Not mere belief in deity.
The worst garment of hypocrisy is a faith that bypasses fellow human brothers and sisters and runs off naked to the heavens in search of a god and supremacy over and above those regarded as ‘pagans’ or ‘atheists’…
You can almost hear those spiritual hypocrites crying out on high and haughty metaphysical rooftops, crying out to their imagined god, “God, Raila does not believe in you…” (And God probably turns to them with a kind smile, and a long white beard, and replies, “Leave that to me…thank you and go back to your work.”)
How can one love a god or God if one cannot love a fellow human sister or brother?
So my dear shepherds of twisted spiritual philosophy and a metaphysics most blind, to prove that Raila is a ‘pagan’, you must first prove that Raila does not Love and Recognize his fellow human brothers and sisters in Kenya, Africa and beyond.
Can anyone prove that or are we going to evoke the cheap philosophy and ontology that drags its spectacular robes in celebration of masked division and leaves the corpse of human dignity rotting by the roadside of substitute selfish wealth and celebrated of layers of selectively affirmed forms of existence?
If we were interested in a president who flamboyantly goes to church every Sunday without missing, then we know what to do, we know where to go.
The road to Kabarak is still open, we can still retrogressively retrace our national footsteps back to Nyayo House and rekindle the fires of broad daylight TV-broadcasted ostentatious religious devotion that at night stashes away Kenyan national energy and breath in Swiss volts… and keep the keys in personal pockets…
But if we are interested in the socio-political devotion that is reflected in the recognition of human existence and dignity, then we know what to do too.
My dear Kenyans of all tribes and shades, please let’s cast our votes wisely and shun the cheap politics of those who would like brandish swords of flaming mouths while arrogantly standing at the gates of cosmic destiny, spirituality, and depths of human life.
My advice to those accusing Hon Raila of ‘paganism’ and ‘atheism’ is this: please don’t rush off to heaven naked with flaming mouths bubbling self-righteous vanity, come back down to earth.
Mungu sio Athmani…
PS/ I could not help sharing this with you. Share it with others too please. All errors of thought in the article are mine and mine alone.
Peter Okelo teaches Language and Communication (tekta01 At hotmail dOt com )
(This article is copyright)
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