Well, it goes back a bit, like, back to the beginning of my 10th-grade year. I was having the first of what would be 3 long years worth of issues with my sadistic bitch of a private school teacher, Mrs. Yvette Brown (who has, since my graduation back last summer, become the school’s counselor). We repelled against each other like magnets most of the time, but there were some short times of clarity in which we had barely-civil dialogues concerning such things as Africa or education, or even about God (which, obviously, would be her favourite subject more so than mine).

However, one day in the first semester of that 10th grade year, it was during one of these false calms that she told me something that I have remembered ever since (and only revealed to Mom sometime last month):

“Harry, what I’m afraid of is that, as soon as you go to college and leave the church, you will convert to Islam.”

Now, at the time, I had just started reading the late Chancellor Williams’ The Destruction of Black Civilization: Great Issues of a Race from 4500 B.C. to 2000 A.D., which stated that the Arabs had been involved in their own African slave trade, which led me to not have that high of an opinion on the Middle East or Islam. So of course, I spurned the suggestion at the time.

Fast forward to 2005. I had graduated from 12th grade with a repugnant outlook towards Christianity and religion in general. I was already familiar with Lucumi in the literary sense (I had, and still have, a soft spot for spirituality), and I’ve wondered ever since about becoming an actual practitioner, but the fact that I don’t live in an area that has that many practitioners is an immediate hindrance to such an endeavor.

Anyway, 2005, graduated, moved to Olgethorpe in Atlanta, smoked weed (didn’t buy any), fucked up, came back this year, now going to a tech school, still nothing exciting about life after high school. Whoop-dee-tapdancing-doo.

Back to surfing the web: I come across stories about disaffected Third World folks in Chiapas (Mexico) or Biafra (Nigeria) converting to Islam as an alternative to the Christianity which is practiced by, and used by the present world order (UN, US, EU) which keeps them under an iron thumb.

I read about how people in these areas are seeing Islam as a religion which presents a challenge to the present world order. A religion of resistance, a religion of popular identification, a religion of the disaffected masses and sidelined minorities, a religion which rehumanizes the human being (or turns him into a WMD?).

Or is it just another religion, another force of deception that is meant to elevate one people, one region (Middle East), and one language (Arabic) above all others, and to assimilate all outsiders into its hegemony? Is it as much of a foe to Christianity as Marxism is to capitalism? If so, then what’s the point? Islam and Christianity both advocate for the submission of “backward cultures” before God/Allah, just as both capitalism and Marxism advocate for industrialization of “backward societies”, notwithstanding the sacrifices which would have to be made in either case.

Or is it time that we look to something other than religions which rely upon the written word for support (note: without systems of writing, you would not have religion. Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, none of that)? Aren’t we getting beyond dried, bound paper leaves with the WWW (and whatever that may succeed it in importance)?

Or is the WWW just another extension of European hegemony (no, I am NOT talking within a racial/skin-color context, but rather within a cultural/spiritual context, in which people of any expression have been adversely affected by this)?

Now, you see, I am confused (and a bit addled in the head).

Maybe I should just look harder for practitioners of Lucumi (or American deriviations of such, like Santeria and Candomble) instead of proving Mrs. Brown right?

Or maybe I should just look for a part-time job first?