HISTORY - Africa, Uncolonized: A Detailed Look at an Alternate Continent

By Frank Jacobs

What if the Black Plague had killed off almost all Europeans? Then the Reconquistanever happens. Spain and Portugal don't kickstart Europe's colonization of other continents. And this is what Africa might have looked like. 

The map – upside down, to skew our traditional eurocentric point of view – shows an Africa dominated by Islamic states, and native kingdoms and federations. All have at least some basis in history, linguistics or ethnography. None of their borders is concurrent with any of the straight lines imposed on the continent by European powers, during the 1884-85 Berlin Conference and in the subsequent Scramble for Africa. By 1914, Europeans controlled 90% of Africa's land mass. Only the Abyssinian Empire (modern-day Ethiopia) and Liberia (founded in 1847 as a haven for freed African-American slaves) remained independent.

This map is the result of an entirely different course of history. The continent depicted here isn't even called Africa [1] but Alkebu-Lan, supposedly Arabic for 'Land of the Blacks' [2]. That name is sometimes used by those who reject even the name 'Africa' as a European imposition. It is therefore an ideal title for this thought experiment by Swedish artist Nikolaj Cyon. Essentially, it formulates a cartographic answer to the question: What would Africa have looked like if Europe hadn't become a colonizing power? 

To arrive at this map, Cyon constructed an alternative timeline. Its difference from our own starts in the mid-14th century. The point of divergence: the deadliness of the Plague. In our own timeline, over the course of the half dozen years from 1346 to 1353, the Black Death [3] wiped out between 30 and 60% of Europe's population. It would take the continent more than a century to reach pre-Plague population levels. That was terrible enough. But what if Europe had suffered an even more catastrophic extermination – one from which it could not recover?

To read more - http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/africa-uncolonized

POLITICS: Chart: Almost Every Obama Conspiracy Theory Ever

http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/chart-obama-conspiracy-theories

SPIRITUALITY/RELIGION: Who says more antiquated things about women and families, Christian fundamentalists or Islamic fundamentalists?

Who says more antiquated things about women and families, Christian fundamentalists or Islamic fundamentalists? Here are nine stupid, backward, and often misogynistic quotes from nine different Islamic fundamentalist and Christian social conservative leaders. See if you can spot which one is which.

http://mobile.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/10/richard_mourdock_rape_scandal_spot_the_difference_between_the_christian.html

HUMOR: If Marilyn Monroe was a Muslim?

http://electrictoothbrushentertainment.tumblr.com/post/24704832730/courtesy-of-diana-greene-via-bookface

SPIRITUALITY/RELIGION: A Flowchart To Determine What Religion You Should Follow

I got the link to this from GodlessGirl on Twitter. - OlderMusicGeek

HUMOR and SPIRITUALITY/RELIGION: Islam vs. Christianity

I got this from a link from GodlessGirl on Twitter. - OlderMusicGeek

ON ANOTHER BLOG: "SPIRITUALITY/RELIGION: Belief-O-Matic" on OlderMusicGeek's Stupid Tests And Quizzes (just click here)

SPIRITUALITY/RELIGION: Good Friday! Happy Purim, Eid, etc...

This is from Time magazine. I found it with my NetVibes page. - OlderMusicGeek

Good Friday! Happy Purim, Eid, etc...
Wednesday, Mar. 19, 2008
By DAVID VAN BIEMA WITH SIMON ROBINSON/NEW DELHI

On Friday more than a billion Christians around the world will mark the gravest observance on their Calendar, Good Friday, the day Jesus died on the cross. (To be followed in two days by Easter Sunday, to mark his Resurrection).

But unlike some holy days — say, Christmas, which some non-Christians in the U.S. observe informally by going to a movie and ordering Chinese food — on this particular Friday, March 21, it seems almost no believer of any sort will be left without his or her own holiday. In what is statistically, at least, a once-in-a-millennium combination, the following will all occur on the 21st:

Good Friday
Purim, a Jewish festival celebrating the biblical book of Esther
Narouz, the Persian New Year, which is observed with Islamic elaboration in Iran and all the "stan" countries, as well as by Zoroastrians and Baha'is.
Eid Milad an Nabi, the Birth of the Prophet, which is celebrated by some but not all Sunni Muslims and, though officially beginning on Thursday, is often marked on Friday.
Small Holi, Hindu, an Indian festival of bonfires, to be followed on Saturday by Holi, a kind of Mardi Gras.
Magha Puja, a celebration of the Buddha's first group of followers, marked primarily in Thailand.

"Half the world's population is going to be celebrating something," says Raymond Clothey, Professor Emeritus of Religious studies at the University of Pittsburgh. "My goodness," says Delton Krueger, owner of www.interfaithcalendar.org, who follows "14 major religions and six others." He counts 20 holidays altogether (including some religious double-dips, like Maundy Thursday and Good Friday) between the 20th (which is also quite crowded) and the 21st. He marvels: "There is no other time in 2008 when there is this kind of concentration."

And in fact for quite a bit longer than that. Ed Reingold and Nachum Dershowitz, co-authors of the books Calendrical Calculations and Calendrical Tabulations, determined how often in the period between 1600 and 2400 A.D. Good Friday, Purim, Narouz and the Eid would occur in the same week. The answer is nine times in 800 years. Then they tackled the odds that they would converge on a two-day period. And the total is ... only once: tomorrow. And that's not even counting Magha Puja and Small Holi.

Unless you are mathematically inclined, however, you may not see the logic in all this. If it's the 21st of March, you may ask, shouldn't all the religions of the world celebrate the same holiday on that date each year?

No. There are a sprinkling of major holidays (Western Christmas is one) that fall each year on the same day of the Gregorian calendar, a fairly standard non-religious system and the one Americans are most familiar with.

But almost none of tomorrow's holidays actually follows that calendar. All Muslim holy days, for instance, are calculated on a lunar system. Keyed to the phases of the moon, Islam's 12 months are each 29 and a half days long, for a total of 354 days a year, or 11 days fewer than on ours. That means the holidays rotate backward around the Gregorian calendar, occurring 11 days earlier each year. That is why you can have an "easy Ramadan" in the spring, when going without water all day is relatively easy, or a hard one in the summer. And why the Prophet's birthday will be on March 9 next year.

Then there is the Jewish calendar, which determines the placement of Purim. It is "lunisolar," which means that holidays wander with the moon until they reach the end of what might be thought of as a month-long tether, which has the effect of maintaining them in the same season every year.

Good Friday, meanwhile, like many of the other most important Christian holidays, is a set number of days before Easter. The only problem is that the date of Easter is probably the most complicated celebratory calculation this side of Hinduism, which has a number of competing religious calendars. The standard rule is "the Sunday after the first full moon on or after the day of the vernal equinox." But in fact, the actual divination of the date is so involved that it has its own offical name: "computus." And so challenging that Carl Friedrich Gauss, one of history's greatest mathematicians, devoted the time to create an algorithm for it. It goes on for many lines. You can look it up. And, of course, it doesn't work for Eastern Orthodox Easter (about one month later than the Western Christian one this year, on April 27).

So, should we celebrate all these celebrations? Yes, says William Paden, the author of Religious Worlds: The Comparative Study of Religion and a professor at the University of Vermont — at least to the extent that we revere the drive to carve out sacred time in the middle of the day-by-day profane. "Each of these religions is creating its own world, with its own time and space and memory system," he says. They recognize what's of real value, and they encode it, and it forms an architecture of memory." Yes, says Bruce Lawrence, the head of Islamic Studies at Duke University, who was invited to speak at a nearby synagogue when the beginnings of Rosh Hashanah and Ramadan happened to coincide last year.

But be cautious, since human nature is as fickle as coincidence. "When one group is grieving and one is jubilant there are some unfortunate tensions," says Anand Kumar, with the Centre for the Study of Social Systems at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, a city with considerable experience with multiple faiths. Such conjunctions have led to conflicts and even riots, not just when moods clash, but because "the public sphere is being contested." Kumar is convinced, however, that "a new generation is emerging that is more pluralistic and they don't feel threatened just because someone is from another religion."

And that will be what this writer meditates on this Friday.

Happy Holidays! :) - OlderMusicGeek

A link to the article at Time.com

CULTURE/SOCIETY, SPIRITUALITY/RELIGION and POLITICS: Email on Obama's Chuch

I got this email from a co-worker. I won't embarrass this person by even mentioning who it might be. And then I add my comments later in italics. - OlderMusicGeek

Now I do know that we get a lot of stuff through our email, but this one certainly is an eye opener!!

Obama mentioned his church during his appearance with Oprah. It's the Trinity Church of Christ.

I found this interesting. Obama's church: Please read and go to this church's website and read what is written there. It is very alarming, Barack Obama is a member of this church and is running for President of the U.S.

If you look at the first page of their website, you will learn that this congregation has a non-negotiable commitment to Africa. No where is AMERICA even mentioned. Notice too, what color you will need to be if you should want to join Obama's church... B-L-A-C-K!!!

Doesn't look like his choice of religion has improved much over his (former?) Muslim upbringing. Are you aware that Obama's middle name is Mohammed?

Strip away his nice looks, the big smile and smooth talk and what do you get? Certainly a racist, as plainly defined by the stated position of his church! And possibly a covert worshiper of the Muslim faith, even today.

This guy desires to rule over America while his loyalty is totally vested in a Black Africa! I cannot believe this has not been all over the TV and newspapers. This is why it is so important to pass this message along to all of our family and friends.

To think that Obama has even the slightest chance in the run for the presidency, is really scary.

Click on the link below: This is the web page for the church Barack Obama belongs to: www.tucc.org/about.htm

Well, I did check out this website of this so-called "racist" church.

Here is their 10-point vision:

The Pastor as well as the membership of Trinity United Church of Christ is committed to a 10-point Vision:

1. A congregation committed to ADORATION.
2. A congregation preaching SALVATION.
3. A congregation actively seeking RECONCILIATION.
4. A congregation with a non-negotiable COMMITMENT TO AFRICA.
5. A congregation committed to BIBLICAL EDUCATION.
6. A congregation committed to CULTURAL EDUCATION.
7. A congregation committed to the HISTORICAL EDUCATION OF AFRICAN PEOPLE IN DIASPORA.
8. A congregation committed to LIBERATION.
9. A congregation committed to RESTORATION.
10. A congregation working towards ECONOMIC PARITY.

They didn't number these points, but I did to make them easier to discuss.

First off, I don't think too many people are going to complain about half of these points. The only ones I can see them having trouble with is points 3, 7, 8, 9, and 10.

Well, I personally don't have a problem with blacks being proud of where they come from and their heritage. Actually I'm upset my African ex-wife doesn't tell my daughter more of her African heritage.

And I don't see why African Americans shouldn't have economic parity with European Americans.


And as for this church supposedly being racist, let me quote from the website this email sent us to...

These are from Dr Wrights talking points. I made some the wording bold and italicized to stress it.

• To have a church whose theological perspective starts from the vantage point of Black liberation theology being its center, is not to say that African or African American people are superior to any one else.

• African-centered thought, unlike Eurocentrism, does not assume superiority and look at everyone else as being inferior.

• There is more than one center from which to view the world. In the words of Dr. Janice Hale, “Difference does not mean deficience.” It is from this vantage point that Black liberation theology speaks.

I don't agree with these points 100% - I think Afro-centrism like Euro-centrism can be racist. But it's obvious that Dr Wright doesn't want them taken in a racist way.

This church strikes me as black PRIDE group, but not as a black SUPREMACIST group.

But what really offended me this claptrap - more than the accusation of racism - is the accusation that Obama might really be a Christian, but a Muslim spy.

I'm sorry, folks, but I find converters tend to be more loyal and believe in a religion more strongly than other folks. Just look at born-agains!

And I was really offended by the comment - Doesn't look like his choice of religion has improved much over his (former?) Muslim upbringing.

Excuse me, but what is wrong with being a Muslim? I even wrote this question to the co-worker that sent me this. She didn't have anything to say about that question!

And what the hell does someone's middle name have to do with anything? One - Why is it wrong to be named Mohammed? And two, Barack didn't get to pick his middle name anyway! And three, his middle isn't even Mohammed - it's Hussein!

And these people are calling Barack and his church racist?

Okay, I'm done ranting.

Deep breaths. In. Out. In. Out. I'm better now.

Snopes.com's take on this email

Ernest T Spoon's take on this email - in full disclosure, I must say that I forwarded this email to him, because I knew that he would be upset by it even more than I was and would write on it.

Newsweek's report on emails about Obama

Trinity United Church of Christ website
Dr. Wright’s talking points for Trinity United Church of Christ its Web site and the Black Value System (in response to Erik Rush’s comments (2.28.07) on the Hannity and Colmes show)
- the video clip is below

ENTERTAINMENT, POLITICS and RELIGION/SPIRITUALITY: On the Road with the First-Ever Muslim Punk-Rock Tour

I got this from my netvibes.com home page. It's from Rolling Stone magazine. - OlderMusicGeek

Allah, Amps and Anarchy

On the road with the first-ever Muslim punk-rock tour

Evan SerpickPosted Oct 01, 2007 2:00 PM

In late august, a creaking green school bus with red camels stenciled on its side rolled up to the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo in Ohio. Seventeen exhausted, beer-reeking punks, with mohawks and dyed hair, walked up to the mosque looking for a place to rest. "I was surprised -- they totally let us hang out there," says Kourosh Poursalehi, 19, frontman for San Antonio's Vote Hezbollah. "They even wanted CDs and stuff."

Vote Hezbollah (the band's name is intended as a joke) is one of five Muslim punk bands that recently wrapped up a ten-date tour that took them from Boston to Chicago during August and September. The bands, which hail from Chicago, San Antonio, Boston and Washington, D.C., share left-of-center politics and an antipathy toward the president. And all have used punk as a means to express the anger, confusion and pride in being young and Muslim in post-9/11 America.

Twenty-four hours after leaving the Toledo mosque, Boston's Kominas -- Punjabi for "the Bastards" -- are playing in a packed basement in a rundown corner of Chicago's Logan Square. Local punks mix with curious young Muslims -- including a few girls wearing head scarves -- as Kominas frontman Shahjehan Khan launches into the opening lines of "Sharia Law in the U.S.A.": "I am an Islamist!/And I am an anti-Christ!" Nearby, mohawked bassist Basim Usmani -- whose T-shirt reads frisk me i'm muslim -- slaps out the song's bass line while viciously slam-dancing with a dude in a woman's burqa.

"This has been the best time of my life," says Khan, 23, who grew up in Boston, the son of Pakistani immigrants. He's retreated to an alley out back, where the bus is parked, to smoke a cigarette. The bands on tour made contact online, and most met for the first time at their first tour date three weeks earlier. Although they are all children of immigrants from countries like Pakistan, Iran and Syria, they came together in part through the efforts of an American convert, Mike Muhammad Knight. Knight -- who bought the bus for $2,000 on eBay and does most of the driving -- is the author of The Taqwacores, a novel about a scene of progressive Muslim punks. The book, news of which spread online and by word of mouth, inspired both Vote Hez-bollah -- named after a fictional band in the novel -- and the tour's name: Taqwatour. ("Taqwa," which is spray-painted on the front of the bus, means "consciousness of God" in Arabic.)

There are more than a million Muslims living in the U.S., and the youngest generation is still struggling to find its place in America. "Shit changed for all of us Muslim people after 9/11," says Khan. "The best way for me to deal with it was music." The Kominas are one of the more established groups, having toured and released records. Their songs mix punk speed and attitude with Middle Eastern sounds. Their lyrics, often confrontational, are also deeply personal. In "Par Desi," Usmani, who spent part of his childhood in Pakistan, describes getting beaten up by punk skinheads in America: "In Lahore it's raining water/In Boston it rains boots."

Everyone on tour has stories about being harassed for being Muslim. "There's that stigma, 'Oh, he's from Pakistan, he's a fuckin' terrorist,' " says Omar Waqar of D.C. band Diacritical. He was working at an Islamic bookstore after September 11th when vandals threw bricks through the windows. And many band members have also faced criticism from their parents or others in the Muslim community. "All the way from 'music is wrong, forbidden' to 'you shouldn't be singing verses of the Koran in your songs,' " says Khan.

The day after the Chicago basement show, the tour was invited to play at a conference of the Islamic Society of North America. The young audience it drew, segregated into male and female sections, roared with rock-star adoration. But when the female group Secret Trial Five took the stage, organizers had the police shut down the show, because it is forbidden for Muslim women to sing in public. "It was completely insane," says Knight. "The show was positive up to that point, with girls in hijabs singing along."

Link to the complete article

SPIRITUALITY/RELIGION: Treating Katrina as a Punishment from God

Letter for The Oregonian and responses

August 31, 2005
Storm is sign from God

The hurricane and floods in the Gulf states are another wake up call from God to the United States. Each warning gets more intense. How many more wakeup calls do we need before this nation turns back to the God of our forefathers?

The liberals are trying to remove everything godly from our nation: prayer in schools and other public arenas, the Ten Commandments from public places. They allow immorality of every type to be promoted. It is time we pray for revival in this nation, which was founded on all the things we are gradually losing. Wake up, America!

JAN LANDIS Southeast Portland


September 1, 2005
Did God make a mistake?

I wondered how long it would take a benighted fundamentalist Christian to nominate Hurricane Katrina as a sign that their God is in a snit over liberalism ("Storm is sign from God," Letters, Aug. 31). Odd that the punishment meted out by Jan Landis' God would strike three Southern red states that probably contain more Baptists and Pentecostalists per square mile than they do heedless and hedonistic liberals.

Apparently, this protest by God could have been more intelligently designed.

STEFFEN SILVIS Southeast Portland


Where superstition leads . . .

So those darn liberals are the cause of Hurricane Katrina and probably global warming, too? What's next? Sacrificing a couple of virgins into Mount St. Helens' crater every week or so?

Better get that Hubble telescope out of orbit soon because it allows us to see a universe that has been billions of years in the building. Should burning NASA scientists at the stake be the next order of business?

BILL POWELL Northeast Portland


Hurricane Katrina: God's Punishment for a 'Wicked' City?
Urban Legends and Folklore Blog

August 31, 2005
A reader writes: Is it true that Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans on a day that was to observe "Southern Decadence Day" with 100,000 homosexuals gathering to commit unspeakable acts in public?

In a word, no. Despite the fact that some fundamentalist Christians appear eager to characterize the disaster as "God's judgment" on the "wicked" city of New Orleans, and despite their attempt to link its timing to a gay celebration held there annually, the claims are patently absurd:

The hurricane struck on Monday, August 29. This year's Southern Decadence, sometimes called the "Gay Mardi Gras," was scheduled to open today, Wednesday the 31st, and continue through Sunday. The storm obviously did not strike on "the day" of the celebration. Many, perhaps most, of the revelers had not even arrived yet.

Southern Decadence is a 35-year-old tradition in New Orleans. Why did God choose to wait till 2005 to "punish" the city for it?

Why is the French Quarter, the district where the event (now canceled) was to be held, one of the least devastated parts of the city so far?

If this tragedy occurred because God is angry at New Orleans, what was the point of the awful devastation and loss of life wrought in Mississippi and Alabama? (And, if I - OlderMusicGeek speaking here - may add a point, Katrina was heading for New Orleans, but switch directions before hitting land. Did God get distracted and let his aim go off? Let it hit Mississippi more ?)

Lastly, if I may vent a bit, I find it shameful, given the massive destruction, loss of innocent life, and ongoing hardships suffered by the hundreds of thousands of victims of Hurricane Katrina, that any self-appointed spokesperson for God would have the nerve to suggest that these people in any sense deserved their fate. Natural disasters happen all the time, and Katrina was certainly not the first hurricane to strike the southern United States this season. By what logic, and by what right, does any human being arbitrarily declare that this natural disaster was a punishment meted out upon sinners by God?

Hurricane Katrina: Al Qaeda leader in Iraq sees ”start of US collapse”

Al Qaeda group in Iraq, which is led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, on Sunday praised in an Internet statement what it said was the "start of the collapse" of the United States after the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina.

"Congratulations to the Islamic nation, to our sheikh Osama abu Abdullah (Osama bin Laden) and to sheikh Ayman Zawahiri (bin Laden's deputy) for the destruction of America, which is at the forefront of evil. It is the start of its collapse."

The statement was referring to the hurricane which left some 10,000 dead.

In recent days, Islamists website connected between the storm and the "US war against Islam." According to them, Katrina was sent by God to torment the American empire.

An interesting take on God, race and Katrina

Dogpile.com Report on one Fundamentalist view of Katrina
BeliefNet's "Did God Send the Hurricane?"