• Published on

    On Afro-Feminism & The Health of a Nation

    via Yaqeen Institute

    “The most complete of believers in faith are those with the best character, and the best of you are the best in behavior to their women.”
    —Tirmidhi
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    ​As Black women, we have a great capacity to survive and, one would argue, thrive. Despite all that befell us over the past 500 years, we participated in communities and societies and made great contributions to bettering those communities and societies. We’ve held our families together, providing education and inventions while, at the same time, holding onto and passing down the cultural and spiritual heritages of the Black communities and societies we belong to.

    How well we thrive is a litmus test of how equitable, advanced and civilized the communities and societies we find ourselves in are. In a healthy, sound society, women (and especially Black women and girls) are valued, and their worth and contributions are not only advocated for but also found essential to the collective growth and prosperity of their societies and communities.

    Take, for example, the West African Sokoto Emirate (
    Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon, and Burkina Faso), founded in 1804 by the Fulani scholar, Shehu Usman dan Fodio.
  • Published on

    “Liberté ou la mort”: On the Haitian Revolution & Our Liberation


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    'Black Spartacus': Toussaint Louverture, leader of the Haitian Revolution by de Baptiste (1875) Credit: Photo 12 / Universal Images Group via Getty Images

    "Zamba Boukman, also called Boukman Dutty, a Papaloi or High Priest, was a literate Muslim; his chief assistant, the mambo Cécile Fatiman, a likely cognate with Fatima (and indeed, Cesil Fatima in Haitian Kreyol), might also have been Muslim."
     ​(Diouf 1998, 152-53, 229)
    Do you sense it? The spiritual revolution awakened by Dutty Boukman in the mountains of San Domingue--present-day Haiti--to the rubble of Gaza? The great evil of European chattel slavery and occupation has kept this spiritual revolution alive.
    When Cristóbal Colón (aka Christopher Colombus) a Spanish Jew, left Spain and landed in the islands of the Bahamas, he brought with him the oppression of the very empire that was oppressing his own people. Five centuries later, the ghost of that landing continues to haunt the world.