Radical Humanism and Generous Tolerance by Joseph Celucien L.;

Author:Joseph, Celucien L.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Hamilton Books
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

In addition, he accentuates the intersection of faith, power, fear, and death:

Power is, paradoxically, the primordial marshland of fear, from which emerges the precipitate of man’s neurotic response to mortality. Therein he proceeds to attempt to match himself with the force of Nature, that agency through which the various apprehensions of God, Super Being, or whatever name—including Death—are filtered.[27]

The greatest threat to human freedom, peace, and harmony in the world is the scheme and politics of religious zealotry. Soyinka argues that religious extremism “menaces the peace of the world will make the uncomfortable discovery that this phenomenon is so much about religion, faith, or piety, but about power, domination, and its complementary idolization project unleashed on the rest of thinking humanity.”[28] Religious zealots not only provoke horror but nurture an environment conducive to terror; as Soyinka maintains, “the assault on human dignity is one of the primary goals of fear, a prelude to the domination of the mind and triumph of power.”[29] To put it another way, “the global climate of fear owes much to the devaluation or denial of dignity in the intersections of Communities, most notably between the stronger and weaker ones, an avoidance of the recognition of this very entitlement.”[30]

Soyinka contemplates further on how Western religious imperialism and cultural imperialism had created violent societies and communities in Africa, as well led to social rift and disharmony among the African people. He sees both Christianity and Islam as agents of colonial conquest and violence in the Continent:

Cultural and spiritual violation has left indelible imprints on the collective psyche and sense of identity of the peoples, a process that was ensured through savage repressions of cohering traditions by successive waves of colonizing hordes. Their presence was both physical and abstract. Their mission was not merely to implant their own peoples on any lands whose climates were congenial—East and Southern Africa—but to establish outposts for surrogate controls where the environment proved physically inclement . . . The cultural and spiritual savaging of the continent , let us hasten to insist, was not by the Christian-European axis alone. The Arab-Islamic dimension preceded it, and was every bit as devastating, a fact that a rather distorted sense of continental solidarity leads some scholars to edit, at the expense of Truth and reality. [31]

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