THE US is infamous for warring against Muslims from all around the world, in much the same way Romans persecuted Christians before the conversion of Emperor Constantine.
To fully comprehend the effect that Constantine’s reforms had on Christians, the Roman Empire and the known world, one must picture the following scenario.
If the US were to become an Islamic republic like Iran, with Trump as their leader, would the Islamic world embrace them and forget all the ills the US has perpetrated against Muslims all these years?
Would they completely abandon their beliefs in Santa Claus, gay rights and so on, or cunningly seek loopholes under which they can preserve their defining traits in their new religion.
And would such a strain of Islam be recognised as orthodox?
Like Christianity in the time of Roman rule, Islam is now the dominant world religion and most Africans are Muslims.
This has been the case since Moorish times (700-1492 CE). Slavery and colonisation by the Westerners threatened to upset this balance by evangelising enslaved and colonised groups but Islam still remains dominant.
But what happened to the Christians who made up the majority in the known world during the time of Constantine?
Why then is Christianity not the biggest religion on earth today, if it was so powerful in the past?
Modern Christianity (post-Constantine) is not the same as ancient Christianity.
Modern Christianity is Western in terms of ideology and practice while ancient Christianity was Eastern. When the Romans began Westernising Christianity, the indigenous people of the East, namely Africans and Asians, became resentful of it.
The Roman Empire also began cracking down on Christians who did not follow the doctrines, festivals and beliefs they dictated.
For example, the Arian Christians of Egypt who challenged and refused the Trinity and Christ as God’s doctrine.
These were outlawed after the Nicaea conference.
The doctrine of the Romans started trumping the way of Christ as well as the Hebrews and this did not sit well with the indigenous people of the East.
Three centuries passed and Rome was again seen to be a villain.
Prophet Muhammad, a descendant of Abraham and Ishmaelite received a calling at the age of 50 in Arabia. Within 10 years, he won the hearts of the indigenous people of the East, mainly through his collection of written revelations from Allah (God) which now make up the Quran.
The Christians read the book even after his death and recognised the words of the Quran to be of the same persuasion as the Hebrew scriptures of old.
The contents complemented each other and all that Muhammad asked was for his followers to return to the ways of Abraham and the rest of the prophets.
The dietary laws of Israel returned, so did strict monotheism and male circumcision, among others. Muhammad taught that he had no new religion, but was returning to the old way of life which was prescribed by God and God does not change.
He taught that Islam was the way of life of all the ancient prophets, including Christ. He defined Islam as the complete surrender of a person to the will of Allah.
This he prescribed to all humans as the way to true peace (salam), thus the name Islam.
Shortly after Muhammad’s passing, the Romans lost their grasp on the known world. Christians became Muslims and so did many of the Hebrew groups that fled to Arabia and Africa from the wrath of Rome.
Syria, Iraq, Iran, Palestine, Arabia, North Africa, West Africa, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Indonesia, among other countries, all became Muslim territories in a very short space of time.
Even Spain and southern France were taken over by blacks who were Muslim for the most part, and known as Moors. ‘Moro’ meant black in Latin.
Romans and Greeks were kicked out of the known world by the Moors. The Hellenic Jews, under the wing of the Romans, fled to Khazaria and southern Europe.
Their punishment was banishment from the region.
Peace prevailed in Africa and Asia with blacks becoming the dominant race in terms of civilisation. In this period, many of the modern inventions were made, for example eye surgery, running water, street lights and modern construction techniques, among others. The dome rock of Jerusalem, the Great Zimbabwe, Timbuktu and many other great constructions were made when Europeans were still living in barns.
Thus, the rise of the Greeks and the Romans led to a fall in innovation and progress in the known world. The black renaissance began when the Western imperialists were done away with.
They were not civilisers, but parasites feeding on Eastern civilisations, resources, cultures and religions.
Muhammad himself was closely associated with Christianity until he was enlightened on the corrupt traits of the Romanised religion.
He grew up and traded with the Sabaeans who were a Solomonic group in Saba (Yemen) and scored most of his followers in Yathrib (Al Madina) among Judean refugees who fled to Arabia from Roman persecution.
He was rejected by his own tribesmen in Mecca and established his city in Yathrib. His people tried to kill him, so he fled and sent his followers to Negus Nejashi, the Christian King of Ethiopia and kinsmen of the Solomonic Sabaeans.
The king embraced them, refused to give them up to their pursuers and declared that his religion (Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity) was no different from Muhammad’s (Islam).
He described them as two rays of light from the same sun.
Eventually, Africa and Asia abandoned Western religion, with the exception of Ethiopia and Egypt which had already taken up Christianity as defining traits of their territories.
This state would remain until the fall of the Moors of Granada, Spain, in 1492.
This was followed by ethnic cleansing, such as the Spanish Inquisition which killed Muslims, black or white, and imposed Catholicism on the groups that remained in Europe.
This led the whites who converted to Islam to flee into North Africa were white skinned Muslims can be found in places like Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and so on.
The indigenous blacks of these regions are still present but were not immune to the stigma against people of colour that has been upheld by whites in recent times.
Before this, the Catholic Pope Urban II tried unsuccessfully to lead Europeans in a series of wars for the holy sites of the east. These were known as Crusades and it is in this period post-1000 CE that Caucasian whites first entered the known world (Africa and Asia). Depictions of ancient figures like the Egyptian Pharaoh and Hebrew Christ as whites should therefore be excused as historically inaccurate.
In the 1600s the transatlantic kidnappings and enslavement of west African blacks by whites began. Most of the victims were Muslims and were forced to abandon their religion, culture and beliefs and take up the slave master’s.
Missionaries also evangelised African and Asian colonies in a bid to colonise and subdue them mentally and spiritually. Despite these efforts, Christianity still has not overtaken Islam.
Ironically, Christians in the former colonies of the West have been deceived into thinking Christianity is the most influential religion on earth whilst statistics say otherwise.
English colonies in Africa are more Christian than the English themselves and black Americans are more Christian than white Americans.
It would be surprising to many Christians that though they are convinced they are saved, they are just a minority group as compared to Muslims and even Buddhists and Hindus, who equally think they are saved.