History...Is His Story
”The darkest man is here the most highly esteemed and considered better than the others who are not so dark. Let me add that in very truth these people portray and depict their gods and their idols black and their devils white as snow. For they say that God and all the saints are black and the devils are all white. That is why they portray them as I have described.” – Marco Polo,after visiting the Pandyan Kingdom in 1288.”
?Excerpts from “IRONY” (Amazon):???
Chapter 6: A Pariah
“To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one's thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one's mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality.”
Ayn Rand
?Before I began my research on Haiti, I was inclined to believe everything negative told to me about that nation; anything I read in newspaper columns or coming over the airwaves via television or radio. I viewed the Haitians as malingers and the society culturally regressive.?A people?who, for centuries,?seem to lack the capacity to move their country forward – in tandem - with European society, since their birth as an independent Republic in 1804. After I completed my research, I had to disabuse myself from the grip of my ignorance.
To understand Haiti’s demise, I had to journey back to Spain before the Moors arrived (711),?view the period of the Moorish Caliphate (711 – 1492), then comprehend what these Africans had accomplished in Spain. After I had done this, I understood – better – what James Burke meant when he wrote, “The intellectual community which the northern scholars found in Spain was so far superior to what they had at home that it left a lasting jealousy of Arab culture, which was to color Western opinions for centuries" (Burke, 1985, p. 41). And it is still being done today. The Berbers had managed Spain well. Knowledgeable Europeans were not about to let this happen in Haiti. Other cultures (non-European) were to be brought underfoot.?“Caliphate” became a word, used with derision and meant to instill fear.?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
?According to Gothenburg University researcher Markel Thylefors, "The event of the Bois Ca?man ceremony forms an important part of Haitian national identity as it relates to the very genesis of Haiti." Some scholars believe that Boukman blended a syncretic form of traditional African religion and Christianity.?Boukman and the priestess – afterwards – asked their followers to cast aside the image of the God of their French oppressors.?
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Boukman’s Prayer
Good God who created the Sun which shines on us from above, who rouses the sea and makes the thunder rumble; Listen!
God though hidden in a cloud watches over us.
The god of the white man calls forth crime but our God wills good works.
Our God who is good commands us to vengeance. He will direct our arms and help us.
Throw away the likeness of the white man’s god who has so often brought us to tears and listen to liberty which speaks in all our hearts.
“On August 14, 1791, the slaves of St. Domingue rebelled. News of the insurrection sent electrifying waves of fear throughout the hemisphere”.
News of the Haitian insurrection not only sent “electrifying waves of fear throughout the hemisphere”, but, also, the thought of the rebirth of a new Caliphate?(remember Moorish Spain) may have awakened a fierce demon that resides within the soul of?Europeans. The slave states and slave owners in the United States and elsewhere in the Americas, understood that “the chickens may be coming home to roost” and were not about to let this happen. Their innate fears stroked the fire of their hatred and gave rise to greater cruelty; lynching, and brutality that extended beyond the bounds of human comprehension. They set about their task with the ruthless intensity that mirrored Adolf Hitler’s pogrom against the Jewish people during World War II (1939 – 1945).
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1 年https://www.worldhistory.org/Marco_Polo/