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By Lenrod Nzulu Baraka
The three great Abrahamic faiths have a long history of repressive behaviour directed against perceived enemies of the deity of those faiths and the holy books these faiths subscribe to. In the Old Testament, the Canaanites came in for some heavy-duty ethnic cleansing simply because they rubbed the deity of the Old Testament the wrong way.
Joshua, who succeeded the equally genocidal Moses, was given the task of uprooting the numerous Canaanite tribes and their neighbours that inhabited the land that Yahweh promised to the descendants of Abraham. In true national socialism style, Joshua proceeded to implement a final solution to the Canaanite problem by putting men, women, children, and animals to the sword.
The Christian community that finally clawed its way out of the bowels of Judaism continued in the same macabre tradition of initiating blood baths against the enemies of the faith. Recalcitrant heretics were rounded up, given a summary trial and dispatched into the great beyond in a fiery inferno known as the auto-da-fé.
After it emerged in the seventh century, Islam continued along the same trajectory. Muslims divided the world into the House of Islam and the House of War. Jihads or holy wars were waged against all the enemies of Islam. Islam, therefore, expanded at the edge of the sword. Whenever these three Abrahamic faiths came into proximity with each other, undertakers would smack their lips in glee because of the high volume of corpses that would materialise.
Religious persecution, bigotry, and an over zealous desire to control the speech, action, and thoughts of adherents and non-adherents alike usually resulted in all three of the great Abrahamic faiths developing repressive totalitarian regimes whenever these faiths gained control of the machinery of statecraft. It is an undeniable fact that all three of the Abrahamic faiths flirted dangerously with despotic theocratic governance that left a trail of blood, misery, and pain in its wake.
Notwithstanding the destructive and diabolical history associated with the Western European nations, it is to their credit that a new burst of illumination pierced the shroud of darkness known as the Dark Ages. Dissatisfied and disgusted with the bigotry, greed, and immorality so unashamedly displayed at all levels of the ecclesiastical despotism that ruled Christendom with an iron glove, European philosophers, statesmen, scientists, and thinkers routed the church and drove a new generation of Pharisees from the temple of statecraft.
Regrettably, most of the African continent has not yet gotten the memo that the world has moved on from the bigotry, darkness, and ignorance that characterised the Dark Ages. On March 21, 2023, the Ugandan Parliament passed a new bill that will criminalise anyone identifying as LGBTQ+. The new bill not only entrenches the criminalization of same sex activity but also makes it a criminal offence to engage in any kind of activism on behalf of the LGBTQ+ community. The previous life imprisonment is confirmed in the new bill for serious homosexual offences. Perhaps one of the most worrisome provisions in the new bill is the inclusion of the death penalty for serial homosexual offenders and aggravated acts of homosexuality.
Another very worrisome aspect of the new bill is the criminalizing of anyone who fails to report anyone suspected of engaging in homosexual activity to the police. This provision has all the trappings of the Inquisition, which also demanded that people snitch on suspected heretics, witches, intellectual dissenters, homosexuals, and crypto Jews and Muslims who converted to Christianity but were still practising their original faith. Persons who refuse to snitch on their family, friends, and neighbours can be fined and sentenced to six months in jail. As Musa Ecweru, state minister for works and transport in Uganda, stated, the new bill is designed to ensure that homosexuals have no space in Uganda.
If this bill is signed into law by President Yoweri Museveni, a new chapter in the Inquisition would have opened in Africa and the LGBTQ+ community like all other victims of Inquisitions in every age, will be in for a torrid time. Africa, generally and Uganda specifically could certainly find other more pressing issues to occupy the time and talent of its legislators. Uganda has very little to gain and much to lose by persisting along this perilous path. A new Dark Ages and Inquisition seems to be beckoning Uganda and its legislators are dancing to the same deadly melody that opened the floodgates for rivers of blood in Europe and wherever religious despotism has taken root.
Lenrod Nzulu Baraka is the founder of Afro-Caribbean Spiritual Teaching Center and the author of The Rebirth of Black Civilization: Making Africa and the Caribbean Great Again.
