Monday, November 17, 2008

kemi seba: france's "malcolm x"

From Mark Sedgewick's Traditionalists' blog: Guenon and "France's Malcolm X"

I wish I knew French so I could read the Saphir interview...

Guénon has found a new fan in France: Kémi Séba, a somewhat notorious African-nationalist activist, who recently converted to Islam and is being referred to by some as "France's Malcolm X." His following, however, seems considerably smaller than that of America's Malcolm X.

Séba read Guénon in a French jail in early 2008, while serving the most recent of a series of short sentences for inciting racial hatred. In an August 2008 interview with Saphir News, a French Muslim on-line newspaper, he referred to several of Guénon's works, and said that although Guénon was not the only reason for his conversion to Islam, it was Guénon who had shown him that Islam was more than the religion of the Arabs.

1 comment:

Ben said...

salam. Indeed Kemi Seba can be seen as a french malcom X. Over the years I have always kept an eye on what he was doing as an 'activist', while I now live in the US, I was happy to hear that he (re-)became muslim (he has been in the french NOI before), and even more happy when I heard of his readings and quotation of René Guénon.. makes me think that he understood deep aspects of Islam here, and how it can relie to his previous 'ancient egyptian religious beliefs' and the synthesis and promordial source of religions.