On Historical Consciousness

The Historical Narrative

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Kaatib Mustafa arranging some manuscripts.

Who are you? Did you define yourself? Or were you defined by another? Is your self definition consistent with historical reality? Does your historical memory work for or against you? The answers to all these questions delineate the importance of historical consciousness.

What exactly is ‘historical consciousnesses? Collectively it refers to a people’s actual historical narrative, but more importantly it refers to their attitudes towards that narrative. It answers the issues of the reason the Creator created them and placed them in the circumstances that they find themselves.

The historical consciousness is a vital element of the original nature (fitra), and is the ontological indication of Divine Unity (tawheed). The innate recognition of the Oneness of the Creator, and the unity of existence, results from a unification of the self, where the unconscious and the conscious are integrated in a symbiotic whole, where the individual sees himself or herself apart of a family, social unit, a nation and a universe which is connected and cohesively apart of an on going historical narrative.

This is vitally important when trying to lay the foundations for a historical consciousness which is necessary in fusing the conscious with the unconscious in resolving the problems associated with slavery, colonialism and domestic colonization.

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