Written by: Qusay Ahmed

Recent years have witnessed a remarkable rise in claims by what is known as the movement AfrocentricIt is a movement that claims to reread human history from the perspective of African identity, but it has often crossed the boundaries of academic research into areas of populism and undocumented claims.

The claims were revealed Afrocentric In Egypt specifically, this movement clashed with a historical and cultural narrative that extends back thousands of years, as some of its figures claimed to present ancient Egyptian civilization as purely African in the modern racial sense, while denying or distorting historical and archaeological facts established by scientific and research institutions around the world.

Afrocentricity: Between reinterpreting history and falsifying civilizations

Researchers and historians emphasize that the crisis does not lie in taking pride in African identity or highlighting the continent’s role in human history, but rather in employing history selectively, subject to ideological and political objectives, far removed from the scientific method based on documents, antiquities, and anthropological and linguistic studies, especially since ancient Egyptian civilization was the product of a complex geographical and cultural interaction within the Nile Valley and its Mediterranean, African, and Eastern surroundings, and cannot be reduced to contemporary racial classifications that did not exist at that time.

With the expansion of social media platforms, some Afrocentric arguments have turned into popular material that relies more on sensationalism than on sober research, which has led broad sectors of Egyptian intellectuals and archaeologists to consider it an absurd movement that lacks a scientific basis and is based on recycling weak or false hypotheses with the aim of creating an alternative narrative, not with the aim of reaching the historical truth.

What is the Afrocentric movement and what are its goals?

This so-called movement was founded in America in 1928, and was influenced by earlier nationalist movements such as Ethiopian nationalism and African nationalism.

The Afrocentric movement flourished remarkably during the 1960s and 1970s in the United States, coinciding with the rise of national liberation movements in Africa and the increasing involvement of intellectuals and academics from Europe and the United States in supporting African identity issues.

Among the most prominent figures who contributed to promoting the claims of that movement were Molefi Kete Asante, who founded the Institute of Afrocentrism Studies and contributed to the development of the movement’s academic theory, as well as Sheklan Ghez, author of African Roots, who highlighted the influence of African heritage in shaping the cultural identity of Black people in the diaspora.

What is the relationship between Afrocentric and ancient Egypt?

To gain popularity, the Afrocentric movement began claiming to represent the 7,000-year-old Egyptian civilization, based on the claims of Molefi Asante’s writings, which reject everything that is not African and black.

The movement claims that the Pharaonic civilization was built on the shoulders of Africans, contrary to all scientific and historical facts, so the movement remains based on claims only, without any scientific study to confirm its claims.

In his many books and research, Molefi Asante consistently rejects monotheistic religions such as Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, considering them part of Western cultural hegemony that contributes to distancing African identity from its original roots, thus disregarding all religions and holy books.