"By false universal, I am referring to the phenomenon of history internalized, normalized, and then forgotten as history.

This invariably leads to the tendency to speak in universal terms but from a particularly cultural, ideological, or historical perspective. In this process, the cognitive mass [mask?] of the universal category eclipses the contribution of the particular perspective from which the speakers speaks. "Human," ''Islam,'' ''justice,'' and the like are all taken, thus, to represent not particular understandings but ontological realities that are equally esteemed and apprehended by everyone, save the stupid, the primitive, or the morally depraved. From this vantage point, only those who subscribe to specific concretions of these ostensibly universal categories are justified in laying any claim to them. In this capacity, and precisely because it is so imperceptible, the false universal turns out to function as a powerful tool of domination.

-Sherman A. Jackson, Islam and the Blackamerican, 9