In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful'To each of you We prescribed a law and a method. Had Allah willed, He would have made you one nation'To Allah is your return all together, and He will inform you concerning that over which you used to differ-' Q5:48BRETHREN, two main arguments, I suppose, could be pleaded as reasons for the current malaise in the Nigerian polity: the argument from extreme profanity and the other from extreme religiosity. These two arguments, I should remind you, are essentially different from the argument from belief and unbelief. Whereas the argument from belief accounts for the existence of over more than one and a half billion Muslims across the world, argument from unbelief, on the other hand, belongs to the incurable atheists- those who say that if the Almighty is indeed capable of preventing evil from happening, then it should be His task to ensure that everybody on earth believe in His existence; it should be His responsibility to prevent disbelief. They equally argue that if the Almighty knew belief in Him would profit humanity, He should have made it an involuntary act from which humanity would have no escape.But the atheist's argument is weak from the dual perspectives of revelation and reason. The latter makes it clear that it would amount to Divine injustice for the Almighty to punish for sins or evils people commit involuntarily. In other words, if belief were to be like living and dying over which humans have no power, it would amount to a travesty of Divine measurement of justice for the atheist to be held to account for something over which he had no control.This explains why disbelief is considered an infraction on the Divine injunction ' the injunction that all creatures should believe in Allah, the only Creator. It also explains why belief or disbelief in the unseen, is a path humans are given the free choice to tread or abandon.But dear brethren, by making reference to arguments from extreme profanity and extreme religiosity in this sermon, I wish to present the two notions as vectors for the systemic failure in the Nigerian polity. Brethren, it is my assumption that to suffer from either of the malaise is to lose touch with the centre of existence, to be obfuscated by the mirages of life, to wander in the wilderness of life, to exist on the margins truth. To suffer from either extreme profanity or extreme religiosity is to attempt to work for the Almighty Allah while, in reality, one is working against Him. To suffer from extreme profanity is to affirm one's location in the arid and dark vortex of the spiritual, where one purports to glorify the other world.Brethren, what else other than extreme profanity, which is masked by extreme spirituality, could explain instances where Muslims and Christians who found themselves as guardians of public authority now collude in order to rape and rip us off all our communal wealth.What else other than extreme profanity could account for the trend in the public service where a civil servant would decide to steal the meagre savings of his fellow civil servants and luxuriate in the thought that the stolen fund would guarantee him an Eldorado in this world and a sanctuary in the hereafter' What else, dear brethren, other than extreme profanity would ventilate the trend where a single individual would siphon the monies which are meant for the development of his village in the thought that such an action would perpetually insulate his family against penury and want'Unfortunately, dear brethren, extreme profanity does not usually function all alone. It sometimes draws on the religious. It invokes the spiritual. It relies on the preternatural. Thus once they steal, once they misappropriate the public wealth, they seek recourse in the mosque or church. Once they steal public wealth, they build education foundations and launch philanthropic outfits.They do this based on another iniquitous assumption that they could, therewith, obtain Divine favour. They think they can 'bribe' the Almighty Allah! Yes! They attempt to do what Al-Ghazalli invoked in his graphic illustration of how futile an exercise it would always be for humans to attempt to cut corners with the Almighty Allah.Al-Ghazalli says the similitude of those who infringe on the eternal and fundamental ideals instituted by Allah for humanity ' the ideal of honesty, of transparency and of accountability - and those who attempt to bribe their ways, even though fruitlessly, back to the glory of the Almighty, is like that of a married woman who commits adultery and goes to cook a delicious soup with the money given to her by the adulterer for her husband. The soup becomes a poison even before it is cooked; the effort of the woman is rendered nugatory from beginning to the end.Brethren, it is, however, not in all cases that extreme profanity sources strength and vigour from extreme religiosity. Rather, each disease is capable of working all alone. In other words, not all those atrocious elements in government circles have Imams and pastors they hearken or listen to; not all those who masquerade under the canopy of Islam to inflict heinous crimes actually desire to build terrestrial castles. On the contrary, extreme profanity and extreme religiosity could be ends in themselves.This is particularly true of the recent happenings in the country. In the latter, extreme religiosity has proved to be a means towards a 'religious' end; it has also become an end in itself. Brethren when a brother says he desires to wish Christians out of existence such an individual is suffering from extreme religiosity. The latter is not only an expression of the anarchistic and villainous interpretation of, in this instance, some verses of the Qur'an, it is equally an appropriation of the Divine attribute to Will and unwill. In other words, when a Muslim says he does not want to see churches besides, for example, the emir's palace in Ilorin or says that Christians should evacuate the Sultanate in Sokoto, he is indirectly saying it was wrong for Almighty Allah (fal Iyadh billah) to have endowed humanity with freewill. He is saying he is wiser (fal Iyadh billah) than Almighty Allah for allowing multiplicity of colours and faiths in the world. He is saying the Prophet (s.a.w) was wrong for recognising the subjectivity of Christians and Jews in the first Islamic state in Madinah and for drafting the first multi-cultural, multi-religious constitution in human annals.Put differently, when a Muslim embarks on a campaign of religious Puritanism, when he seeks to purge his environment of the presence of other religions, he is actually and ironically destroying the very foundation of Islam; he becomes like the crocodile in the only stream in the village.guardianfridayworship@gmail.com
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