On the contest between extreme profanity and religiosity (I)

“To each of you, We prescribed a law and a method. Had Allah willed, He would have made you one nation (Quran 5:48). In other words, if it was in His plans, humanity would have been bearers of one creed, one culture and civilisation. On the contrary, however, we, as humans, are fated to live, […]

“To each of you, We prescribed a law and a method. Had Allah willed, He would have made you one nation (Quran 5:48). In other words, if it was in His plans, humanity would have been bearers of one creed, one culture and civilisation. On the contrary, however, we, as humans, are fated to live, subsist and indeed ‘thrive’ on contrarieties. Thus, humans shall always profit from strife and calamities; what is foul, in line with Shakespeare, would be fair to some. To attempt to walk straight in our world, is posture like an angel among subjects sired by the fathers’ loins and born of the wombs, preparatory to the tomb!  

Brethren, the above argument, if as such it may be described, validates two others that 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 people for sins or evils that 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 unbelief 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 here, I actually wish to problematise 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 of 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 glory in the otherworldly.

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 to rape and rip us of 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? This reminds me of that chapter in the last testament, the Quran – the chapter of unconscionable acquisition of material wealth. It reads thus: Indeed, striving for more and more wealth has diverted your attention; Until you visit the graves.

Nay! You shall soon know;

Again, Nay! You shall soon know;

Nay! Were you to know with the knowledge of certainty, (you would beware!);

You shall certainly see the blazing fire;

Again, you will surely see it with the certainty of your sight;

Then, on that Day, you shall surely be questioned about the pleasures (that you indulged in). (Quran 102: 1-6)