Opinions

The need to promote sound religion

ANY student of world history and civilisations, and especially of peace and conflicts in it, will discover that while the love of power and money or wealth had driven most of these, religion wrongly developed and/or sought to be as wrongly spread, had been the cause of the most silly and intransigent of all the conflicts thereof. Surprisingly, spirituality is a common function of all human beings; and at the personal level, most human beings would very easily agree on their common themes. Similarly, organised spirituality is what religions ought to be; and it would be obvious that if it does so healthily, it should similarly not be a cause of friction anywhere as such. It would indeed just be bringing about what may only be likened to “heaven on earth”! Unfortunately, this is not the case; as these do not develop by any mutual discussions to arrive at consensus on the tenets of these religions.

On the contrary, religions usually arise from one person coming up and declaring these as such. In this way, many religions often conflict with those originated from such other founders, and soon become the main sources of the worst of primitivities, wickedness and un-Godliness of all of these! Even when many religions originate healthily, the people who embrace and try to give leadership in these often go fanatical also, refuse any inter-religious dialogues and so perpetrate the worst monstrosities with those religions. This is exactly the very reason that those of us who claim to be religious should ensure that we are not only properly so; but also, that those who claim to share the same religion as us are not such spiritual monsters as those who use or live these religions negatively.

Now, as is very clearly discernible by any healthy human being, the world and our human life in it is not made up of only the things that we all see and touch. The very things that we value the most are not such material things. On the contrary these very important things (that we value to receive from other people as good) are love, hard work, honesty, trustworthiness, faithfulness, solidarity, etc. Nobody sells nor buys these things. Yet they are so very much more expensive than anything that money can buy – land, houses, power, and even some religiousities!

It is the articulation of all these unseen and non-material things and ordering one’s life according to their dictates that constitutes a person’s spirituality. It helps a person to appreciate these things as well as to pursue them above every other (material) things. Spirituality also explores the spiritually discernible origin, source and rewarder of those values, both in time and in eternity, usually referred to as God! Even though there are still a few poly-theistic religions around the world, including virtually all of the Nigerian native religions, it is obvious that these religions will only gradually all die off and give way to the mono-theistic religions. Even our words such as Chi-Ukwu (the big god or simply Chukwu) already indicate that even though traditional religion may seem to indicate belief in many gods, it recognizes also that there is only one almighty God or the biggest of the gods.

Of the three principal monotheistic religions, on the other hand, Judaism or the religion of the Jews would seem to be confined to that race, with no urge or mandate to get any other people to embrace it. The Baha’i Faith, having developed from Islam itself, will have to sort itself out with Islam before we will be able to know where to put it as a contender for the religions to consider in the future peace and concord of the world. Even though Islam, having seemingly developed for the Arabs as descendants of Ishmael as Judaism developed for the descendants of Israel, as both sons of Abraham, it has managed to propagate itself as a religion that may be spread to others apart from the Arabs. However, the truth remains that unlike Christianity, which developed originally from the Jewish people but was out rightly rejected by them as incompatible with Judaism and so something for all else except themselves, Islam has to a very large extent failed to be a religion of peace and concord with all men and women of good will; despite oral claim that it is or should be so. All men and women of goodwill will therefore do their best to see that Islam does what it says and hopes to be, both in spirit and in truth, whether they be Muslims themselves or not!

In this wise, it would seem obvious to us that in all of the world, Yoruba land is probably the only place where Islam has been domesticated enough to be such a religion – to all intents and purposes, at least up to lately. It is because of this reality that the Yoruba race must make themselves the true evangelists of peaceful Islam; that is, one which can be practiced side by side without animosity between its adherents and those of the other religions around it – capable of inter-religious dialogue and of mutual peaceful existence of their adherents with those of the other religions. I sincerely believe that this is not only a universal task which the Yoruba Muslims must undertake; but one which they must start by first and foremost preventing their long peaceful Islam to join the world-wide terrorist brand thereof.

Leaders of Christianity also must do well to curb the newly growing trend for a more fanatical and war mongering Christianity. At the level of civilization already achieved by human beings in the 21st century, for anybody to think that s/he can embrace and practice any religion that says that everybody must accept it or otherwise be killed, disturbed, hated or howsoever else eradicated, is to really identify such persons and their religion as preparing for their very own world eradication on the contrary! That will be same as the rather apparently intensifying growth in some of these newer age religions or sects that would seem to say that anybody leaving such a religion for another or even none at all will be killed, undermined, hated by them, etc. The duty to develop ALL peaceful religions and the individual human spiritualities that are their origins, is that of everybody desiring to go to Heaven, Paradise, Nirvana, or whatever other names people of the different religions call this eternal place of final rest of the people who were good in their lives on this earth.