WORLD RELIGIONS: Mercantilists Methodologies or Deus Desiderata?

By Adeniyi Kunnu

Twitter: @mautin777

No matter what anyone says, until we search ourselves and question certain things, the 'Light of God ' will elude many, especially as Individuals. I believe in the Almighty God, but when those who claim to have a relationship with God turn out to be those who keep their flock in bondage and impoverish them, or Stoke the embers of hatred and religious supremacy, then it simply consolidates what colonialism achieved and still does in these times.

All religions are culpable...for the importance of knowledge; there are 2.3 billion Christians in the world, making it 29% of over 7.8 billion people across the globe - many of whom are in Europe, the USA even Africa. Sadly however, many of these nations were the colonist nations, which continue to impoverish Africa and other developing nations of the world. What then is the correlation between their professed faiths and the lives they live as well their relationship with others nations?

First is the unending racism against but not limited to Africans and those of their ancestry. The forced abortions and termination of lives disguised as health policies; calculated sterilizations of women in Africa, South Korea and India; the lies about Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, support for rebels in Libya, incursion into Syria and many atrocities, yet, these are predominantly Christian nations.

Islam comes second after Christianity as the most followed religion in the world. There are 1.9 billion Muslims the world over, accounting for 24% of the world population. The irony also is, how do we explain the evils of ISIS, ISIL, Boko Haram, ISWAP, and of course the intolerance that we have seen emanate from the civilian population of Northern Nigeria, Pakistan and some other places.

Not to forget that Arabs were part of the Slave Trade, and still trade in human beings, having supplied a lot of slaves to the traders in the West and treating non-Arabs as less humans, yet many of them claim to be Muslims.

Agnostics and Atheists are third in rank with respect to religious affiliation, numbering 1.1 billion and accounting for 14% of world population. The question many people are not asking us that, why do we have the rising number of atheist?

Many who are agnostics or atheists who feel there is no God must have had significant turn around in their lives at some point, and perhaps interrogating their non-conformist stance will give a balanced perspective as to why they feel religion could be a product of 'deceitful and subservient machinations'

Can we reconcile the profession of religion and unending and pervasive injustice? What about the deaths of innocent children, men and women in wars they never started, among many other pains suffered by those who never should have been involved in these killings in the first place.

Following closely in 4th are Hindu worshippers, who live predominantly in India, numbering up to 1.1 billion and also 14% of world population.

Buddhists are in 5th position, with a percentage of 6% and over 506 million devotees. The Chinese Traditional Religion follows closely in 6th, with over 394 million adherents, making it 5% of the world population religion wise.

Looking at the incidences of fake drugs from India and substandard good from China, one is left to ask the question, what these religions teach these people, who manufacture 'fakes' that often lead to the jeopardy of human lives without the humanity and honesty expected of them.

The Chinese especially are reputed for various levels of racketeering, especially their operations in Africa and Nigeria particularly, whilst also not absolving India whose caste system is the sustenance of slavery in their country and other developing nations where they operate.

When we put atrocities committed against fellow human beings on one side, and we look at the perpetrators of these crimes on the other side, it simply becomes obviously alarming, that many who profess devotion to many of these faiths are at the fore of these crimes committed.

What we all need therefore, especially in Africa is the rediscovery of our HUMANITY...what the Almighty God has made us for is to see the next man as oneself, as well as other things he has created, which includes animals and plants.

When we learn to appreciate and treat the next man as we would want to be treated, the evils that seem not to be abating will be choked off.  

After all, who needs any religion when God is more than enough?

Let us make the reverence and honour of the man we see, the only true and acceptable religion to make our motherland and the world a place worth living.

The hypocrisies of world religions must be sieved off, because history already shows how religions have been used to oppress, deceive, maim, destroy, ravage, impoverish, enslave and annihilate a group of people in favour of faith-preneurs and their evolving political allies.

NEW BOOK: Las' Las' We'll Be All Right by Joy Isi Bewaji

Las' Las'…It means "eventually"

"Eventually what?" You may ask.

Eventually, all will be well.

"How?"

We are not sure.

"When?"

 Nobody knows.

But "God dey sha."

That comforting clause that soothes us as we move from day to day and one "las las" to the next. There are not many solutions here. We have been struggling with the same issues from the beginning of creation—bad roads, no potable water, poor education, shameless corruption, poor health system, the list is endless.

What do we do? We do not seem to know. Dying for the country is out of it. Nobody will remember your name, how much more remember what you died for.

Jollof rice is a more interesting topic. It is all we have. It is all we fight for.

Las' Las' We'll Be All Right

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HAPPY READING!

WORK IN PROGRESS: NOWHERE TO HIDE

By Omoruyi Uwuigiaren
ldsomoruyi@yahoo.ca

I went into the printing press and I have to tell you that it was the best press I have ever seen in my life. It was beautiful. There were customers. There was help on the floor. One of the staff approached me. He greeted, “Good evening sir.” Smile paraded his face.

“Good evening, young man,” I replied, beaming with confidence. “Where is your boss? I came for my books. Are they ready?”

He shifted his weight to one leg. He smiled and threw out a question, “Are you Mr. Robert?”

“Yes!” I nodded affirmatively.

“My boss is not in the office but he left a note for you!” He handed the letter over to me and moved to one side.

Without wasting time, I browsed through the piece. In a couple of minutes, I was done. I let go a mighty heave, raised my head and turned to the young man. “Thank you, I got the message. Where are the books?”

“They are over there,” he pointed to a corner in the press. “Please, follow me.” We walked to the corner where the books were neatly packed.

 I considered myself the happiest visitor. My first book was finally printed and they are now within my reach. Beautiful prints and my world has become an intriguing place. It was the best any first time author could ever ask for.  

I was starting a new life altogether. Every turn taught me a lesson. I was richer in wisdom but I could not tell if my new endeavour would turn to be a gold mine that I could be mining forever. My passion was great. It was taller than the pair of legs that carried me.

 Some of the valuable lessons will certainly stay with me forever. If I do not make them applicable to my everyday life, I will be a loser and it might haunt me for the rest of my life. We ought not to look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors and for profiting by dearly bought experience.

The process of getting the book published was turbulent. I met folks who challenged me. They hit me hard and I almost gave up. It was obvious that it was up to me if anything remarkable would happen. If I were not forthcoming with money as quickly as possible, my job would be thrown out of the window. I was a man hunted by bandits who are all demanding for his neck at the same time and guns pointed at his head. They made me tough.

Most people want their lives to keep improving, yet they value peace and stability at the same time. People often forget that you cannot improve and still stay the same. Growth means change. Change requires challenging the status quo.  I had stumbled on a path that I would be glad to see where it would lead me.

The printer had done his job. The books were glossy and neat. Not everyone will be this meticulous given the short time given to deliver. My life was a festival. The young man joined me and we packed the books. We moved all of them to my car outside. After the excruciating exercise of arranging the books in the boot of my car, I was exhausted. I thanked the young man and he walked back into the office.

I dusted my clothes and got the car keys from my chest pocket. My rickety legs carried me to the driver’s seat where I settled into the car and fastened the seat belt. My eyes travelled quickly about to see if everything was in place. The books had settled in nicely in the boot, and there was no stone left unturned, so I ignited the engine and drove off. 

Omoruyi Uwuigiaren

Coronavirus and Exploding Conspiracy Theories of Religious Crackpots

By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.
Twitter: @farooqkperogi

The novel coronavirus is not only devastating humankind, it is also disrupting the settled certainties and spiritual verities of religious fanatics for whom atavistic and superstitious frames of reference are the only ways to make sense of the world around them.

I’ll start from fringe members of my own religious community. When the new coronavirus first emerged in China, a lunatic fringe of the Nigerian Muslim community celebrated it and said it was Allah’s punishment against China for mistreating its Muslim minority population.

They said the clearest indication that it was divine pestilence to avenge the persecution of Chinese Muslims could be seen in the fact that all Chinese people were compelled to cover their whole bodies in ways that were reminiscent of the sartorial choices Allah enjoined Muslims, especially Muslim women, to make, which China denies its Muslim minority.

I recall telling a religious crackpot who made this silly argument early this year that it wasn’t the first time that people had covered their bodies in response to a pandemic. The 1918 Spanish Flu, which killed nearly half a million Nigerians and more than 50 million people worldwide, caused people to wear face masks.

I added that his theory would fall apart if the virus made its way to Muslim communities. But, like other simpleminded, delusory loonies, he was certain that Muslims were providentially inoculated against Allah’s pandemic for infidels.

Shortly after, Iran became one of the epicenters of the new coronavirus. It killed people, including political and religious leaders, with the same viciousness that it did Chinese atheists, Buddhists, and Taoists.

Then Sunni zealots among the conspiracy theorists changed tack and said Iranians became susceptible to the virus because, being Shiites, they are not real Muslims, and that the Hazrat Masumeh Shrine in Qom, Iran, which was the principal way by which the virus spread in the country, isn’t “Islamic.”

Of course, we all know the virus has infected Sunni Muslim strongholds in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia. For the first time in decades, al-Masjid al-Ḥarām in Mecca and Al-Masjid an-Nabawi in Medina, Islam’s two holiest mosques, were closed to worshippers because of COVID-19.

As of the time of writing this column, there were 3,651 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 47 deaths in Saudi Arabia. An April 8, 2020 New York Times report said up to 150 members of the Saudi Royal family have been infected with the virus and that Faisal bin Bandar Al Saud, the king’s nephew, is in intensive care unit arising from COVID-19.

The tenor of the conspiracy theory has changed again. Coronavirus is now a grand plot by “Jews” to halt the inexorable march of Islam, to disrupt Muslim rituals in Mecca, and to dominate the world to the exclusion of Muslims!

There are different Christian versions of this superstitious lunacy. Enoch Adeboye, the general overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), for instance, said the new coronavirus would not infect, much less kill, people “who serve God wholeheartedly.”

Since thousands of Christians, including medical professionals who were on the front lines in the service of humanity, were killed by the disease, Adeboyean logic would have us believe that they died because they didn’t “serve God wholeheartedly.”

Abia State governor Okezie Ikpeazu upped the ante of religious irrationality when he said, “Abia is the only state [in Nigeria] that is mentioned in the Bible. We have been promised by God that none of these diseases will get to us. We saw Ebola and pox. Even this one [COVID-19) it won’t get to us.”

If Abia State is immune from COVID-19 because of the phonological accident that caused the word “Abia” to appear once in the Bible, why is the virus running riot in Israel, the very scene of the Bible?

As of Friday when this column was written, more than 10,000 people have tested positive for the new coronavirus in Israel, and nearly 100 people have died from it. But Israel was mentioned countless times in the Bible.

Italy, the headquarters of Catholicism and of Christianity for centuries, has been one of the worst-hit countries in the coronavirus pandemic, with 147,577 infections and nearly 20,000 deaths as of April 10.

What is so special about Abia that God would spare it of the coronavirus but let it fatally maraud Italy and Israel? Even the United States that Nigerians like to call “God’s own country” and whose motto is “In God we trust” is now the epicenter of the coronavirus.

The unvarnished, unsentimental truth is that COVID-19—and other natural calamities that periodically befall humankind—isn’t a providential, celestial missile that faith can give us cover from. Nature is insensitive to our emotions and sensibilities. Our piety, prayers, and religious affiliations can never provide us with safeguards against the ruthlessly unstoppable march of nature.

A rational, scientific mindset free of the encumbrances of silly, retarded superstitions is what we need. And that’s precisely what is lacking in Nigeria—and many developing countries.

The vast majority of our people stand in uncomprehending awe before the littlest natural complexity and quickly take recourse to mythic, superstitious explanations for confounding but knowable phenomena. It is this mindset that explains why Nigerians give “testimonies” of “God’s mercies” on them for surviving car crashes in which others perished. They imply that God hates the people who die in car accidents.

This is a country where many people still believe that one can become wealthy through the ritual murders of other humans, where deaths, including car accidents, are attributed to witchcraft and sorcery, where the ability to perform cheap magic tricks is invariably associated with the possession of supernatural powers.

Sadly, in Nigeria, superstition and anti-scientific attitudes often take refuge under religion so that an attack on superstition and pre-scientific attitudes is usually mistaken for an attack on religion. But that’s a fallacious association. Both historical and contemporary examples show that religion and science can co-exist.

Religion isn’t necessarily synonymous with superstition, nor is science necessarily the anti-thesis of religion. Superstition, belief in witchcraft and sorcery, and a disdain for the scientific method represent the infancy of human reasoning. It’s sad that many Nigerians have not evolved from this.

I have no doubt that unthinking obsession with supernaturalism and metaphysical claptrap is Nigeria’s, nay Africa’s, biggest stumbling-block to progress.

Maryam Uwais and COVIK 419 Writ Large
"Those who benefit from the conditional cash transfer of the Federal Government as palliative to cushion the effects of the lockdown caused by the deadly Coronavirus don't want to be addressed as poor people. That is why we can't publish their names.

"Also, the beneficiaries of the Federal Government's gesture are invisible and dwell where the conventional society cannot see them, and carrying journalists along to investigate the authenticity of the payments to the target persons will be cost implicative to the scheme because the funds at hand can't pay for extra burden as we are only managing what we have."

Maryam Uwais
Special Adviser to the President on Social Investment on Channels TV Sunrise Daily.

When I received the above text on WhatsApp on April 10, 2020 from several people, I thought someone initially just made it up for comic relief and that it was being shared by people on social media in ignorance.

In fact, I persuaded an older friend that the quote couldn't be real, based on what I’d read of Maryam Uwais who strikes me as an extremely smart woman. But after watching the video clip of her interview a few hours after I’d read the text, where I heard her express sentiments that were consistent with the first sentence, I was compelled to go back to WhatsApp and retract what I said to my older friend about the quote.

Anyone who is too proud to be called poor is clearly not poor. The pangs of hunger are stronger than the vanity of self-esteem. That’s why there are hordes of Nigerian “e-beggars” who drop their names and account numbers on social media without shame during social media “giveaways”—and sometimes without “giveaways.”

But the whole point of asking for the identity of the people who benefited from the government’s “palliatives” is to be able to authenticate government’s claims.

In any case, the minister of humanitarian affairs, who supervises the disbursement of the “palliatives,” was reported by the Daily Nigerian to have stolen 200 tonnes of date palms (dabino) donated to internally displaced persons in the northeast by the Saudi Arabian government in 2017. This is COVIK 4-1-9 writ large!

NEW BOOK: Santander: Rambling on Borrowed Time

DAVID ELLSION

Rambling on Borrowed Time

A unique memoir/travelogue/reflection-on-life…Santander features poignant short stories that, like pieces of a puzzle, create a captivating whole exploring themes of personal growth, adventure, justice, wonder, disillusionment, and ultimately gratitude. Although Santander recounts a teacher’s wild exploits and perceptive musings, it appeals to anyone who has raised or taught children, who’s traveled the world of countries and ideas (or who’d like to live vicariously though someone who has); anyone who’s struggled to find compassion for oneself and others; who, in the words of Robert Frost, “had a lover’s quarrel with the world” and tried to make a difference. Santander pays homage to living an authentic life.

“Terrified, I finally realized the federal agents answered to no one and could do with me whatever they pleased. I thought of the death squads who had “disappeared” so many others into the Central American jungle.”

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NEW BOOK: GABE'S GUARDIAN ANGEL by Beverly Stowe McClure

AMAZON

BARNES & NOBLE

And other stores.

Gabe never asked for an angel…

Gabe Montana’s clumsy. He’s overweight, and he’s dyslexic. Worse yet, the bullies make his fifteen-year-old life even more miserable—so miserable he wants to die.

Charley, his guardian angel, says no to that idea, and comes up with a different plan. He’ll give Gabe self-confidence so he can solve his problems, not run away from them. But Gabe wonders why the angel doesn’t just help with the bullies. What’s with this self-confidence stuff?

Can Charley help Gabe stand on his own two feet? Will Gabe give up hope life can improve for him? Or will he finally listen to the angel’s advice?

LEARN MORE AT BOOK BUB

HAPPY READING!