The Gods Are Not Crazy, WE ARE!

Sayo Aluko

Rigby, Adebolajo, and Rev Poobalan

"Call me Muhajid Abu Hamza", demanded Michael Adebolajo, 28, as he was brought into a Westminster Magistrate court to stand trial for hacking down Lee Rigby, a 25-year old British soldier in broad daylight, as a reprisal attack to atone for the lives of his fellow jihadist
brothers all over the world. He reportedly walked remorselessly into the court all smiles, a copy of the Koran held to his chest, raised his hands into a Usain Bolt pose, and also blew kisses to an admirer of his amidst the court crowd. He and his accomplice, another Michael Adebowale, practically decapitated Rigby and also mutilated his body by stabbing him repeatedly to an extent that Rigby could only be identified through his dental records, yet, Michael entered the court room with such narcissistic aplomb, with that "I'm-proud-of-what-I-did-for-Allah's-cause" kind of feeling reeling through his mind, and to say the truth, this act just keeps worrying my thought.

The killing of Rigby has been tagged and acknowledged as an act of terror, and yes, a lot of interpretations have been given to it, some even believe it was a staged facade with varying underlying intents, but, the simple truth is that yet another act of terror has been wrought, and that these two Michaels are just two of the many scions which the ascendancy of terrorism has successfully grafted into the tree of human existence. You are simply left to wonder how we got to a stage of this life, where some (now so many) human beings are primed to see divine good in undamned, unfazed and bloodthirsty wickedness by hacking down or blowing off their fellow men; and, in instances like this above where they're caught for justice's sake, one is stung by the sheer thoughtlessness, lack of penitence and bizarre grandiosity that they mostly bask in.

While the world-wide vituperative condemnation against terrorism continues, I've personally had to think and view beyond this commonplace veil of violence in trying to know how and why these acts of hatred-induced terror have fostered and festered this much, and I could only hinge my thoughts on one thing : the whole human race has gone crazy! Craziness derived from blinded allegiance to the deterrents of religion at the expense of guided adherence to the tenets of love and love only. This kind of craziness is what breeds, nurtures and festers terrorism, not just some vantage violent-mindedness; and since it is true that almost all of us fall under this indictment for blind allegiance to religion, any religion whatsoever, then, it isn't far-fetched that terrorism has garnered such mammoth bandwidth against world's peace. It's our craziness.

The complexity of humanity has afforded a lot of diversity in choices, especially as touching religious beliefs, but while this has no harm, what we've mostly done over the years that keeps serving as the harbinger for danger is the way we have misconstrued the simplicity of religion, which is largely a mode or means of worship to God (or any deity one believes in), into another form which is aggressive dogma. In other words, we've all recklessly substituted love for religion so dogmatically. It is not only shameful, it has actually been the real terror, so terrible that is becoming harder and harder to dutifully accept this truth and at least, blithely acquiesce to its message.

This article isn't a satire meted towards the stance of religion(s) in today's world, rather, what it simply directs against is the terrorism-enhancing religious dogmatism that keeps using its separatist genie to sow vast amounts of hatred into us all, thus, making us illogically accept reasons why we should use religion as a PLATFORM to always see a problem in diversity of virtually everything, from belief systems to ways of lives, to senses of judgement, languages, even as ridiculous as modes of dressing, etc, all at the expense of peace. All religions in the world, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, etc, all preach that the true religion is LOVE, but our craziness has made us loose liberating light like an etiolated plant. I'm not trying to preach the "One People, One God" cliché, which though true, has been glaringly overused; I'm rather needing us to be less negatively sensitive and more thoughtfully loving, by letting thou Christian know that there lies no blasphemy in praising thy God by saying Allahu Akbar (God is Great) or greeting thy brother by saying Assalam Alaykum (Peace be unto you), and to thou Muslim that it is no haram to shout Hallelujah (Praise to God) --- it is this terror-establishing kind of religion that makes us believe otherwise! And all these while, we've been crazy to believe otherwise! And thus, we've terrorized ourselves!

Something worthy of note that also rightly buffered this stance of the true religion of LOVE happened about 2 months ago in Scotland. A named Reverend Isaac Poobalan of St John's Episcopal Church in Aberdeen, opened its larger church's building for use by members of a quite smaller Syed Shah Mustafa Jame Masjid Mosque, who before have had to pray inside the rain, wind and snow because of their population which overcrowded their mosque. Now, because of Rev Poobalan's act, the Muslim worshipers have a bigger space inside their neighbour church to pray 5 times daily. The Reverend's was quoted saying,

"'It would be good to think we can change the world. I would not be true to my faith if I did not offer to help. Praying is never wrong. My job is to encourage people to pray. The mosque was so full at times, there would be people outside in the wind and rain praying. I knew I couldn’t just let this happen - because I would be abandoning what the Bible teaches us about how we should treat our neighbours. It was really hard to watch when they were doing the prayer they had their hands and feet exposed and they were sitting on the pavement, which is very rough. You could even see them breathing because it was so cold and I think when I saw that, the visual impact was such that I just couldn't walk past. It felt wrong, mainly because the church is next door, it's a big building and it remains empty on a Friday lunchtime which is when they need the place most as that's when they are at their busiest. We had something we could offer and they were just standing out in the cold and I said to my congregation ‘we need to do something’. He moved on to say that he wanted the move to help build bridges between Christians and Muslims. It's a move that is so basic and fundamental. It has nothing to do with religion - it's all based on human need. The religious divide shouldn't divide us as people"

These above are the words of a really reverend human being who truly understands how the tenets of true religion cordially intertwines with the enchantment of love without the friction caused by the fangs of religious aggression or separation.

Unsurprisingly, Reverend Poobalan has been repeatedly vilified from some coffers for his act by people who seem to be obstinately entrenched inside the religion of dogma. I met one of such recently, an acclaimed pastor here in Nigeria. He said as far as he was concerned, he isn't sure if Rev Poobalan was led by the Holy Spirit to "commit" the act. He said some more gibberish afterwards, as I left his presence in utter despair, thinking that maybe he forgot that the prime fruit of the Holy Spirit is indeed LOVE itself! Many like this Pastor I met abound everywhere together with their sheepish members who believe nothing else except their Pastors'; argumentative fanatics of many other religions are also replete everywhere, especially in this my part of the world. All bound in the colony of religious blindness, wasting time arguing what's right or wrong instead of solemn worship in LOVE. Well, it's a pity.

A group of friends of mine actually lauded the act of the Reverend while we discussed it, but, they too got something wrong in their analyses. They opined that the Reverend's act was so wonderful and lovely, lovely enough to even woo the Muslims into Christianity. I got disappointed at that point, because that cross-over inference they made simply showed the depth of rot being caused by the separatist effect of religious bigotry.

You may wonder how all of these above add-up into churning out Michael Adebolajos and jaw-dropping acts of terrorism, well, again, it isn't far-fetched. The daily, minute by minute, little by little and trace amounts of dogmatic religious aggression plus marked religious chauvinism that we show from time to time, as said above, sow poignant hatred into all minds involved in a subtle way and latent form. These latent forms, sown in a Michael Adebolajo for example, are the forms of hatred that get imploded into terror moulds. Hatred is sown into the mind in latency, gradually festers into an implosive force, then becomes a fertile ground for terrorism to thrive --- and that's the cascade that's our bane!

Tolerance will do the trick to tackle terrorism, only if we practice it pragmatically and pro-actively; over the years, tolerance has simply remained a Pope's speech thing and nothing else!

I bet we all actually understand what the practice of tolerance entails, especially now that it must be practised together with lots of immaculate and cleanly motivated LOVE in order to achieve the reign of true religion that will eventually phase out the fostering of terrorism, further resulting in less Adebolajos and more Reverend Issac Poobalans.

 It was back in 1980, when a South-African movie producer named James Uys, wrote, produced and directed a movie he titled "The Gods Must Be Crazy". A major chunk of the movie's plot is set around a man named Xi, a Sho bush man who lived with his family without any knowledge of civilisation. They lived in peace and plenty in the Kalahari desert until a strange object (a coca-cola bottle thrown-out from a flypast helicopter) fell into their midst supposedly from their "gods". They were happy initially as they used the bottle for a whole lot. But unlike anything that they have had before, there is only one glass bottle to go around. This exposes the tribe to a hitherto unknown phenomenon of “property”, and they soon find themselves experiencing things they never had before: jealousy, envy, anger, hatred, unhappiness, and even violence. So, out of their resolve to blame their gods for giving them such "evil object", Xi had to embark on a journey to the end of the world to return the object to their crazy gods.

I thought about this movie as I wrote this article, I realised that we aren't Xi, we are quite civilised, quite sophisticated, and as regards how we've muffled religion into a terror mould, I saw how well it is an outcome of our own craziness, not Gods'.

Yes, catastrophes that could make one question God's omnipotence occur, but, as touching acts of terror in our world of today, if we remain obstinately adhered to this non-tolerant and aggressive form of religion, then, I'm so sure that the gods aren't crazy, we are.