Spiritual Guardianship

Also published in Daily Trust

Spiritual guardianship is a situation whereby a religious personality is excessively revered by his followers to the extent of regarding him as a middleman of a sort between them and God the Almighty. They literally look up to him as the yardstick of measuring the right and wrong irrespective of what their religious scriptures maintain. And they channel their prayers to God through him on the assumption that he is pious enough to intercede with God and get their prayers accepted.

Practices of both Muslims and Christians in Nigeria suggest how this culture is entrenched amongst them. For instance, the modern age phenomenon of Christian evangelism in Nigeria, which is pioneered by the new generation churches, is particularly responsible for the phenomenal spread of such culture amongst the Christians, which is also spreading particularly throughout the sub-Saharan Africa and even amongst the largely African churches in Europe and America.

Bizarre practices by many of such church leaders which obviously go against the law and the standard scientific reasoning and logic stir up controversies every now and then. Interestingly enough, while such bizarre practices can go to any extent in Nigeria and its likes, where such Church leaders enjoy absolute spiritual authority over their followers, the situation is not the same elsewhere e.g. in Europe and America. Such Church leaders there could easily end up in jail. For instance, imagine what would have happened to Bishop David Oyedepo if it were in Britain when he was shown on camera recently slapping a young lady during church service.

Anyway, while I am not in the position to dwell on the extent to which the Christian doctrine allows its clerics to go in terms of handling their followers, I know for sure that Islam maintains a very clear stand that regulates the relationship between clerics and their Muslim followers. And it does not give any room for anything like spiritual guardianship.

However, many Muslims have been made to sanctify some individuals, who are incidentally largely self-appointed spiritual guardians instead of sanctifying the religious precepts. This is why they regard them as infallible of sorts, whose assertions and deeds no matter how clearly un-Islamic and ridiculous can’t be questioned anyway.

Imagine for instance, a supposedly reputable Islamic cleric declaring a couple of months ago that the apostle of Allah got up (in reality not dream) from his grave and met with somebody somewhere in North Africa where he gave him some additional “messages”. Interestingly enough, the gap between the demise of the apostle of Allah and the birth of that North African person was more than one thousand years.

Anyway, due to the huge influence enjoyed by such self-appointed spiritual guardians, they resist anything likely to expose them. After all, they have –over the years- prepared the ground for the sustainability of their legacies, and are prepared to go to any extent to defend it.

This of course includes deliberate misrepresentation of facts and manipulation of religious texts in their desperate but futile attempts to justify their deviant ideologies and heretic practices. And it also includes deliberate dissemination of unconfirmed and unrecognized narrations in order to support their illusions.

Perhaps their most obvious trick is their fake love for the apostle of Allah under the pretext of which they promote their deviant courses and their so-called saints at the expense of the actual mission of the apostle of Allah and the legacy he left.

Meanwhile, while their poor brainwashed followers wallow in confusion, their supposedly educated disciples go on an intellectual rampage employing cheap tactics of blackmail, intimidation, defamation and name-calling against anybody who tries to expose them. Ironically also, they cry intolerance whenever the delusions of their clerics are uncovered.

By the way, contrary to their illusion, tolerance simply means the ability to contain our differences within the ambit of logic, reasoning and civilized engagement in objective argument based on reasons and facts. So, it does not in any way mean to overlook or keep silent over what one believes to be wrong. After all, it is tantamount to a serious breach of trust especially if it involves religious issues, to - under the pretext of tolerance- conspire to overlook one another’s shortcomings and excesses, which he publically promotes.

Moreover, in Islam, the only absolutely infallible personality, who all Muslims shall obey unconditionally, is the apostle of Allah; Mohammad, peace and blessing of Allah be upon him. Apart from him, any other individual no matter how knowledgeable or seemingly pious is only followed subject to the extent of his compliance with the precepts of Islam as clearly maintained in the noble Qur’an and the authentic Sunnah, and as also understood by the pious predecessors, whose understanding of the religion is obviously the yardstick for determining the actual meanings of the religious precepts, having been honored to accompany the apostle of Allah in his lifetime and lived the moments of the revelation.

Likewise, apart from the apostle Allah, nobody can give anybody any clue about his eternal fate much less any amount of assurance of eternal salvation. As a matter of fact, nobody has such clue about his own eternal fate for that matter. All Muslims are basically equal before the same set of rules and are expected to practice the religion subject to their individual capacities in all aspects of life.

Clerics have moral and religious obligation to teach people about the religion as it is without any omission or addition. And of course Muslims are enjoined to accord them due respect within the appropriate precepts of the religion. Equally, the clerics are expected to respect their followers, after all nobody including the clerics has any clue whether his acts of worship are accepted or not.

It is noteworthy that, the Islamic concept of equality between Muslims considers even the new convert to the religion and any religious cleric no matter how revered equal in terms of rights and obligations subject to their individual intellectual, physical and other relevant capacities. And it maintains that, only Allah the almighty knows who is better than the other; for He is the only one who accesses their minds hence knows the extents of their sincerity and judges them accordingly.

Therefore, this invalidates the notion that some individuals, most of whom are actually self-appointed, could exercise any form of spiritual guardianship over anybody.

It is only when individuals’ God-given esteems are recognized particularly by religious clerics that bigotry and narrow-mindedness could be tackled. And it is obvious that this can’t be achieved while many clerics hold on to and indeed promote the culture of spiritual guardianship for their own selfish interests.