Gross proportions of evils, extreme in most turpitudinous complexion
have been committed in the name of God. There is no scintilla of wavering
argument or doubt that most evils from the devil’s lair itself especially in
the 21st century have been motivated and spawned by God. Blasphemy?
Maybe. This claim is premised on the fact that “God pleasing” men discharge
their egregious, feculent and toxic secretions on hapless victims by way of
killing, butchering,
maiming, extorting, exploiting, coaxing, befuddling, and brainwashing them
using Him-God as a fulcrum. He is therefore responsible for the deaths and
erosion of the minds of the unthinking and malleable many who have come under
the physical and psychological guillotine of His men since He has not in any
way exerted himself to rescue them- victims of “in the name of God” decimation
and evils- from his loyal, praying marauders.
It is not tendentious to contend that in some religious
texts God is shown to have dark,
human propensities such as anger, hate, prejudice, disgust, murderousness,
envy, jealousy and pride. This list is not exhaustive of the negative human
propensities of God as can be gleaned from some religious texts. It is not
inscrutable to read in some
religious vademecums, “And
God smote the people or that person”. Following
this, it is not surprising therefore, if some depraved persons express their
evilly actions in the name of God. Religion is by and large a channel for
expressing all shades of human atavistic
proclivities.
In the Medieval Era, campaigns of murder tagged the
Crusades were carried out by the Church in the name God. Millions perished and
God watched, perhaps, bathing his hands in their blood. And then, the
inquisition in which many were tortured and dehumanised. This is not obviating
the witch hunts in which many were summarily executed. All these were done in
the name God.
In a similar vein, the Muslims led by Mohammed at first,
waged atrocious and iniquitous wars called Jihads. What later followed after
Mohammed, the progenitor of Islam was a series of murderous cleansing of
obverse populations. Millions were killed over a span of twelve centuries. The
murderous campaigns were carried out in the name of God. And as can be
inferred, God approved the killings because he did nothing.
In Aztec in the 1300s, twenty thousand helpless people were
sacrificed yearly to God because he needed daily nourishment of blood.
In India, in the 1500s through the 1800s, as many as
fifteen thousand were strangled and sacrificed yearly by the Thuggee sect to
the bloodthirsty God. All these were base, abominable and teeth- gritting
violations of human life in the name of God.
Today, it is evident that the most challenging problem
confronting the world is terrorism; terrorism with its fount in religion. It is
also not wrong to aver that the cowardly killing of people by Islamist
militants is done in the name of God. Deductively, the murderous past of Islam
finds expression in terrorism today. This is not to imply that Islam is
synonymous with terrorism, but it is a statement of fact that the Jihads of
today are classified as terrorism. This implicates the Jihads of the past
carried out by Mohammed and other Muslim warlords. If Jihads today are acts of
terrorism what justifies the Jihads of Mohammed, Uthman Dan Fodio and others in
the lineup of “holy killing” kingpins.
While Muslims lead the pack in violent terrorism, Christian
pastors top the charts of subliminal terrorism. Subliminal terrorism is perhaps
unknown, but it is as
virulent as violent terrorism. Subliminal terrorism is an attack on the mind in
a confounding way; a way that makes it difficult to process, examine, question
and criticise a claim, a sermon, a story, an issue, a belief or reasoning. It
thrives on ignorance and mental laziness.
Just as violent terrorism exploits fear to achieve a
desired sinister objective, subliminal terrorism exploits fear and ignorance to
achieve an immoral goal too.
Subliminal terrorism is visible in Christendom as many
Christians who have refused to use their heads to bear their own mysteries are
exploited, fooled,
extorted and raped psychologically in the name God. An example of a subliminal
terroristic act is the Christian theory of giving which entails giving
mindlessly, effortlessly, uncompromisingly, without doubts, questions or ambivalence, for as they say, the earth is not a living place.
In view of this, umpteen of Christians give to the marrow
as they have been wheedled into believing that they must store up their
treasures in heaven and not on earth, or that they receive in the measure of
what they give.
In contrast to the austere and quotidian existence of a
mass of Christians, some pastors
live in exorbitant affluence enjoying the so called worldly, ephemeral and material things
of life.
Just as the world is battling violent terrorism, attention
should be turned to subliminal terrorism too as it is leaving many people
doomed to the fate of ignorance, poverty, aggression, mental laziness, and
intellectual aridity, most especially in Africa.
Finally, it is a seminal deduction that owing to scale of
malfeasance done in the name of God in which he seems complicit in, God may be
man after all. This reasoning is
informed by the fact that God as man portrays is not different man.
P.S. It is the reasoning of the writer not to use “god” as
against “God” for any religion as some religions hold the singular idea of a
being called God. Again, the writer feels it is derogatory to refer the “being”
that other religions beside Christianity and Islam venerate as “god.”
Fredrick Nwabufo is a writer and a poet.
Email:fredricknwabufo@yahoo.com 08167992075
