Let it be known that the discovery of truth is neither an act of rebellion nor an affront to the sacred. Truth stands as the primordial essence of all that is, and whatever fears its emergence is, in itself, a counterfeit.
Today, we stand before a peculiar spectacle: those who are accused not only refuse to vindicate themselves by evidence but resort to the most obnoxious artifice—wrapping themselves in the tattered robes of religion and seeking to anathematize their exposers. It is to you, the self-anointed guardians of the divine, the brokers of pulpits and chandeliers, I direct this rejoinder.
From where does your authority stem? Is it from the Book whose ink has dried but whose words remain alive? Or from the tradition whose narrators weep when they see what you have made of it? Or is it from the coin, the intoxicating rustle of currency and treasury notes, LPOs and vouchers, slipped under the table? For *he who sells words as wares and turns sacred spaces into marketplaces has no claim to the title of scholar*. He is but a merchant, and a dishonest one.
*You have, for too long, trafficked in the ignorance of the masses.* You sermonise and pontificate against the poor who dare to demand bread and justice, urging them instead to wait for celestial rewards, while you gorge at the table of kings. *You scorn those who speak of good governance and accountability as if the pursuit of justice were a sin and submission to tyranny a virtue*. Yet you yourselves, *when threatened with mere exposure, tremble and cry foul, invoking not your innocence but the supposed sanctity of your office.*
Consider for a moment the moral imperative. If a deed cannot be universally applied without contradiction, it is unworthy of enactment. Will you then decree that theft is virtuous if draped in clerical garb? That falsehood becomes truth when whispered from the pulpit? That to shield the oppressor is the noblest duty of the scholar? If so, then you make of religion a travesty, a tyranny masked in piety.
Immanuel Kant would have no patience for your hypocrisy. He who declared that morality is not contingent on convenience but upon being responsibly responsive to the issues of the moment. Your actions fail the test of the categorical imperative. “A law that permits scholars to loot public coffers, to silence critics by threats, and to equate dissent with blasphemy, is a law that would render human society a resort for the savage.”
John Stuart Mill would find you equally repugnant, for you are the sworn enemies of liberty. Freedom, he taught, is not merely the absence of restraint but the active flourishing of the human soul. Yet you crush it daily, pressing the heavy foot of misaligned and misinterpreted texts upon the necks of the people. “Your sermons are not lanterns but chains, restraining inquiry, discouraging virtue, and preserving ideological prostitution.”
And what would Imam Ali, the Commander of the Faithful, say to you? He whose sermons thundered against injustice even when committed by men wrapped in turbans and robes? He who said, ‘He who establishes oppression, and he who condones it, and he who is content with it, all three are partners.’
Would he not count you among the oppressors? He who was the living embodiment of justice and equity, who declared that a society could endure with unbelief but not with injustice, would see your betrayal for what it is—a sacrilege worse than unbelief.
George Bernard Shaw would likely sneer and remark that you have made religion the last refuge of the scoundrels. *You have turned what ought to be a beacon into a bargaining chip, a commodity to be traded in the corridors of power*. Your sophistry, your deliberate misreading of texts, your invocation of dogma to paralyse the conscience of the masses, are not mere errors—they are crimes!
Karl Marx would find in you a living proof of his most tragic diagnosis—that religion, when stripped of its emancipatory spirit, becomes the opium of the people. Yet, you are not even content to let the people sleep in narcotic stupor. You induce nightmares, wherein the downtrodden are taught to kiss the chains of their masters and see in every voice of resistance the face of the devil.
O false men of the cloth, what has become of you? The heavens weep, not at the exposure of your misdeeds, but at the betrayal you perpetrate in the name of God. You have weaponized the pulpit, turned the minbar into a fortress against the very people you are meant to protect. Yet you dare to decry the activist who exposed your schemes as an enemy of the faith. *Is it not the highest form of faith to call falsehood by its name*, even if it be draped in religious vestments, costumes and regalia?
You shall say, as you already have, that to question you is to question the divine. But I put it to you—does God require that His name be used to shield thieves? Does truth cower behind threats? Does righteousness demand silence in the face of injustice? Only he who has abandoned reason will answer in the affirmative.
“Let it be known, then, that the activist who exposed you did not attack religion but defended it.* For religion is not a cloak for deceit but a lamp for guidance. Its essence is justice. Its heart is truth. The masses have a right, nay, a duty, to question you—not as an act of rebellion, but as obedience to the very faith you pretend to uphold.
It is you who desecrate the sacred. It is you who insult the faith. It is you who have built idols not of wood and stone but of power and privilege and bowed before them. You cry out now, as your idols are smashed, accusing the iconoclasts of sacrilege. Yet it is not sacrilege to destroy false gods.
The people are awakening. No longer shall they be deceived by chants and empty homilies. They seek justice, not your benedictions. They demand accountability, not your curses. They desire leaders who serve, not scholars who sell.
This is not the end of your deception, but its beginning. For as light penetrates even the deepest cavern, so too shall truth expose every hidden treachery. Take heed, for the judgment you fear is not merely that of men but of history and, surely, of God Himself.
You may yet repent. But until then, be assured: silence shall no longer be the price of peace, nor shall the abundance of “*facial hairs*” be a license for plunder.
Mr Mundadu writes from Kaduna
