The 'Curse' of Religion

First of, I must start by apologizing to the readers of this blog however few our numbers may be now for having left this space for quite a number of  time without any prompter. The reason however, to discerning mind is not far-fetched- Academic constraints.  With virtually less than four months to become a graduate of Law, it is only inevitable that I must have more than enough on my table to deal with (i.e. if I’m able to scale through LW502 Nigerian Company Law (1) without a carryover, no thanks to my abysmal performance in the C.A. Test. I insist you all don’t want to know how poor I performed; but we won’t be discussing that here.

Also, my resolve to round up my program with at least a Second Class, Upper Division however the odds seem to be stacked against me, meant that I drop my pen albeit for a while, lest I misplace my priorities as many friends counselled.

Finally, my final year project LW599 has been a thorn in my flesh. How do I begin to write an analysis on the Law of Armed Conflicts in International Humanitarian Law with the Boko Haram experience as a case study for goodness sake? You see, these and little other sundry issues add up to keep me away from what I see as a hobby – writing.

But as I’m currently on a one month holiday, even though many insist that am running away from town due to the fear of a possible post-election violence, I make it a promise to do a couple blog posts before heading back to the boiling pot of the insurgency- Borno to put the final icing sugar on my LL.B cake. Trust me.

So in the absence of full-fledged blogging what have I been doing? Just like Stephen King counselled that when a writer is not writing, then he must be reading, I had gone into extensive reading of classics that I ought to have read like Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom, Mossab Hassan  Yousef’s  Son of Hamas, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai’s Accidental Public Servant, to name but a few. I must say they are all good books that have come with preferential and not just ordinary dividends as I cannot qualify what they have done to my horizon.

To the many who have seen me as a political writer that like to dwell on Nigeria’s murky and diabolical politics, today at least, after reading this piece,  you would  know that am not just a political writer. If I have written more on political issues in the past, it is simply because I hardly get my eyes off what happens on that pace. You know, like Buhari’s certificate being a cause célèbre or the man and his APC running away from a political debate; what Mama Patience would not even do however poor she commands the English language which is not even her mother’s tongue. Or furthermore, Professor Charles Soludo describing the Coordinating Minister of our Economy as an ‘atilogwu’ dancer on PDP political rallies. So you see why one finds it difficult to keep their writing off a very interesting political atmosphere.

But let us hastily come back into the discourse of the day – Love and Religion.

 I must not go about a definition of both popular terms as one writing a doctoral thesis on the subjects for I am way too sure that no matter the attribution we give or how we choose to conceptualize both terms they cannot be explained away without connotations of feelings of emotions and affections towards another person in the case of the former while the later-Religion, cannot be rationalized away from the unqualified belief in a deity who consciously or unconsciously we give credit to the coming about of existence, but while taking at its height could pose a lot of problem for humanity.

If we were to make this piece the subject of a suit before a tribunal, the issues to be considered before her justices would be broken down into the following:

Love, when complete, or deemed to be had and,

Religion, whether a barrier to love, grounds

In doing justice to the former, one may conveniently conclude without more that feelings of love is said to be complete when having been nursed for quite a consistent number of time( what constitutes ‘consistent number of time’ would be decided by the court in the circumstance of the given case, i.e., if we still hold this to be a matter before a court) and having been finally communicated to the ‘lovee’ (if I may infiltrate that term into the emotional lexicography) in clear, certain and unequivocal manner.

In considering the later issue, that is to say, whether Religion should be a Barrier to Love, we are met at  T-Junction  where the trouble of this piece is born which I write sitting in my shabby and dusty apartment this Sunday afternoon.

So having spent six years in the Borno State capital in the pursuit of a future which is soon to come with fruits and coupled with the undeniable fact that yours truly is a sociable and jolly good fellow, there is no question of my not having had soft spots for the opposite sex which I comingle with in such a cosmopolitan facility as a Federal University is wont to be.

And so, riding on the high horse of friendship being a sine qua non to a happy relationship, I chose the just ended semester to be the perfect time to sing my love song to a fellow colleague I came to admire the very moment I started knowing her sometime in 2012 lest time catches up with me especially in the event we do not get posted to the same campus of the Nigerian Law School.

When the D-day broke, the atmosphere was unusually brighter. A geographical accident I attached supernatural powers to. so in my little estimation, since the heavens has ordained this, there was nothing going to stop me. Little did I know that I was soon to be disillusioned.

 Let me at this very point make it clear that the young girl which I had in mind is/was a Muslim to whom the Shari ’a – Islamic Law was the ideal religion and the Holy Prophet Muhammad (SAW) the best of mankind to have graced this earth and I, a Roman Catholic but lately a passive member of that religious congregation.

So no sooner had I gone over the routine of telling her how much I care about her all these years having chosen to walk her home after a short visit to her house, than the bomb shell came “Raymond, you know there is no way this is going to work between us; apart from the fact that I feel almost nothing for you, religious concerns is also a problem. My father will not even hear of it much less allow me entrance into his house for finding romance with an ‘unbeliever’ – otherwise called ‘al-kitabiya’ a mild word for those who do not believe in the oneness of Allah and the Sunnah of his Prophet” Said she. I was extremely broken and almost transfixed not for her social reasons of ‘unmutual’ feelings of love, but for the latter reason, the religious alibi. Not even my turning the confab into a philosophy class harping on the importance of our humanity and why religious sentiments should not be a ground for two hearts of diverse religious persuasions to co-exist could turn around the  tables in my favour.

 “I feel we can still be very good friends as we have always been.  Let’s not get things complicated to avoid a sad ending” she ended the cool evening on that note.it was obvious she wasn’t going to have a re-think. At least not right there. We parted in a convivial mood as though hearts had not been broken.

It is in reaction to that, that I chose this topic to be the subject of this effort and hence why I must put forth the question: Are we to slaughter the prospect of a good world where a Christian Male can marry a Muslim Female and both live together not being oblivious of the fact that they are humans before adherents of a particular Religion they grew up into, and which were received across borders on the altar of religious misanthropism? What is in it for humanity? Are we the best or the worst for it today and are we not by such actions and practices giving tacit approval to the much vexed debate of the superiority of one religion over another? Is it not rife we did murder to the divisive tendencies of Faith before it comes to consume us further that it is already? These are strong posers that must be mulled over to arrive at a more logical answer.

I have said in another place, that biology and sociology precedes our predilection for whatever received religion handed over to us from western and Arabian Merchants and phantom missionaries. It should not be a gulf to pitch humanity against itself. For me, I am the latest victim but as with other things, I shall get over it.