“Religion can be deformed by only two people: a stupid
Muslim or an intelligent priest.” (Albanian proverb)
(Contemporary Pakistan)
Only the form is religious, only the name pious sounding;
the content is nothing but satanic. Humility is practiced so that the
practitioner can luxuriate in it. Charity replaces justice and hides the most
vulgar forms of self-seeking and self-promotion. Faqr and tawwakul give way to
avarice, to conceit, or self-worship. Time was when the truly pious used to
give away this world for gains in the next world. Today’s celebrity mullahs—the
fraudulent Sufi sheikh, the fatwa spouting rabid mufti and the wrathful
ayatollah, these “scholars for dollars”--- give away the next world for gains
in this world. For the former, the next world was Real---the really, only
Real--- and this world was an abstraction, a dream, an illusion; for the
latter, this world is the only reality that matters: they sell “abstractions”
and seek “real” worldly gains. Upon being asked the question, “What do you
want?”, the sincere and oriented believer would reply: “I want not to want”.
Now, the religiosity brigade wants to “cut a deal with God” and “they speak of
God as if He were a cow!” as Meister Eckhart once exclaimed.
To borrow from the madman Nietzsche, this religiosity must be destroyed so that RELIGION can be restored (renewed / tajdeed) and the authentic religious ways of life---of knowing, doing and being---made possible again.
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