09/01/2020
39097 times read
09/01/2020
39097 times read
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SOME blame us for shedding light on those who belong to fundamentalist movements and others who seem to be religious, pious and righteous. We have repeatedly said the same belief is shared by all Islamic doctrines, as well as Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and Zoroastrianism etc, after becoming conscious and learning to understand that being religious corresponds to adopting virtues such as truthfulness, honesty and chastity both in action and words.
However, this conviction becomes shaky from time to time when we hear, for instance, about some clerics in the church molesting minors, and greed of some Muslim clerics who hoard money instead of distributing the money to serve purposes for which they were collected or as donors of the money believe it should be used for.
Hundreds of horrible stories choke clerics in all religious spectrums, as we have already mentioned.
In this article, I will talk about religious men who deviate from uprightness with regard to the reason for acquiring such titles, just to understand that the title is a sham.
I will narrate what I heard and saw with my own eyes from a renowned credible Egyptian journalist and TV personality Ibrahim Essa when he said the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had requested the leadership of Azhar University in Egypt to nominate 100 scholars among its top graduates to assume positions in a center for religious guidance and moralization, in order to spread moderate religious thoughts in the mosques, schools and media platforms across the UAE.
Our UAE brothers are thorough on this kind of dealings. They do not entertain pleasantries at all – something our government circles lack in Kuwait where the sector is filled by expatriates whom we do not know the veracity of their certificates or academic description or ideological bearing.
Back to our brothers in the UAE, they requested all 100 nominees from Azhar University armed with titles and certificates (doctorates, masters and degrees) to seat for aptitude tests to determine their cultural and academic levels in majors related to the Islamic religion concerning guidance, moralization and propagation of moderation principles. Surprisingly, the 100 mullahs or religious men failed. All of them failed the test.
All of them! Journalist Ibrahim Essa earlier described the same religious men as the top newly graduates from the renowned religious university, Al-Azhar, but none of them managed to earn the honor of assuming a position in the moralization center in UAE.
To our brothers in Egypt and UAE, we share the same situation. We have religious institutes that started competing with the normal government schools. We also have an unnecessary college, the College of Shariah, which is the major manufacturer of graduates who resemble our 100 Egyptian brothers.
By Ali Ahmed Al-Baghli Former Minister of Oil
Email: [email protected]