Holier than thou?

Let me share a small personal anecdote with you. I admittedly am not a very well known member of my local mosque, but on the evening in question I had an attack of religious fervour and so I strutted off to the mosque and lo and behold it turns out that I was the first attendee for the evening prayers. So I sat down and soon I was in a deep and peaceful meditative mood. But this nirvana wasn’t to last long as my thoughts were rudely interrupted by the imam who was tapping me on my head. I inquiringly looked up and smiled hoping that I may appease the imam and absolve myself of the blatant sin that seemed to have brought about that harsh frown coupled with the exasperated look that one reserves for toddlers who are trying to eat the television antenna.

And so the imam launched into a long religious diatribe whose gist was that I had failed to offer two rakahs of the optional sunnah prayer. He proceeded to state that my failure to do so within the next five minutes would annul any subsequent congregational prayer that I was to attend. This bashing was made even more unbearable by the fact that the mosque was quickly filling and the imam’s missing front teeth were giving me a liberal spray of his lunch. By this time I had had enough of this uneducated fool and so getting up and bringing myself up to eyelevel I launched into my counteroffensive.

My first point was to tell the imam that if he thought that sunnah were an obligatory prayer, then his religious education and understanding could be compared to that of a 12 year old child. Secondly I was forced to impress upon him the importance of politeness and the fact that spraying people with phlegm without their consent is considered to be a serious breach of manners and etiquettes in every and any society. Having said my word, I stormed form the mosque sputtering and foaming from the mouth like a rabid dog.

On my way home it struck me; where is it mentioned in god’s book or the sayings of the prophet that a gentleman with a beard and shalwar kameez and toupi is holier than me? Where and when did they get the religious permission to judge others? I always considered that to be solely gods right and I most certainly don’t remember pledging allegiance to any single half cocked scholar or any religious cum political party whose members consider themselves to be gods hand picked governors on earth. Where in the illustrious history of Islam has the clergy been placed a notch above those who pursued careers in politics or medicine or perhaps law. Our clergy usurped the concept of the Islamic clergy when they considered their word to be final in any point regarding islam. Islam is the only religion which doesn’t have a pope or any such visible church which can call itself the final authority in matters concerning the religion. The clergy is there to simply present to us all the pertinent religious information,essentially the final decision is ours.

Each muslim is his or her own pope and their personal belief is the final authority for them. So please don’t let yourselves be intimidated by these terror tactics and always remember that any imam is as human as you and I are. He suffers from the same vices and excesses that we do. None is holier than thou!