Abubakar Ahmed Kamaludeen
The spiritual dimension of our being should not be ignored as doing so would be perilous.
Our existence is at the will of a superior being, God the Creator who only should be worshipped, and his demands upon us obliged.
Doing good and ensuring justice by those in authority is part of being godly.
The idea of a nation coming together to give thanks to God is a wonderful idea when those behind it mean well and are not being pretentious.
There are a lot of things which demand that we constantly render gratitude to God, but before we do, the need to repent should be brought to the front burner.
To pray to God while still being on the iniquitous, vengeful tangent and not being repentant does not meet the divine conditions for the acceptance of our intercessions.
Last Tuesday, government organised a National Day of Prayer and Thanksgiving activity which involved Christians and Muslims, both Abrahamic faiths with large following in the country.
It was auspicious that the prayers were offered a day after the Martyrs Day, which was held to remember the slain three High Court judges. The judges were executed because of their stance against arbitrariness of the then Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) junta. Those heady days were occasioned by arbitrary arrests followed by junta-style justice, a major blot on the history of post-independence Ghana.
One man of God stole the show during the spiritual activities last Tuesday because of his outspokenness. Imam Abubakar Ahmed Kamaludeen, Imam of the Shi’ites in Accra, slammed what he saw as the trampling of the independence of the judiciary by the executive.
He admonished government to desist from the act, pointing at the recent ‘packing of the Supreme Court’ by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration when a little over six months ago, then in opposition, it called for a sealing of the number.
To the Minority in Parliament, he recalled how they too refused to recognise the newly appointed Supreme Court judges. The executive, he said, must desist from manipulating the judiciary because this has led to the current state of public erosion of confidence in the bench.
We salute the boldness of the Imam and ask that those who are occupied with the spread of the word of God must be bold in matters of principles.
Those who ‘follow their stomachs’ and find it difficult to speak the truth are only being hypocritical and therefore unfit to lead God’s ministries.
Those in authority must especially repent for their vengeful actions which have only served to polarise the nation along partisan lines.
Spending so much state funds to undertake a spiritual activity as we witnessed last Tuesday when those in authority do not show signs of walking off the path of vengeance, which is the Lord’s, can be spiritually counterproductive.
How many men of God have spoken out against the executive’s overreaching action against the judiciary?
As the Shi’ite Imam pointed out, our attitudes matter in such matters. Our prayers would only be accepted when we put up positive attitudes, because so says God Almighty.