A Believer’s Dilemma -By Gimba Kakanda

You are not afraid of your bills. You are not afraid of your deadlines. You are not concerned about thieves lurking in your neck of the woods. You are not afraid of your politicians. You are not even frightened by the exploitable vulnerabilities you tender in your friendships. Of all these things that haunt and frustrate you, you settle to attribute your adversity to some imaginary witches—to something that doesn’t or hardly exist.

A witch should be the least character in anyone’s nightmares in this age. It’s even more troubling when those who identify as believers in God ditch their theological stations to seek protection from a being other than the Creator of all beings. If you don’t trust that God can protect you from the spiritual missiles of the witch you blame for your failures or setbacks, what then is the point of your religion? This is why associating God with any deity is the biggest of sins in Islam.

The rush to attribute one’s adversities to some witch seems to be driven by a dangerous assumption that life must flow as we imagine it, and that there’s no tide in the river of our life or bump on the road to our final destination. It’s impossible. There’s no person whose life goes as smoothly as they planned it. None. This is why it’s called life. You may rejoice, but you must also grieve. And that’s why our religions are built on the promises of the shade of life some of us seek in this bittersweet world.

In the hierarchy of beings in Islamic cosmology, Man is greater than Angels and the Jinn—and he’s given the privilege to demonstrate this. This was why the angels were commanded to bow for Adam when he was created. It’s to underline the certainty of this superiority of the human to any being created, and Satan is paying for his refusal to acknowledge the hierarchy. So, why then must you belittle yourself to serve the jinn, an inferior being, in exchange for the protection God has promised you if you adhere to the righteous path?