Inheriting Religion
Your Religion Was Never Really Your Choice.
When we were newly born, we had no idea about our environment. We eat, cry, grow up, and start imitating the immediate people around us, our families. We imitate our parents and grow up doing exactly what we see them do every day. Our parents also guide us based on what the society they live in accepts. That is exactly how we decide our identity. We tag ourselves Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Jews, atheists, and whatever “ism” exists in our environment.
If currently you’re a Muslim, you would have been a Christian had your immediate parents been one. If you’re currently a Christian, you didn’t choose that. Your parents did that for you. And had your parents been Chinese, you would have been worshipping Chinese idols.
You aren’t a Muslim or a Christian because either of these religions is the best. You’re one because your parents happened to bring you up in that faith.
Of course, you can become an adult and choose to switch for the best reasons known to you, just as I chose mine. But the majority of humans aren’t in their religion because of how good it is. Just their parents.
The world has over 200 religions today, and it’s sad that for religion’s sake humans fight. Disown their families. Some kill their kids. Others kill for blasphemy. And these religions were not even decided by any of us to start with.
The final major reason is this. Christianity and Islam are not native to this part of the world. The mass spread of Christianity in Nigeria and across West Africa was driven by British colonialism and missionaries. Islam came through Arab traders and their trade routes with our forefathers.
Had the British not colonised us, had there been no Arab trade with our ancestors, the chances are you would still be practising the faith your forefathers practised before any of these religions arrived. You didn’t inherit the best religion. You inherited the one that got here first.
By Salimat Zakariyah
