Tanzania media outlets reported the President John Magufuli advises clerics to shun mixing politics and religion, insisting that by so doing they were likely to make the nation lose its direction. The President said it was high time for religious leaders to avoid using spokespersons who were purely not clerics, to avoid confusing their followers.
“If there are matters concerning religion, it is good when Sheikhs, Mufti, Bishops, Priests and Pastors, among others, to speak than using spokespersons who cannot differentiate between politics and religion,’’ he said.
Comment:
Dr Magufuli’s statements were made at Dar es Salaam when visiting the modern mosque construction expected to be the biggest in East and Central Africa constructed under the sponsorship of King Mohammed VI of Morocco with a cost of between 80 and 100 million US dollars.
The prohibition of mixing politics with religion and vice versa is not a practical issue and does not fit with reality since both sides address human who is from a single Creator. In a wider sense, the concept of secularism advocating that viewpoint is flawed and contradictory in nature.
Secularism even though is a foundation of capitalist ideology, it was formally arose in the 18th century out of a critical tug of war between clerics and thinkers as a means of a solution through compromise without any convincing intellectual basis.
In practical terms, when clerics account politicians, in haste manner politicians allege clerics of foul play of mixing religion with politics, but when it comes for politicians using religion to meet particular political agenda, that is never treated as wrong.
Furthermore, in spite of democratic politicians being aware that secularism is a western concept that has nothing to do with Islam, yet they deliberately try to generalize all religions to the similar platform, as separate from politics.
In Islam there is no separation between politics and religion, since the human is a single entity and he is inseparable. Furthermore, in Islam everyone has the right to participate in politics, whether practically or to account politicians. Khalifah as a state leader has no right whatsoever to stop anyone in accounting him or his aides.
Ali Amour
Member of the Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir in Tanzania