Uganda and Nigeria should let God jail atheists himself

This week brought us disturbing news about a Nigerian non-believer who was sentenced to 24 years in prison after being convicted of blaspheming Islam.

Mubarak Bala, 37, renounced his religion after watching a video of a beheading of a female Christian in Nigeria in 2013 by young men who were his age. 

Mr Bala has been in detention since 2020 and pleaded guilty to all 18 charges brought against him on the basis of the country’s blasphemy laws.

In Uganda, like in Nigeria and other places, everything about God is the responsibility of people, not God — which is surprising. People claim to know when God is angry, to know when what has been said offends Him and to know when He gives people blessings to get rich or to remain poor.

Many people in Uganda, like in Nigeria, think that irreligious people, mainly the seemingly reviled lot called atheists, should be jailed or ostracised. And I would not be surprised if there are Ugandans and Nigerians who support the killing of atheists.

Yet in Uganda and Nigeria, we see people who claim to care about God and religion doing the exact opposite of what religion teaches. Our prisons and those of Nigeria are teeming with inmates who are religious.

In 2020, Uganda’s score on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index was 27 and Nigeria’s was 25. Both countries have had poor scores for years. The lower the score, the higher the corruption. Countries where corruption is almost non-existent get scores of 80 and higher, and some — such as Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden — do not take God and religion seriously.

A US sociologist named Phil Zuckerman was once quoted by The New York Times as saying that a pastor told him: “In Denmark, the word ‘God’ is one of the most embarrassing words you can say. You would rather go naked through the city than talk about God.”

The problem for countries like Uganda and Nigeria is not people renouncing their faith. If, for example, you have political leaders and civil servants who do not go to church/mosque, and even have serious doubts about the existence of God but they take their work seriously, how can that be a problem?

If someone was born a Muslim and renounces Islam for reasons of their own, God should be the one to deal with that person. If religion is great and God is real, why jail or discriminate against those who do not want anything to do with God and religion?

God, after all, according to religion, created everything and everyone. If some people do not believe in Him, He already knows them and is probably happy for them to be non-believers because that is what He wanted them to be.

I find that believers themselves are not even believers in the real sense. For example, Jacob Oulanyah, who was Uganda’s Speaker of Parliament until his death in March, told a journalist in an interview last year that he would not hesitate to do anything “if it is okay with God”.

But in the same interview, he said: “This is the only life I have. I don’t know about the other one because nobody has reported to me in a very conclusive way about what happens after [death].”

We have prominent political leaders who are surrounded by security all the time and would not even set foot anywhere in Kampala if you stripped them of bodyguards. They claim God protects them, yet their own actions are proof that they protect themselves. 

Mr Namiti is a journalist and former Al Jazeera digital editor in charge of the Africa desk

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