Sacred business!

I left Pakistan for America many years ago because I did not want to always pray in order to be able to pay my fee for various things. Little did I know that that little phrase would reverse itself in America where I would be required to pay a fee so I can pray.

One of the most visible brands in America is the famous retail store called Walmart. It always tells its customers "Save Money, Live Better". It always struck me as odd because in America one must spend money to save money. Where I had come from, we saved money just by not spending it.

Anyway, places of worship in America such as mosques, churches, synagogues, and so forth are, for lack of a better way to describe them, basically storefronts selling morality for a fee. In Pakistan, where I frequented mosques, most people were poor or below middle class, the Imam always gave lectures about hellfire and other miseries we might face in the hereafter if we didn't check our vices. In America, the imam is also lecturing about facing the same fate, not because of not controlling vices but rather for not paying cash for the mosque. He wants us to believe that our desire to trade cash for a better hereafter is the ultimate test of a Muslim. Sorry if this offends any Muslims but I instantly laugh while sitting inside the mosque listening to this ludicrous logic which is written and directed by the imam who may himself be full of all the vices and greed. Because the imams I had seen in Pakistan came to the mosque on a bike that made more noise than covering any distance. These imams here in America drive Mercedes and BMWs and live in large houses inside very nice neighborhoods.

Pakistani Americans are mostly in the gas station business, which we call petrol pumps in Pakistan. Going to the local gas station to buy quick junk food and drinks is a very American thing. Most Pakistanis don't like to talk about this in Pakistan but some of the stuff that is sold inside those gas stations is not Halal. Therefore, many Pakistani and Indian Muslims transitioned from this business to other Halal businesses such as restaurants and selling insurance. Some of them end up managing and sort of owning local mosques. And that is where the story becomes twisted.

I am sure many of us have been in a situation where we go buy groceries and come home, park our car, and then grab those grocery bags to walk inside the house. Sometimes we try to grab as many bags as we can in order to be efficient but while walking to the house from the car, we drop some or all of the bags resulting in broken eggs and milk spilling from broken gallon containers. While our intention is to do it right, we end up turning it into a completely bad situation.

That is what happens with those men who enter the mosque business, sometimes with good intentions. But then they end up in that trap where they have to do more immoral things than they did in the gas station business, for example, in order to keep making money. Because now they have gotten the taste of big money, which is also tax-free. It is a lot more than what they were making in their non-Halal business. And there is no end to it. While in gas station business, they see the homeless and drug addicts of American society as their customers, but here in the mosque they are visited by candidates running for local public offices asking for their blessing.

Money combined with power and prestige is a very powerful thing, which they do not want to part ways with. They sell religion instead of beer and pork chips. But a worse thing is that now they do not think they are wrong or immoral. They now run the God business.