Op-Ed: Why we Worship Dead Prophets but Reject the Living Ones

All major world religions agree that throughout history, God has sent prophets and messengers as divinely appointed leaders. He intended to rule over humanity through these prophets and messengers, in order to establish justice and equality on the earth. The story of our history is a story of these men whom God sent being persecuted, tortured or even killed by the very people they were sent to help.

Today we see these past messengers from God in a very different light than their contemporaries once did. These men are revered, spoken of as martyrs and heroes, loved with a devotion their own generations rarely offered them. And the religions they founded — Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism — all exploded in popularity after the founders of these religions died.

"It is very easy for people to follow a messenger that is dead." (Aba Al-Sadiq)

So why do we love the messenger who is dead so much more than the messenger who is alive? 

Perhaps the most well-known example of this is Jesus Christ, the Messiah. Today, there are 2.3 billion Christians who claim to love Jesus Christ, making Christianity the largest religion in the world — yet, in his time, the majority of people did not. We seem to love the version of Jesus who was suffering and dying on a cross for our sins, yet when he was in front of us as a king, humanity had so much hatred for him that a huge mob screamed for his death.

Can we say that the nature of humanity has changed so much since the time of Jesus, that now we are all just much nicer people? Or is there another reason for this disparity in our reactions to Jesus?

While the Jews in his time were awaiting their Messiah and saviour, when he came to them they rejected him. The Pharisees and religious authorities at the time accused him of blasphemy, and turned against him when he exposed their hypocrisy, and subsequently plotted to kill him. The people from his hometown also rejected Jesus and could not believe that a “carpenter's son” could be the Messiah. The people who did follow him were in the minority and even they abandoned him after his teachings became heavy on them.

“From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.” (Bible, Book of John, Chapter 6, Verse 66)

After his arrest in the garden of Gethsemane, even his close disciples left him. Then the crowds in Jerusalem voted overwhelmingly to have Jesus crucified over a criminal murderer, Barabbas. Why was his leadership so hard to accept? Jesus said that the truth is disturbing .

“Those who seek should not stop seeking until they find. When they find, they will be disturbed.” (Gospel of Thomas, Sayings 1-2)

Jesus made it clear that he was a king sent by God and it was humanity’s obligation to obey him,

“Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?" (Bible, Book of Luke, Chapter 6, Verse 46)

Jesus taught that it was a condition for our salvation to follow the will of God, and he taught self denial.

“If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself… and follow me.” (Bible, Book of Matthew, Chapter 16, Verse 24)

At times Jesus gave people commands that were at odds with what they wanted to do and would mean denying their egos. One example of this is a rich man who asked Jesus how to become one of his companions, 

“Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me. But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions. Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” (Bible, Book of Matthew, Chapter 19, Verses 21-24)

So, instead of listening to the words of Jesus in his time, the majority of people listened to someone else who came after him and gave us a radically different and much more appealing message - and it was this message that caused Christianity to explode in popularity after the death of Jesus.

Paul taught that we don't have to obey the commandments of God and accept the leadership of God for salvation, like Jesus did. Paul said we simply have to believe that Jesus died on the cross for our sins. This message of salvation through the crucifixion was at odds with what Jesus said. So while Jesus came to uphold the law, Paul’s message was easier to accept than the truth Jesus had brought - this message did not require people to go against the self or deny the self at all.

Although appealing and something that we would like to be true, the so called "Gospel of Grace" is an idea that makes no sense and defies logic. Like the story of The Emperor’s New Clothes—it requires a collective denial of the truth despite evidence and common sense pointing the other way. 

Jesus had declared that he came as a king and that his followers were to obey him. He never stated that he was sent as a sacrifice and he even asked God to remove the crucifixion from him in the garden of Gethsemane. 

Paul’s interpretation offered a version of faith that required no real change, no surrender of the will and no transformation of one’s life. It presented an enticing vision of a God who affirms our egos, makes us feel good even when we are harming or oppressing others, and ultimately allows us to continue living however we please at the expense of our fellow human beings. 

The new and more popular Christianity also taught that the “Comforter” - the successor that Jesus had promised was actually the Holy Spirit which would enter into all Christians who accepted this idea, so that whatever they felt in their hearts would be understood as God guiding them - effectively equating our own personal desires with the will of God. 

To follow what our own ego wills is an ideology which is actually the opposite of the message that all the prophets and messengers brought to us and is closer to the message of the satanic religion Thelema, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law."

Denial of the Self 

In The Goal of the Wise, Aba Al-Sadiq states, “Every Prophet and Messenger to ever walk the Earth has taught a doctrine of self-denial or fighting against the self, evil inclinations, or annihilating the ego.”

This message that we must deny our own selves not only came from Jesus. All of the prophets and messengers in fact taught that same thing - that we must go against our own egos and our own selves and put other people's needs ahead of ours, to abandon pride and selfishness.

The Prophet Mohammed said, “The greatest jihad is against one’s own self,” and Imam Ali said, “Every person’s devil is his own self.” 

And obviously this is not a message that the ego likes to hear.

The ego is the I, or the me - a dark force of selfishness that is directing the actions of human beings. It is a ball of emotions which lives in our chest. It is an illusion and false sense of self that is utterly dependent on our experiences, the ways that people have reacted to us and the way that we have been treated. It is the darkness that is controlling us by making us arrogant or jealous or angry or sad or anxious. 

The ego does not want for us to deny it - it wants to have the best of this material world that it can get because this is its only life it will get (unlike the soul that lives forever). To have the best clothes and the best food, the best of anything in the material world because this is the only world it will ever know. The ego wants to have the most, to survive at any cost, and it wants to be in control of us.

The ego is the greatest obstacle for us to accept the leader that God sent to us and to worship God in the way that He told us to - Through the Caliph that God appointed. 

Even in the original story when Iblis rejected the first Caliph that God appointed, it was due to emotions like arrogance and jealousy. 

“I am better than him. You created me from fire and created him from clay.” (Qur'an, Chapter 7 (Al-A‘raf ), Verse 12)

Following our own impulses like Iblis did has been humanity's greatest downfall. The prophets and messengers came to save us from ourselves and free us from this darkness which is holding us hostage and bring us to the light. 

Following our own Will

"People love the messenger that's dead. They hate the messenger that is alive, because to be a part of a religion that has a living leader, one must disregard their own personal interest and their own will in order to follow that leader." (Aba Al-Sadiq)

When we hold onto a messenger from the past, we don’t have to actually do what they commanded, because with no living messenger we have no live commandments. Following a dead messenger means following a dead religion. We can avoid the disturbing truth if we want to and do not have to go against our own selves. There is no one to hold us to account or warn us when we are going wrong. In fact, when following a messenger who is dead, it is not even possible to follow them at all; if they are not here speaking to us directly, how can we? We end up following our own version of what we think the messenger is like, copying and pasting our idealised version of them—what we would like them to be rather than who they truly were. This is the opposite of aligning with the will of God. And if we follow our own will, where does that leave us? It traps us further in darkness and strengthens the control the self has over us. When we hold onto the messenger who is dead, we can follow our own will instead of the will of God—we can do whatever we want. As Jesus said, if we want to enter heaven, we have to do the will of God, not our own will.

“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of My Father who is in heaven.” (Bible, Book of Matthew, Chapter 7, Verse 21)

But when we hold onto the messenger who is dead we don’t need to even listen to what we know the messenger did say. The heavy message that Jesus gave the rich man? We can ignore it and essentially pick and choose which parts of religion we would like to follow, when there is no one to hold us to account.

We find this is the case when we look at Christianity today. Jesus could not have made it more clear how wrong it was in the eyes of God for us to be rich but today how many rich Christians are there? 

According to a study by New World Wealth, out of 13.1 million millionaires globally, 7.4 million (56.2%) identify as Christian. In terms of global wealth, the same report estimates that Christians hold US$ 107,280 billion, which is over 55% of worldwide wealth.

When Jesus is a king in front of us and not dying on the cross for our sins we have no option but to obey him if we wish to follow him. We have to do that. We have to go against our own will and align with the will of God coming to us through Jesus.

Islam and the Dead Messenger

This is not just the case with Christianity but with Islam too. The Majority of Muslims believe that salvation is found by following the 5 pillars of Islam; the Shahada, the declaration that there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is His messenger; Salah, the five daily prayers that maintain spiritual connection and discipline; Zakat, the obligatory giving of charity to support those in need; Sawm, the month-long fasting during Ramadan that builds self-control and empathy; and Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca that Muslims must undertake once in their lifetime if they are able. 

But Islam means Submission and the word Muslim means “One who submits to the will of God.” So while to follow the 5 pillars of Islam can be seen as submission to specific commandments of God- are they actually enough to be in full submission and aligned with the will of God? And is that even the same religion the Quran was speaking about?

“Whoever submits his whole being to Allah while doing good has grasped the firmest handhold. And to Allah is the end of all matters.” (Qur’an, Chapter 31 (Luqman), Verse 22)

Just like Jesus said, when we obey him we obey his father in Heaven- the same is true in the Quran.

“Whoever obeys the messenger has obeyed Allah…”  (Qur’an, Chapter 4 (Nisa), Verse 80)

So how can we obey a messenger unless he is speaking to us directly?

“O you who believe! Obey Allah and obey the Messenger and those in authority among you. And if you disagree about anything, then refer it back to Allah and the Messenger, if you truly believe in Allah and the Last Day. That is best and most suitable for final determination.” (Qur’an, Chapter 4 (Nisa), Verse 59)

And in order to follow this verse of the Qur'an we clearly need a messenger who is alive and speaking to us, otherwise it is not possible to refer something back to him. The Prophet Mohammed made things even clearer when he said,

"Whoever dies without pledging allegiance to the Imam of his time dies the death of ignorance." (Sahih Muslim, Muslim ibn Al-Hajjaj Al-Naysaburi, Book 33, Hadith 90)

Without the Imam of the time the 5 Pillars of Islam are useless to us and get us nowhere. 

Where has this got us?

So where has rejecting God's Chosen Caliph and worshipping God in our own way like Iblis got us? Instead of taking Jesus or Mohammed or any of the ones appointed by God as our leaders, we followed whatever we liked and we chose our own leaders instead, picking people who appealed to our egos and empowering them over the ones who were sent to help us overcome them.

So we live in a world where the self has won, one that has been dominated by the ideology of “Me First,” that dark force of selfishness living in each person's chest that is in control of us because we did not follow the living messenger in each time who came to free us from it. 

The Qur'an states that God placed enough sustenance on the earth for everyone to have what they need. 

"In their wealth is a share for the beggar and the poor."  (Qur'an, Chapter 51 (Adh-Dhariyat), Verse 19)

But we live in a world where so many people have taken so much more than they need of wealth and from the sustenance of others, that 25,000 people die per day on this planet of starvation. 

According to Oxfam, global inequality contributes to the death of at least 21,300 people every day, which works out to one person dying every four seconds, largely because of hunger, lack of access to healthcare, and the systemic denial of basic human needs. The same report estimates that hunger alone causes at least 5,773 preventable deaths every single day, with more pessimistic estimates reaching nearly 14,916 per day, due to chronic food insecurity. Meanwhile, Oxfam warns that around 10,000 people die daily because they can't access necessary healthcare—an outcome of “economic violence” rooted in extreme wealth inequality.

We would have been in a completely different situation had we actually followed the leader that God sent, who comes for the betterment of humanity and to bring us justice and equality and teach humanity how to stop oppressing one another.

"Had they pledged allegiance to Ali, they would have eaten from above them and from beneath their feet.” (Ansāb al-Ashrāf, Vol. 2, p. 274)

In fact, all of the suffering that exists on the planet right now is because people followed leaders who were not appointed by God instead of following the one who was appointed by God. These leaders won us over by appealing to our selfishness and we have proven that every single time we follow our own choice instead of the choice of God we make the wrong choice and in fact, the worst possible choice.  We chose Barabbas over Jesus. We chose Hitler, Mussolini and Donald Trump.

If someone is rich in a world where people live in poverty then those riches can never truly belong to him and he will never truly feel peace or happiness. 

The rich man that Jesus spoke to did not want to let go of his money. He was attached to it. To give that money away would have gone against his ego. The problem is that our attachments may feel like what we want but the reality is that they are not only oppressing others but ourselves. The rich man may have felt that he needed his money but it was the very thing he needed to let go of.  

Many of us have felt like this about worldly resources, that we needed to hold onto them and to hoard as much as possible. We are all stuck in survival mode and fear-based hoarding, taking more than we need, holding on to the one thing that, while we keep it, keeps us trapped in darkness. It is actually impossible for a human being to feel happy or at peace when he is oppressing another human being by taking his share. 

Whether it is wealth, reputation, pride, or people - love of the world in any way keeps us miserable and keeps us away from God. As Jesus said, we cannot serve two masters. 

“You cannot serve both God and money.” (Bible, Book of Matthew, Chapter 6, Verse 24)

The Imams from the Ahlul Bayt told us the same thing - that we cannot serve God while serving this world and that if we try to please one of them it leads us in a direction that is the opposite of the other one. 

The way for the rich man to be happy and to be at peace would have been to do as Jesus said - to let go of his wealth, and the same is true for any material desire that we have. While holding onto wealth and possessions that are above our needs and prioritising our own selves makes us miserable - the opposite is also true, if we fulfil the needs of others ahead of our own this is the way to truly feel happy and to truly feel at peace. 

The religions that exist on earth today have drifted from the living messenger. They have become empty shells, missing the true core—the living and breathing word of God present in every age. God loves us too much to affirm our egos in a state of darkness and self-destruction. He is a Father who loves us more deeply than any earthly parent and desires what is truly best for us. 

When we choose our own will over God’s, the consequences ripple outward. The world becomes shaped not by justice or compassion but by selfishness, fear and greed. We hoard instead of share, harm instead of heal, and justify behaviors that contradict the teachings we claim to honor. The suffering we see throughout the world is the predictable result of humanity choosing its own desires over the guidance God continually sends.

The living messenger and the successor of all the Caliphs who were sent by God today is Aba Al-Sadiq Abdullah Hashem. To follow him and to obey him is to follow and obey God and this is the way to dissolve the darkness inside of us into the light of God and defeat that devil within us. If we reject him, we join the ranks of all who rejected Jesus Christ, Mohammed and all of the 124,000 prophets and messengers in their time.