Kenyan Scholar and media manager Dr. Mohamed Ahmed Bahaidar, in his reflection titled “A Living Sanctuary,” offers a stark portrayal of contemporary faith—fractured, commercialised, and frequently stripped of grace.
But woven through his critique is also a vision of renewal: a rebirth of belief rooted not in performance, but in compassion.
He begins with a parable. A man enters a sacred house, seeking peace, only to be shamed when his forgotten phone rings during worship.
Humiliated, he flees — wounded not by the sound, but by the judgment in the room. Later, in a crowded bar, he drops a bottle. This time, strangers rush to his aid. “Are you okay?” one asks. “Don’t worry, we’ll clean it up.” In the least “holy” of places, the man discovers what sanctuaries were meant to embody: mercy.
This contrast, Dr. Bahaidar argues, is the mirror of our age. “We proclaim paradise, yet fear death. We preach freedom, yet chain our hearts with resentment.”
What was once a refuge has become performance. Sermons sound rehearsed, pulpits resemble stages, and leaders increasingly resemble merchants rather than shepherds.
And yet, he is not announcing the death of faith — only of its false performance. Real faith, he insists, still lives in places often overlooked: whispered prayers in hospital wards, a mother keeping vigil over her fevered child, strangers offering hope in sterile corridors. It is unpolished, stripped of ego, alive.
His metaphor for renewal comes from California’s ancient redwoods. These giants do not stand tall because of deep roots, but because of wide ones that intertwine. “No redwood stands alone. When storms rage, their roots lock together.”
Humanity too, he says, survives not through division but through connection — through compassion, justice, and respect.
It is a radical call, particularly in a time when religion is so often weaponised. Words meant for love are turned into walls of exclusion. Sacred texts become tools for power.
Faith becomes something to be branded, marketed, or policed. Against this backdrop, Bahaidar’s essay offers an alternative: not the rebuilding of old institutions, but the transformation of people themselves into sanctuaries.
“We do not need more marble floors. We need open doors. We do not need polished speeches. We need honest conversations,” he writes.
“Perhaps the true revival will not be sung in stadiums or shouted from platforms, but whispered in the quiet act of one human being choosing to hold another up.”
At its heart, “A Living Sanctuary” is less about religion as an institution and more about faith as a way of being human. It is a reminder that holiness is measured more by how deeply we love than how loudly we preach.
And it is an invitation — for each of us to become sanctuaries ourselves, where no one leaves in shame, and where everyone can find a home.
