Shabir Ahmed   

  Viewpoint

Want some religious advice then you need look no further than the Ulema. Would you like to donate some money to charity? The Ulema will lend you a receiving hand. Islam today contains the excess baggage of peoples own ideas and conjecture. The Ulema is very distinct one.

Many so called Muslims cannot envisage life without them. To these people, Islam cannot be accepted without this 'important' catalyst. The truth of the fact is that if people embraced Islam in its true sense then the Ulema would be unemployed and probably unemployable.

Nowhere in the Quran does it say anything about the Ulema as the source of Knowledge of Islam. What has happened is that these people have cornered a gap in a market, which has now become very lucrative. A gap, which was created by people, owns insecurity and inability to accept the one true God.

Maybe it's time to dump the Ulema in the passage of history along with Druids and soothsayers.