By Imam Murtadha Gusau
Sunday, October 25, 2026
In the Name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful
All praise is due to Allah, and may blessings and peace be upon the Messenger of Allah, his family, and all his Companions.
Dear brothers and sisters! Indeed, change begins in the mirror, not in the marketplace of malice. When we unleash our tongues in anger, cursing and insulting those placed in authority over us, we pierce the spiritual fabric of our own society. We demand righteousness from the throne while cultivating rebellion in our hearts.
Islam offers a profound psychological and spiritual truth: Our leaders are but a reflection of our collective state. If we sow the seeds of venom, mockery, and hatred, we cannot expect to harvest the fruits of justice, mercy, and benevolence. How can a vessel poured full of public curses overflow with political blessings?
The great legendary Islamic scholar, Imam Hasan al-Basri captured this divine law beautifully, he said:
“Indeed, the leaders are a torment from Allah. Allah inflicts them upon whoever He wills. So do not face the torment of Allah with anger and swords, but face it with humility, submission, and repentance.”
When we insult those in power, we treat a systemic spiritual ailment with emotional poison. The Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) explicitly warned against this destructive outlet, guiding us toward a higher psychological and spiritual discipline. He said:
“Do not insult your leaders, do not deceive them, and do not hate them. Fear Allah and be patient, for indeed the matter is close at hand.” [Sunan Ibn Majah]
Fellow Nigerians! Wallahi, this is not a call to blind compliance or cowardice; it is a clarion call to spiritual intelligence. Cursing a leader changes nothing in their heart, but it corrupts everything in yours. It replaces constructive civic duty with lazy, toxic venting.
And from a psychological perspective, human behaviour thrives on feedback loops. When a populace unifies only in hatred and vitriol, a leader’s psychological defenses kick in. They do not soften; they harden. They do not listen; they build walls.
If an entire community pours curses upon a leader, that leader emotionally detaches from the community. You cannot abuse a shepherd daily and expect him to guard the flock with love. By shifting our energy from insult to sincere voting, Du’a and supplication, we actively participate in changing the spiritual atmosphere of our nation.
Consider the deep insight of the great sage and Imam of Islam, Fudail Ibn Iyad, who understood the profound leverage of a sincere prayer over a bitter curse, he said:
“If I had a single supplication that was guaranteed to be answered, I would make it for none other than the leader.”
When asked why, he replied:
“If I make the supplication for myself, its benefit does not go beyond me. But if I make it for the leader, he is rectified, and through his rectification, the wellbeing of the servants and the land is achieved.”
Let us stop burning our energy in the fires of gossip, social media rage, and futile condemnation.
The next time frustration rises in your chest, channel that raw emotion into a secret, sincere Du’a:
“Ya Allah, guide our leaders, soften their hearts toward the weak, and grant them righteous advisors.”
Look at your household, your business, and your own character. Are you a just leader to those under your care? Rectify your small kingdom, and Allah will rectify the greater one for you!
Refuse to participate in the casual slaughter of reputations. A tongue stained with foul language can never be the vehicle for societal reformation.
The equation is simple: If you want leaders who fear Allah and show mercy, become a people who fear Allah and show mercy. Clear the airwaves of curses, and fill the heavens with prayers.
Respected brothers and sisters! The state of a nation is rarely birthed in the halls of parliament; it is mirrored there. We look at our leaders and see a reflection of our collective choices, our public morality, and our private spiritual decay. Yet, the modern tongue has weaponised itself with curses, insults, and venomous rhetoric directed at those who govern. We drag their names through the mud of social media, invoke ruin upon their families, and then look up at the sky wondering why rain does not bring blessings, why the economy chokes, and why justice feels like a ghost.
How do you expect a vessel to pour pure water when you constantly contaminate the well? How do you expect a leader to find the courage, wisdom, and sincerity to do good for you when your collective spiritual frequency sends nothing but malice, hatred, and destruction on their way?
We live in a universe governed by divine laws, and one of the most foundational principles is that malice yields no mercy. When you curse a leader, you are asking Allah to remove His Mercy and Rahmah from them. Consider the profound psychological and spiritual consequence of that request: if Allah removes His Mercy and guidance from a leader, who do you think takes their place? Ash-Shaitan (Satan)!
By cursing your leaders, you are actively praying for their further misguidance. You are asking for them to become blinder, harsher, and more corrupt. You are cutting off the very pipeline of divine intervention that could turn their hearts toward justice. A heart stripped of Allah’s mercy and rahmah, cannot extend mercy to its people. Your insults do not reform them; they deform them further, and you pay the price of that deformity.
Our beloved Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) did not leave us to wander in political emotionalism. He provided a psychological and spiritual framework for dealing with unjust authority.
Furthermore, the classical Islamic scholars understood that the weapon of the Muslim believer against systemic failure is not anarchy of the tongue, but alignment of the soul.
This is high-level spiritual intelligence. It bypasses the emotional gratification of venting anger and targets the root of the problem. It understands that a leader’s heart is between two fingers of the Most Merciful, Allah; it is easier to change their heart through sincere prayer than to break their power through toxic rebellion.
No doubt, psychologically, cursing your leaders is an act of spiritual laziness. It is a defense mechanism that allows a population to externalise all guilt. It is comforting to believe that all societal filth—bribery, deceit, lack of neighbourly compassion, cutting corners, and moral compromise—belongs exclusively to the presidential villa or the legislative chambers.
But a leader is not an alien dropped from outer space. They are born from our neighbourhoods, raised in our schools, fed by our markets, and cultured by our social norms. They are the fruit of our tree. If the fruit is bitter, injecting poison into the branches via insults will not make the next harvest sweet. You must heal the soil.
The Qur’an states this with shattering clarity:
“And thus We make some of the wrongdoers allies of others for what they used to earn.” [Qur’an, 6:129]
Islamic scholars of exegesis (Mufassirun) note that this means an unjust population will inevitably be granted an unjust leader. If you want the leaders to do good for you, you must first ask yourself: Am I doing good to those under my authority? Am I just to my spouse? Am I fair to my children? Am I fair to my employees? Am I fair to my neighbours? Am I honest in my business?
Stop funding the economy of outrage. Every curse you utter is a brick you lay in the fortress of your own oppression. You cannot insult someone into loving you, and you cannot curse a leader into serving you.
Change your strategy. Turn your viral rants into secret nighttime prayers. Trade your mocking memes for tears of repentance, the Tawbah. When you look at the shortcomings of your leaders, let it be a mirror that forces you to fix your own shortcomings.
If you want the sky to clear, stop muddying the earth. If you expect them to do good for you, start by wishing good for them—not because they necessarily deserve it, but because your children, your country, and your own soul desperately need the blessings, mercy and rahmah that come when a leader is guided by Allah Almighty.
Dear brothers and sisters! Wallahi, sincerely speaking, cursing and insulting your leaders will never cure your nation because the state of a leadership is merely a reflection of the collective spiritual and psychological state of its people.
The external world is a mirror of the internal realm. When a nation falls into the trap of endless cursing, vilification, and emotional reactivity against its leaders, it misdiagnoses its own disease, ensures the continuation of its suffering, and actively blocks the descending mercy and rahmah of Allah.
An ancient and profound maxim in Islamic history, often attributed to the early generations (Salafus-Salih), states:
“As you are, so will be your leaders.” كما تكونوا يولى عليكم
“As you are, so will be your leaders” كما تكونوا يولى عليكم is a profound spiritual law of cause and effect. It shifts the gaze from the palace of the leader to the heart of the citizen, reminding us that leadership is not an isolated anomaly, but a mirror reflection of the collective soul.
Dear servants of Allah! We often look at our societies and weep at the corruption, the injustice, and the weakness of those who govern. We raise our hands in anger, demanding change from the top down. But Islam demands that we look within, from the bottom up.
There is an unyielding, immutable cosmic law woven into the fabric of creation: The leader is not a detached entity; the leader is merely a shadow cast by the people. If the object is crooked, the shadow can never be straight.
If we cheat in our markets, in our business transactions, in our marital ralationships, in the training and tarbiyyah of our children, how can we expect leaders who do not plunder our treasuries? If we oppress our wives, our children, and our workers in the privacy of our homes, how can we demand leaders who uphold human rights on the world stage? If we abandon the Fajr prayer in the warmth of our beds, how can we expect victory to be granted to our nations?
Wallahi, wallahi, wallahi, like it or leave it, change does not begin in parliament or the presidential villa. Change begins on your prayer mat. It begins in your honesty at work. It begins in the purification of your heart. Be the nation you wish to see led.
During the caliphate of Ali Ibn Abi Talib (RA), a man approached him with a critical, condescending tone. He asked:
“O Ali! Why is it that the affairs of the Muslim believers were peaceful and prosperous during the times of Abubakar and Umar, but now during your caliphate, there is chaos, rebellion, and division?”
Ali (RA), endowed with deep spiritual intelligence and psychological clarity, looked at the man and delivered a shattering truth. He replied calmly: “Because Abubakar and Umar ruled over people like me. And today, I rule over people like you.”
The message here was instant and devastating. Abubakar and Umar were giants, but they led an army of giants—companions who feared Allah in the dark, who wept out of piety, who prioritised their neighbours over themselves. Ali was a giant, but he was leading a generation that had begun to compromise, bicker, and chase the material world. The leadership had adjusted to match the spiritual density of the populace.
Stop waiting for a saviour. Stop expecting a Salahuddin Al-Ayyubi to emerge from the heavens while today masses refuse to even pray in congregation.
Wallahi, tyrant leaders do not drop from the sky; they grow from the soil of a negligent society. If a people are corrupt, Allah allows a corrupt hand to hold the whip.
Allah explicitly states in the Qur’an:
“Indeed, Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves.” [Qur’an, 13:11]
This is an activational reminder. Do not point fingers at the throne. Point the finger at your own chest. Your personal righteousness is a political act. Your hidden repentance alters national destiny.
If you want leaders like Abubakar, become a citizen like those who stood behind him. When the foundation becomes pure gold, the crown cannot remain made of iron. Fix the root, and Allah will fix the branch for you!
Respected brothers and sisters! When the Sahabah (companions) and the early righteous predecessors (Salafus-Salih) faced tyrannical leaders like Al-Hajjaj Ibn Yusuf, the spiritual giants of the time did not gather to launch verbal assaults, insults, or curses. Instead, Imam Hasan al-Basri issued a timeless psychological and spiritual diagnosis. He said:
“The leader is a sword with which Allah takes vengeance. If you are oppressed, do not meet His sword with your anger and curses, but meet it with repentance, humility, and submission. For if you curse the sword, it will only cut deeper.”
A leader does not emerge from a vacuum. They are grown from the very soil of the society they govern. If a society suffers from widespread dishonesty in daily trade, corruption in personal relationships, negligence of spiritual duties, and a lack of empathy for the vulnerable, the leadership will naturally manifest those exact traits on a macro-scale. Insulting the leader is like breaking a mirror because you do not like the reflection of your own face.
From a psychological perspective, cursing and insulting those in power is a form of emotional venting that creates a dangerous illusion of action.
When you consume your energy in rage and vitriol, you subconsciously shift 100% of the responsibility for your life onto an external entity. You tell yourself, “I cannot be good, honest, or productive because they are corrupt.”
Cursing leaders allows individuals to feel morally superior without doing the hard, painful work of self-correction. It paralyses a community, turning citizens from active builders into passive, angry spectators.
The Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) strictly forbade cursing and insulting leaders, even when they fail to fulfill their duties. He commanded the Muslim believers to give them their rights and to ask Allah for their own rights.
Cursing a leader is an act of spiritual self-sabotage. If your curse is answered and the leader falls into further ruin, madness, or destruction, the entire nation collapses into chaos with them. Conversely, praying for their guidance, wisdom, and justice is an act of profound strategic and spiritual intelligence.
A nation is not healed from the top down through anger; it is revived from the bottom up through transformation and Tazkiyyah.
Allah establishes this unalterable psychological and sociological law in the Noble Qur’an, He says:
“Indeed, Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves.” [Qur’an, 13:11]
Dear servants of Allah! Please, stop wasting your breath on insults that only harden the hearts of those in power and darken your own soul. Reclaim your agency. Fix your home, honour your neighbour, purify your wealth, and master your profession. Elevate your speech from the gutter of curses to the heights of sincere, strategic, and transformative prayer.
When a population shifts its focus from blaming the shepherd to rectifying the flock, the spiritual atmosphere of the land changes. Only then does the divine mercy and rahmah descend, causing corrupt leaders to either reform or be gracefully replaced by the Almighty Allah, with those who will govern with justice, mercy and rahmah!
All praise is due to Allah, Lord of the worlds. May the peace, blessings and salutations of Allah be upon our noble Messenger, Muhammad, and upon his family, his Companions and his true followers.
Murtadha Muhammad Gusau is the Chief Imam of Nagazi-Uvete Jumu’ah and the late Alhaji Abdur-Rahman Okene’s Mosques, Okene, Kogi State, Nigeria. He can be reached via: gusauimam@gmail.com or +2348038289761 or +2348024192217.