“Religion is a legalised madness – everything is taught to be accepted without questions,” said Avraham Ben Moshe, Pan-Africanist and CEO of Common Sense Family.

He said this during his appearance as this week’s guest on a popular Ghanaian podcast show,The Real Talk Podcast, hosted by Elizabeth Essuman.

It is often said that the African continent is “more Catholic than the Pope”, and whatever that means was explored on this week’s episode of The Real Talk Podcast, where Elizabeth Essuman and her panellists engaged their guest, Avraham Ben Moshe, in a thought-provoking discussion.

Quoting Karl Marx’s famous statement that “religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.

It is the opium of the people,” Avraham Ben Moshe shared similar sentiments, arguing that both the church and the mosque have become havens of obsolete dogmas, medieval intolerance, and Stone Age abuse of congregants’ rights — all in the name of God.

He supported his points with scriptures and posed nerve-racking questions about faith, reasoning, and spirituality — emphasising that religion should be an individual journey rather than an instrument of intimidation.

“The whole aim of questioning religion is to help my society regain belief in themselves and whatever they trust in,” he said. “We must put away the complexes of years of colonisation with a Jewish ‘story book’ that has disrupted our cohesion and violated our pride as a people with a rich, deep culture before the white man stumbled on our territory and scattered everything with their books and gunpowder to counter our traditions.”

According to Avraham, “Christianity, for example, is all about ‘trust and obey, do not question’ — and that’s because the pastors themselves do not have answers to the many questions raised.”

He added that “Africa and the world at large are gradually waking up to the reality of their independent existence, moving away from religious upstarts and misguided elements who seek to recolonise our minds with their jaundiced and hypocritical views on everything.”