ONE day my friend with a right-wing leaning took a jibe at my `liberal` thinking, arguing that people do not attend to the imam`s call for prayers, but if the same imam commits some mistake in the prayer call on the loudspeaker, the people, particularly those who never even enter a mosque, throng the mosque only to point out the imam`s misstep. Is this not ironical, he asked. Certainly, it is.

While delving into the polemics of the argument, we admit that it is a common practice these days to pick holesin religious personalities. But the clerics also have their own share in tarnishing their image.

With the yawning gap between their catechism and deeds, they have made themselves vulnerable to public scrutiny andverbaldisgrace.

If the people around that hypothetical imam had been so convinced of the nobleness of his character, they would have gone to the imam not to criticise him, but to ensure that he was all right in terms of physical, emotional and mental health.

But there is an opposite side to the argument. Geoffrey Chaucer in his prologue to The Canterbury Tales mostlymade ecclesiasts the target of his irony and satire, saying: `If gold rusts, what shall iron do?` An act of laxity on the part of the clergy is, indeed, a matter of serious concern for society at large.

M. Nadeem Nadir Ka sur