Courtesy: Senegambianews.

Fa-Ad-Ooo Llaaha Mukhli-ceena lahu ALletheena wa-law  karihal kaafiroona.
Haruna.

Imam Ba Kawsu Fofana and the price of weakness

Published  10/12/2010 - 5:04 a.m. GMT









Credit - thepoint.gm
Imam  Lamin Touray and his unconstitutional Supreme Islamic Council have
banned Imam  Ba Kawsu Fofana from preaching and leading prayers.
Slide Show


By Karamba Touray, Florida,  USA
Throughout Gambian history,  communities have always assumed responsibility
for the way they practice their  religions. They marshal their resources,
build their houses of worship, choose  their prayer leaders and pursue the
tenets and traditions of their faith in the  manner that best suits them. By
and large, this remains true for most  communities from small villages to
larger communities in the greater Banjul  area.


However, the Supreme Islamic Council, a misnomer  for an association of
political sycophants who demonstrably use the religion of  Islam to perpetuate
themselves and their fraudulent ways, is attempting to  insert itself into
how the Gambian people practice Islam. Religiously  compromised and morally
bankrupt despite the veneer of officialdom they  relentlessly try to project,
the SIC has no standing in the eyes of honest  Muslims. In the part of the
country I come from, I know of no religious leader  or community that has
ever paid any attention to any pronouncement of the SIC  and there is no
scenario in which they will honor any edict, suggestion or  recommendation
emanating from this discredited group. Additionally, there is no  possibility of
the SIC or the government being able to enforce any of their  pronouncements
on matters of the religion of Islam on these good folks. So they  will never
ever be able to dictate when precisely people will perform Eid or what the
daily Salats chedule is going to be no matter how many  times to go to the
media pretending to issue any such edict.
It is not hard to see what these corrupt people are  attempting to do and
it revolves around the base desire to exercise political  control over people
using Islam as a vehicle. They have even taken upon  themselves to advise
Gambians to entrust them with their religiously sanctioned  obligation of
Zakat for onward distribution to the needy. That call too  would remain largely
an unheeded one because most good Muslims tend to know the  needy from
among them and would dispose of the Zakat in the manner  prescribed to them by
Allah and are unlikely to subcontract what is a pillar of  their faith to
charlatans masquerading as religious leaders. Again what they  want is to have
access to a pool of resources and use it to manipulate the needy  to serve
their own selfish interests. So the SIC by and large is an irrelevant  quasi
government entity that is now attempting a crusade it can't and must not
win. They would like to turn every Gambian to their kind of a Muslim; with a
weak faith, cavorting with the tyrant Yahya Jammeh, and imposing their
immorality on the entire nation. That is why the case of Imam Ba Kawsu Fofana is
 at once disheartening and profoundly disappointing. Mr. Fofana, like every
other  Imam in the country, is an independent cleric leading prayers and
teaching in a  mosque he built in his own home with his own resources and
contacts.
Like most Imams in the country, he does not think  much of the SIC and has
publicly aired those disagreements especially on matters  of faith and
practice. In the best tradition of Islam, he refuses to go along  with gratuitous
pronouncements from the SIC especially on matters central to the  practice
of the faith. It is important to note that no Gambian is bound by what  the
SIC says or does especially the odious bunch that now constitute it.
Frustrated with how their Eid date designation was generally ignored by  Gambian
Muslims, the SIC decided they needed to make an example of Imam Fofana  who
was an on the record critic of their baseless edict by populating their
Kanifing office with hundreds of their minions to bully the Imam into
essentially renouncing his widely held view that local people need to determine
their Eid schedule.
To that end, they drafted a shameless and self  serving screed effectively
asking Mr Fofana to abandon Islam as he knew it and  sign on to Islam ala
SIC. They demanded he sign a letter that banned him from  praying in his own
home, spreading the Word of Allah to the Gambian people  either directly or
through the media. So at the behest of Yaya Jammeh who a  couple of weeks
earlier had publicly demanded that the SIC either reign in  clerics that
contradicted their dictates or he will step in do the job himself,  and because
their commitment and loyalty is not to Allah or the deen of  Islam, they did
the tyrants bidding. Imam Fofana to his credit refused to give  in to their
catcalls and declined to sign their letter effectively divesting him  of his
right to be the Muslim he chooses to be.
The tragedy however, is that while Imam Fofana he  has refused to sign
their foul and sacrilegious letter, he has practically given  into to their
intolerable demand to stop leading prayers in his own house!  Allahu Akbar! How
can a Muslim submit to a demand to not do what his lord has  prescribed for
him in his own home in the land of his ancestors? Why shouldn't  the Imam
simply not tell the SIC that he was going to lead prayers as normal and  that
if the government and them [SIC] didn't want him to, they would have  to
physically prevent him from doing so by either imprisoning or killing him but
that his responsibility to God and Islam was far greater than their puny
grievances or purported authority over him. Wolahi if an Imam is  persecuted
in his quest to uphold the religion of Allah, he must pass that  singular
test by being steadfast and uncompromising in his pursuit of the truth.
For the venerable Imam to allow these bad Muslims  at the SIC to silence
him by their threats and to allow his faith to be  undermined by those who
urge him to surrender to the whims and caprices of a  petty dictator or worst
try to curry favor with Yahya Jammeh in a vain attempt  to mollify the very
people tormenting him would fatally undermine the high moral  standing he has
earned over his many years of Dawa. I realize there is  the ever present
Gambian malaise that nothing is really ever worth fighting for  especially in
instances where one risks life and limb. That is why as soon as  one
confronts this terrible regime, purported well meaning folks  -- sometimes family
members emerge like weevils out of a dung and begin to  insinuate various
dishonorable ways to go back crawling to your persecutors as a  way to save
yourself.
Ba kawsu Fofana by his own accounts, has led  prayers, taught and preached
the Quran thousands of times in the last twenty  years. This is the ultimate
trial for him and it is entirely up to him to defend  his faith and
vindicate everything he knows to be true about this religion. The  SIC is corrupt
and immoral with no standing in the eyes of most Gambians and he  simply
can't give in to their religiously impermissible conduct of banning him  from
practicing Islam as he sees fit. Mr Fofana should also disabuse himself of
the notion that Yahya Jammeh is a good Muslim or that he will side with him.
He  publicly ordered the SIC to do exactly what they are attempting to do.
Side with  Allah and lead salat in your own Masjid! Don't be afraid because
they  are wrong and you are right.
If Imam Fofana cowers to these  bullies and remain silent even temporarily
or entertains any notion that a  compromise is possible between him and most
of the country on the one hand and  Yahya Jammeh and the SIC on the other,
he would have failed to vindicate the  very clear sets of belief that he has
always preached about. That would be a  fall from which he couldn't recover
because Islam to the faithful is the very  essence of life and it must be
defended at all  cost.

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