*Editor Sillah of the Gambia journal's reaction centred around the
President's intermingling of the state apparatus with religion. However, is
he seeing too much into that.*
Should the media editors analyse the religious environment with less
harshness, thereby placing secularism in its proper context? I wonder. Mr
SIllah's general theme is correct, however, what would he call puritan
Islam? Can Jammeh be even considered a proper Muslim let alone advocating
for a puritanical form of religion. Isn't Jammeh using religion for his
political purposes rather than for the love of it. Highly placed sources
indicated that, Jammeh actually has a lady who looks after his oracle Idols
in State house, the lady's main task is to conduct the sacrifices for
Jammeh, pour the wine and offer the chicken blood.
Editor Sillah made a lot of sense, however, Jammeh careless about secularism
or religion, its all about power for him.
Gambia Strripped of Secularism And I n Transition To Sharia
03 April, 2011 01:48:00
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Last week I read in the local newspapers that one Soriba Debasy, Shaabi
Jallow and Abdalai Alieu Jallow were the winners of the Quranic Memorization
competition sponsored by Gambian leader, Yahya Jammeh. First Prizewinner,
Soriba Debasy from Ubai Ibun Mughabi Quranic Memorization School in Banjul
received D1 million dalasi; second position winner, Abdalai Alieu Jallow,
also from the same school, got D500 000 while Shaabi Jallow from Daarusuna
Islamic School in Wellingara who took the third position received D250,000.
Both the actual recital competition and the award giving ceremony were held
at t the Gambia Supreme Islamic Council (GSIC) Doha International Conference
hall in Kanifing. The weeklong competition brought together 150 male
participants under the age of 19, drawn from Arabic Islamic schools,
learning institutions and individuals from across the country.
In the same week I saw an invitation for bids also on the local papers from
the Office of the President. The bid is for the extension of the State House
Mosque. This will include the construction of an upper floor of this
existing mosque and the total floor space upon completion should be able to
accommodate three thousand worshippers.
The bids, which should be in sealed envelopes, and clearly marked, ‘BIDS for
the State House Mosque’, should be addressed to the Office of the Secretary
General, State House, Banjul. All bids should reach the Office of the
Secretary General not later than the 1st of April 2011.
Wow, I thought, this looks to me like Afghanistan under Taliban rule. There
may not yet be the coercive Puritanism of the Mulla Umar-type in the tiny
West African state but the dangers are clearly imminent. I wonder what has
happened to our secularity. Just about a month earlier, another Muslim title
was bestowed on President Jammeh on top of the “Sheikh” he got from the same
Supreme Islamic Council last year. Last February the Catholic St Therese's
Parish Diocese of Banjul sent a letter On behalf of the Priests in the
Parish, Regional Sisters, the Parish Council and Parishioners of St.
Therese's Parish Kanifing expressing its gratitude to the Gambian leader
Yahya Jammeh for his donation during the Christmas festivities. Under his
one-man totalitarian rule the Gambian dictator has been expanding his power,
authority and influence over all aspects of social living including the
faith-based institutions and movements in the country. Just after coming
into power in July 1994, the AFPRC junta under his leadership quelled a
brooding feud over the Immamship of a mosque in Bundung, a neighborhood in
Serrekunda. A similar intervention was done by the junta in another such
crisis in the Upper River region town of Gambisara. Since then President
Jammeh appeared to have developed the taste or habit of interfering in the
affairs of the Gambian Muslim Ummah like it has never been done in this
country. President Jammeh interferes with the setting of the Islamic
calendar, its daily prayer times and the selection of leaders manning its
institutions. The Gambian dictator has gone very far in not only
emasculating the Ummah but subverting the country’s secular tradition.
Secularism comes to the Gambian people naturally because of the acclaimed
tolerance of the Gambian people for religious and other cultural deviations
and not only because of its declaration in the constitution of the republic.
We live in the 21st century when the dominant secular orthodoxies of both
socialism and, lately capitalism, have been seen to have failed. The need
for some form of orthodoxies, ideologies, worldviews, etc, is an endemic one
of the human condition, having been cultivated over thousands of years. The
new century arrived together with the vacuum left by the decline in the
power of secular ideologies and the tendency everywhere to substitute them
with alternative orthodoxies in the form of religious fanaticism,
fundamentalist currents in both Christianity and Islam, the growth of
political Islam and culture and civilization clashes of various type. But we
still live in a jungle, in a world governed globally and locally by the
brutal power of the military, the police, the capitalist market and its
media, and the power of religion. We know from the past and the present that
all those powers are connected, that they work together and help each other
to dominate and exploit the majority of men and women in every country. The
big economic military nuclear powers in the USA, Europe, and Israel need
religion to establish their control over the world. They need God to justify
injustices and double standards.
We live under a post modern slave system, dominated by religion and
political power of the West. Religion can be more dangerous than military
weapons. It can veil the minds of people, make them blind to contradictions,
and make them submissive to corrupt authorities. We see how people are
killed under Islamic states for no reason except exposing injustices, or
expressing opinions different from rulers. A novelist or a poet can be
killed or put in prison just because of writing creatively. A girl may be
killed just because of going to school or not covering her head. A war can
erupt between different sects or groups in the society just because of
different interpretation of one verse in God’s Book. Secularism helps shield
us against such dangers.
Usually, the threat to secularism use to come from Church and Mosque trying
to exercise their intrinsic tendency to grow, expand and dominate. In the
West state and Church locked horns for centuries before finally agreeing on
established demarcation of rights and responsibilities and a viable
co-existence. Whenever there was any chasm or threat to the co-existence it
has almost always come from the Church and not the state. In The Gambia,
under the Jammeh-dictatorship, it has all the time coming from the state.
About a decade ago President Jammeh mentioned the possibility of turning the
country over to Sharia rule. When this was reported on state television, the
President denied saying it, in this way indicating his recognition of the
power of secularism in the country. But today he appears to be presiding
over a country in transition to Sharia rule.
The most nauseating thing of the whole affair is that most Gambians doubt
the president’s personal piety justifiably so because of the man’s personal
religious history of a cocktail of fetishism, Catholicism and Islam. He is a
man who tries to be the macadam of Islam, the Pope of the Catholics and
biggest witch-doctor of them all. So he is real cause for alarm
--
www.suntoumana.blogspot.com
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