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.

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

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