Ranting about secular state

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By MADI JOBARTEH

When individuals have other ulterior motives they forcefully create a new narrative just to mislead, misguide, distort, misinform in order to scare and confuse and control the uncritical mind! So yesterday a so-called Islamic conference was convened in response to the draft constitution only to serve as a platform to release highly unfounded statements just to suit their ulterior motive.

They claim that,

Secularism is a religion
2. A restaurant is serving human flesh in New York

Well none of the above is true at all. One can search in the entire internet and even in the Library of the Congress and one will not see anything even close to thee false narratives.

To help, see the screenshot of a google search about this hilarious restaurant! Also don’t forget to read the link as well – https://www.snopes.com/fact-c…/nyc-restaurant-serves-humans/

It is high time Gambians take a stand against politicians and religious scholars and clerics, no matter which religion or political party, who engage in hoodwinking the people for their selfish interests. We need to stand up to stop them from engaging in falsification and diabolical schemes that will undermine our sovereignty and democracy hence threaten our lives and our human rights. Never again!

Politicians seek political power that is necessary to control and manage our state and society in a way to ensure that our rights are protected and our needs are fulfilled. It is the state that manages public resources and affairs hence those who seek that state power must be checked and scrutinized.

Religious leaders lead and manage our religion and faith as individuals and communities so that we exhibit the highest of values and standards in our lives. Therefore religious leaders and politicians are very important people in our society.

For that matter politicians and religious leaders must not engage in playing with words and misleading the people because that can cause conflict and damage our rights and lives.

For 22 years we saw this happened in The Gambia where politicians used the state to maim and torture and rape and kill. This was perpetrated by the President and the NAMs under that regime. During that time only few Islamic and Christian scholars and bishops, priests and Oustasses and imams stood up to speak truth to power.

The rest of the clergy only sided with the Dictator as he bastardized our society like his cup of coffee or just kept silent! They prayed for him. They conducted his uncountable Gamo for him. They recited the Holy Quran for him uncountable times. They blessed his occasions and even conferred on him the title of ‘Defender of the Faith’ – Nasurudeen! Yet that Dictator was only an idol worshipper!

The biggest victim of that Dictatorship was Islam and Muslims yet not a single Islamic scholar or imam stood up to condemn his idolatry and his atrocities against Muslims. Not a single Islamic scholar organized a conference to demand the release of Imam Baba Leigh or Imam Al Haiba Hydara or the release of Imam Ba Kawsu Fofana who was in fact forced into exile!

Yet most of these scholars and imams at that conference yesterday were the very ones at the court of the Dictator at that time!

At that time not a single scholar organized a conference or conducted a radio and television talk show or wrote a petition to Yaya Jammeh to demand that the bodies of late Buba Baldeh and Kukoie Samba Sanyang be allowed to return to their motherland to be buried as required by Islam!

Rather those who organized that conference yesterday to attack democracy in our country were the same scholars who benefited hugely from that Dictatorship that was killing Muslims and undermining Islam. They enjoyed the goodies of the Dictatorship in anyway imaginable and kept silent as the Dictator was harming our society as a whole!

What moral authority do they have today to claim to be the spokespersons of Islam and the Ummah? Nada!!!

The issue of the secularity of the state is an issue of democracy. A secular state is synonymous with democracy. Hence anyone seeking to deny The Gambia remain as a secular state is also seeking to kill democracy in our country at the sane time. This country does not need Dictatorship of the minority or majority ever again. Similarly this country does not need a theocracy under any religion nor does it need one man or one woman rule. We need only democracy! Period.

Only democracy can ensure that all citizens enjoy their right to practice their religion in peace and harmony with a state that serves everyone equally. This is what is a secular democratic state. Therefore anyone claiming that secularity is a religion is only seeking to misinform and mislead.

To further claim that secularity will cause Gambians to become homosexuals or eat human flesh or such infantile and unintelligible narratives is the highest display of dishonesty and intoxication!

Gambians, if you wish to live in peace and progress it is high time you must stand up to dishonest politicians and their counterparts in the religious arena. It is these same people who abandoned the Ummah when it was hard. Now that the people fought hard to achieve democracy we must not let anyone to snatch that hard fought and hard won democracy from us!

Let our genuine Islamic scholars and genuine imams speak up now and not let these other scholars ad imams to control the narrative as they did before only to soil the religion and endanger the Ummah once more. Secularity of the state is a necessary democratic dispensation that upholds and protects religion and believers!

For The Gambia Our Homeland