By Kemo Cham
Last week the Office of National Security (ONS) convened the first national conference on the role of Islamic scholars in the fight against terrorism. This was part of the government’s four-pronged counter terrorism strategy, at the top of which is the prevention aspect.
With the global rise in terrorism attributed to Islamic fundamentalism, some counter-terrorist experts believe the best way to tackle the phenomenon is to include the moderate segment of the religion in the fight.
The ONS ferried into Freetown leading religious scholars and Imams from all corners of Sierra Leone for the conference that discussed, among others, the role of Islam in ensuring peace and security, and the Islamic stance against terrorism.
Among the scholars who gathered at the Miata Conference Center in Freetown was Dr Ahmad Ramadan Jalloh, a leading Islamic scholar, Imam and missionary in the country.
In this interview, Jalloh, who happens to be Chairman, Imam and Muslim Missionary Taskforce in the ONS collaboration, spoke on the position of Islam on terror and what is being done to shield the country from radicalization. The interview was conducted at his office at the Voice of Islam, located in the center of the capital.
Please read on:
Politico: As a religious scholar, how did it feel when you were contacted you to help fight terrorism?
Jalloh: Of course it made sense, especially for now that Islam is being accused of terrorism. Every part of the world today, no sooner you hear about terror, about any area being terrorised, they tend to attribute it to Islam. So it is very important that we as Muslims, we as missionaries, we come together to refute that. To make it known to our own people here in Sierra Leone that Islam has nothing to do with terror, that whatever these people are doing under the umbrella of Islam they are not representing Islam. They are representing themselves.
Secondly, it was a great opportunity for us as Muslims to come up with one of our duties and responsibilities, because maintaining peace and security in any nation is what Islam preaches. We have so many verses in the holy Quran that encourage people to live in peace and harmony.
In fact Islam itself means peace and submission to the will of Allah. You won’t be regarded as a Muslim if you don’t establish peace between you and your fellow human beings, regardless of the kind of person; as long as he has not offended you, you should make sure you live with him in peace.
When we were called upon by the ONS they told us that they had a four-pillar strategy, and that the pillar that they wanted us to take part in, the first pillar, was prevention. It turned out that this very pillar itself is well placed and well addressed by the Quran. The Quran and the teachings of the Prophet (PBH) had long ago provided us with all the preventive mechanism that would help us to stop terrorism. So on that day it was very nice when we highlighted some of these preventive mechanisms that the Quran has provided.
The fact that Islam preaches peace is one of the preventive mechanisms. The fact that Islam has preached justice is another preventive mechanism. The fact that the Prophet (PBH) was asked to preach the message of wisdom and admonition, using a soft and lenient approach, is also another preventive mechanism. The fact that Islam does not compel anybody to accept it is another preventive mechanism. The fact that Islam has encouraged us to have peaceful co-existence with our counterparts is another preventive mechanism. The fact that Islam itself is a moderate religion, it warns against extremism, is also another preventive mechanism. The fact that Islam warns against taking the lives of people is another preventive mechanism. Sometimes some people say it has warned against taking the lives of innocent people, even those who are not innocent. (But) it is not the duty of any human being to take that person’s life. He/she has to go through the law…It is only the state that has the right to take such actions.
There are so many examples of preventive mechanisms that Islam has provided.
You just touched on something very important; this issue of innocence. For the fundamentalists, if you are not a Muslim you are against Islam, and that makes you a target.
Exactly! That’s how some people are understanding it and that’s not correct. Some of these people are misquoting the Quran to satisfy their own desires. It is total misinterpretation of the Holy Quran.
But critics, and some Muslims, including myself, have always said that Islamic scholars have not helped in that they have not been proactive in speaking against these kinds of people. When there are attacks we do not hear Islamic scholars coming out and condemn it. And to some extent, non-Muslims tend to think that this is so because we all share in the same ideas. What do you think about that?
Well, I don’t think they (Islamic scholars) have not been condemning it. It is the level at which they do the condemnation. They do it using their own mosques, using their own smaller platforms. That was why there was the need for us to come out in this form. We needed this kind of support so that we will come out and make our condemnation out rightly… for people to know exactly what Islam really is, that terrorism has no place in Islam.
But to say that there has not been condemnation, no, I don’t think so. Most of us do condemn it but at our own levels.
What has been your experience, as missionaries, in the fight against terrorism, given that every [Islamic] preacher tends to arouse suspicion?
Well, this is another thing that made that conference important; so that that kind of relationship will be established between the Muslim missionaries and the security sector, so that there will be a flow of communication between us. There have been instances when some of our Muslim people have been accused. Recently we had a visitor, a great scholar, Dr Bilal Philips. There was some kind of intelligence that this guy was a wanted guy, so he was somehow embarrassed and it was an embarrassment to Islam. That was simply because that kind of communication was not three.
So now we have agreed to have this kind of relationship so that constant communication will happen. In fact, we are going to have a committee that will work with ONS now to monitor some of the activities of these Islamic organizations, the activities of some of the Madrasas [Islamic schools], so that they won’t be radicalized. Because you can’t tell, someone may come from out of the blues, he has his own ideologies, and he may tend to radicalize some of these institutions, especially given the vulnerability associated with many of these institutions. People are poor, somebody will come and say I want to help you build a school and help you build a mosque… That’s why we are going to have this kind of committee that will work with the security sector in that respect. So we are expecting the relationship to be there now.
You have touched on another thing which is very important - the states of Islamic schools, Madrasas. They are not well looked after. And we have a lot of them here. This is one thing experts say we have to address if we have to prevent terrorism.
What, if anything, are you guys doing about this?
Of course we really need to do something about that. We agree with the fact that there is the need of us coming together as Muslims and Islamic scholars to look into the improvement of these schools and put them to standard. We do agree on that but it also depends upon the availability of resources. We need to have resources to keep these schools up to standard. But the plans are there.
After all these children are Sierra Leoneans; they just chose that aspect of education. So maybe there should be a way they can fit in.
Yea, we will try to do this. For example, here we have a school that has just been established, about three years now.
Ok, is it conventional?
It is conventional, we have both Islamic studies and Arabic and we have the government curriculum. We have the primary and we have the JSS [Junior Secondary School]. But we are lucky a little bit here because we have some business people who are supporting the school, because it is a private school…
Now, at the conference, I understand you came up with some recommendations. What are some of these?
We had some recommendations and also resolutions: The need for Madrasas and Islamic schools to be supported; the need for these kinds of workshops to continue; and for a kind of relationship to be established between the security sector and the religious scholars, especially Imams; the need for Imams to be trained across the country; the need to support also the schools.
You were saying earlier that most of these schools are poor. There is the need for these schools to be supported; the need for government also to fight against other forms of radicalization like drug abuse, alcohol consumption - all of these things kind of help to create terrorists; and the need for ONS also to work closely with the immigration for assurance and control measures. There is also the need for public sensitization for public understanding of the term terrorism, what it really means. This is because no sooner people here the word terrorist now they relate it to Islam. There is the need for Islam itself to be really understood by the people.
(C) Politico 2016
