SIERRA LEONE: ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 06 FREETOWN 000067

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PHUM PREL SL
SUBJECT: SIERRA LEONE: ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY


1. Summary: The four minor incidents of inter-religious
violence over the past five years are the first such
occurrences in Sierra Leone. As Christianity becomes less
orthodox and Islam more so, such incidents are likely to
recur or worsen, but Sierra Leoneans, both Muslim and
Christian, are proud of their reputation for tolerance and
will strive to maintain it. End Summary.


2. Sierra Leone has a history of religious intermingling and
tolerance that is, or should be, the envy of most other
countries with significant Muslim and Christian populations.
Muslims form the larger group, perhaps 70 percent of the
population, as is generally acknowledged by Christians. Many
extended families contain both Muslim and Christian members,
and conversion from not only Christianity to Islam but also
Islam to Christianity (rare in other parts of the Muslim
world) is common, with a wife (and children) invariably
acquiring the religion of the husband/father. A Christian
president was elected to succeed a Muslim president in 2007,
in each case balanced by a vice-president of the other faith.
Religious symbolism is sufficiently politically important in
Sierra Leone that the present Vice President Sam Sumana
converted from Methodism to Islam, and went on the hajj,
before the election. (Note: Inter-religious tolerance does
not extend to traditional African religious beliefs. Both
Christians and Muslims share an aversion to traditional
African beliefs and practices which they dismiss as
witchcraft or black magic. Openly admitted adherents of
traditional religion appear to number less than one per cent
of the population, but many beliefs and practices remain
ingrained, especially in the up-country.)

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The Four Incidents
--------------


3. The four incidents of inter-religious violence 2005-09
(three of them occurring in the last year and a half) are
therefore a source of discomfort and some anxiety for both
Muslims and Christians. They are tame by comparison to
events elsewhere (including at nearby N'zerekore in January),
and Sierra Leoneans are quick -- perhaps a little too quick
-- to dismiss their importance. In each case, Muslims were
provoked by Christians and retaliated with violence to
property. To review:


A. In May 2005 Muslim youths stoned an Anglican church and
primary school in eastern (predominantly Muslim) Freetown
after pupils from the school taunted a Muslim woman wearing a
veil. The woman fell or was pulled down. (Note: The
practice of wearing a veil remains unusual in Sierra Leone
although head coverings are becoming a practice especially
among women of the Fula tribe and are mandated for
schoolgirls in Muslim schools.)


B. In September 2008, Muslims attacked a pentecostal church
in eastern Freetown, when the loudspeakers at the church were
turned up loud enough to drown out Ramadan prayers. Church
members retaliated by breaking windows in a nearby mosque.


C. In April 2009, Muslims who claimed to be acting on the
orders of an imam burned down a pentecostal church in a
village in Kambia district near the Guinea border. The
church had recently been erected near where a mosque or
Muslim prayer site had existed. The perpetrators came from
outside the village.


D. Most recently, on December 15, 2009, Muslims attacked a
pentecostal church during a Tuesday prayer service, damaging
the pastor's Range Rover, the roof of the simple church
structure, and the church's audio equipment. Members of the
nearby mosque had repeatedly warned the pastor to reduce the
volume of the loudspeakers.

--------------
Muslim Views
--------------


4. Poloff called on a number of Muslim and Christian leaders
February 11-15, starting with Shaykh Abu Bakr Conteh, a
senior imam in Freetown center city and a member of the
Inter-Religious Council. Conteh said that the
Inter-Religious Council was formed in 1997 at the USIS office
when a delegation came from the United States representing
the World Council for Peace. Sierra Leone was in the midst
of its internal war at the time, during which religion was
not a significant factor, Conteh asserted; rather, the
impetus to establish the Inter-Religious Council was mounting
global concern about Muslim-Christian friction elsewhere and
a desire to ensure that such friction would not spill over
into Sierra Leone.


5. Conteh pointed out that Islam had been rooted in Sierra

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Leone for many centuries, as far back as the Kingdom of Mali
in the fourteenth century. Much later, the Anglicans and
Methodists had come by sea with the founding of Freetown in
the late eighteenth century, Catholics following in the
nineteenth century. These Christian groups had set up
schools throughout the country, to the benefit of Muslims and
Christians alike. Conteh, who speaks fluent Arabic and has
spent many years in Saudi Arabia, said that he -- like most
older Muslims -- had gained "95 percent" of his education
from Christians, and indeed he had been brought up by a
Christian woman. Conteh said that there was, in Sierra
Leone, a thorough mutual understanding among Muslims and
Christians of each other's practices and beliefs. He said
that, on the one hand, it was lamentable that Islam in Sierra
Leone was, as he put it, so "shallow," both in the sense of
shallow-rootedness (Muslims too easily converted to
Christianity),and in the sense of shallowness of
understanding of Islamic doctrine and insufficient attention
to Islamic practices. (Christianity, he claimed, was
similarly "shallow" in Sierra Leone.)


6. On the other hand, Conteh said, for all the shallowness
of their religious understanding and practice, Muslims and
Christians in Sierra Leone had, through their age-old mutual
accommodation and trust, demonstrated a "true interpretation"
of the Koran and Bible. Formerly, there had been few
"prayerful" people in Sierra Leone but "many God-fearing
people." Now with the advent of greater "religious
awareness," there were more and more prayerful people, but
fewer God-fearing ones. Conteh viewed his life's work as, on
the one hand, to show Sierra Leonean Muslims the way to a
deeper, more correct Islam, while somehow striving to keep
them tolerant.


7. Yet, he feared that the younger generation of Muslims and
Christians was moving away from traditional Sierra Leonean
tolerance. The recent minor incidents of inter-religious
violence, he said, could become major without careful
management. The 2009 Kambia incident (C above),he said,
demonstrated the ill-effects of insensitive Christian
evangelism. A charismatic female preacher had convinced
local Muslims that she had raised an old man from the dead,
converted some of the villagers, raised money from the United
States, and bought land on which the mission had built a
church. Unfortunately, the land was the site of a
dilapidated mosque which was still considered a holy Muslim
place, outsiders got wind of what had happened, came to the
village, burned down the church, and even poisoned the new
water sources that the church had installed for the village.
The Inter-Religious Council participated in a delegation,
with government, UN, and embassies' representation, that
helicoptered to the site immediately. (Note: Embassy
employee who flew with this delegation reports that there was
no "mosque" there at all, but only a open "prayer area"
located at some distance from where the church was built,
that it took three years for the church to be built, and that
only after that did outsiders come to burn it down,
instigated by an imam in Freetown.) Conteh said that the
Inter-Religious Council intended soon to present a full
report on the incident, with recommendations, to Vice
President Sumana. One recommendation would be that holy
sites of one religion, however "dilapidated," should never be
used by another religion.


8. Conteh said that the first incident, involving the veiled
woman (A above),was brought to an amicable solution for both
sides, when it was understood that the woman (though taunted
by children) had not been intentionally pushed down. Conteh
noted that the hijab was mandated by the Koran. The state of
morality among women in Sierra Leone, he said, was "lax" and
the use of the hijab (both head covering and veil) would help
to reduce that immorality.


9. Both of the other incidents (B and D),according to
Conteh, derived from extreme insensitivity by new pentecostal
churches to their largely Muslim surroundings in eastern
Freetown. These churches frequently put on revivals and
sometimes had prayer sessions every day of the week, using
amplification systems at maximum loudness. In the most
recent case (D above),the church had established itself
within close proximity of a mosque. Conteh claimed that most
of the stone-throwers were "not really Muslims" but "idle
youths," and not members of the nearby mosque. This incident
was brought immediately to the attention of the Vice
President (who received the church's pastor within six days
of the incident). The Inter-Religious Council intended to
release a statement soon on the incident and step up its
efforts on inter-religious sensitization. Otherwise, Conteh
lamented, "a volcano awaits."


10. To poloff's questions about the doctrinal nature of
Islam in Sierra Leone and the role of foreign Islamic donors,
Conteh said that Sierra Leonean Islam was overwhelmingly

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Maliki Sunni, with little presence of Sufism or the Tidjani
sect. The Ahmadiyya movement had arrived via Pakistan and
the United Kingdom (and was given a further boost with the
presence of Pakistani UN troops during the war) and was
instrumental in establishing Muslim schools, which had
previously hardly existed. There was some foreign money
involved in the widespread, on-going construction effort --
the Kuwaitis in particular were supporting the construction
of small new mosques. Qadhafi had financed entirely the
construction of a large new mosque in eastern Freetown.
However, Freetown still lacked a "Grand Mosque" typical of
most capitals of Muslim countries. Ten years ago, Sierra
Leonean Lebanese (who are overwhelmingly Shia),with help
from Iran, had begun building a large mosque dominating the
quay of central Freetown, but it remained unfinished, and
while it was generally called the "Central Mosque," most
Sierra Leoneans refused to consider it the "Grand Mosque,"
because it was Shi'a-inspired. (Note: According to press
reports, at the beginning of February, the Iranian ambassador
presided over a ceremony at this unfinished mosque,
celebrating "The Islamic Revolution as a Continuation of the
Prophet Mohamed's Misson." Head of the Ahmadiyya Mission in
Sierra Leone Amir Saeed Ur Rahman, in his speech, noted that
"before the Revolution there was no Islamic tradition in
Iran." Sunnis were represented at the occasion by the
Secretary General of the United Council of Imams in Sierra
Leone, al-Hajj Madani Kabba Kamara, who said that "imams in
Sierra Leone have benefited a lot from the Iranians in terms
of education and welfare.")


11. Conteh said that the Saudis had proposed three years ago
to finance the construction of a Grand Mosque and had sent
several delegations to Freetown for the purpose. The
previous government (under a Muslim president) had appeared
favorable. However, the present government (under a
Christian president) had not yet authorized the project.


12. Subsequently, poloff sought separate appointments with
the President and Spiritual Guide (or "Amir") of the United
Council of Imams, al-Hajj Yahya al-Din Kamara and Abu Bakr
Kamara, respectively. However, these worthies surprised
poloff by receiving him jointly and in the presence of twenty
other imams and staff. The occasion, replete with cameras
and microphones, turned into a speech-giving event with
little substance and prayers and recitations from the Koran.
There were, however, a few interesting tidbits emerging from
this otherwise controlled, formalistic, and tedious exercise.
Speakers extolled Islam as a religion of peace (remarking on
the core root of the word as meaning "peace," even if the
word "Islam" itself means "submission") and praised Sierra
Leone as an exemplar of inter-religious toleration. They
noted the recent violence in neighboring N'zerekore and
emphasized that such violence must be avoided in Sierra
Leone. They regretted the "rise of Christian evangelism in
the past 10-15 years" as having caused "some problems," which
however remained "not serious." They noted that religious
leaders, Muslim and Christian alike, had worked hard and
worked together to resolve the war and avoid recriminations
in its aftermath. Secretary General al-Hajj Madani Kabba
Kamara said that Sierra Leoneans were "very proud" of their
Central Mosque, that Sierra Leone had no "Grand Imam" as such
but that the President and Amir of the United Council of
Imams together "essentially filled that role," and that
Sierra Leone soon "expected to have a Grand Mufti" (not
further defined).


13. Finally, poloff called on Shaykh Fomba Abu Bakr Swaray,
director of the radio station Voice of Islam and imam of a
multi-story Islamic center located east of the city center.
Shaykh Fomba, as he is known, is a well-known figure in
Sierra Leone, through the radio station (the major Islamic
one in the country). The station is heard as far away as Bo,
Lunsar, and Kambia; most broadcasts are in the national
language Krio, but it has some programs in Mende, Temne,
Limba, Susu, Mandingo, Fula, Sherbro, and Loko.


14. When poloff mentioned that he had met some of Fomba's
colleagues at the United Council of Imams, Fomba said that he
was part of the Sierra Leone Muslim Missionary League and not
the United Council of Imams. He intimated no fondness for
the other group, saying the Missionary League was more
scholarly, with deeper grounding in Islam and connections to
Saudi Arabia, Libya, Kuwait, Sudan, and Nigeria. Fomba noted
that Sierra Leone had been part of the Islamic world since
the 1300's and he claimed that Islamic clerics in Sierra
Leone had a long tradition of erudition. He said that, as
Muslims were the great majority in Sierra Leone, the
country's record of religious tolerance must be viewed as a
Muslim accomplishment. However, the Christian minority
needed, he said, to understand the limits of Muslim patience.
Muslims should be able to enjoy the privilege, as well as
carry the burden, of being the majority, and Christians
needed to be more careful to accommodate themselves to the

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majority.


15. In regard to the "minor incidents" of the past several
years, Fomba said that Muslims strongly objected to being
characterized as the violent party. In every case, Muslims
had been sorely provoked. Although the case of the veiled
woman (A above) was some years old now, Fomba said, it still
rankled deeply among Muslims. According to Fomba, the Koran
demanded that women wear a veil, and at least they must cover
their hair. This poor woman was carrying food home to her
husband, was walking by the Anglican church and school when a
teacher came out of the school and yanked off her veil,
causing her to fall to the ground, and the teacher prompted
the children to taunt her as the "devil." (Note: Embassy
employee went to the scene soon after it occurred and
interviewed many people, who affirmed that a schoolteacher,
who was directing traffic outside the school so that children
would not be hit by cars, inadvertently struck the veiled
woman with her outstretched hand.)


16. The more recent cases, Fomba noted, involved
insupportable incitement from charismatic churches. The
burning of the new Lord's Mission Church at a village in
Kambia district (C above) was a result of the destruction of
an existing mosque. Some Christians claimed that the mosque
that was destroyed was derelict, but this was false. The
mosque had continued to be actively used by inhabitants not
only of that village but from surrounding villages. The
claim by the female missionary that she had raised an old man
from the dead was a source of anger throughout the district.
Fomba hoped that the report now being finalized for
presentation to the Vice President would call upon donors to
provide funds for building a new mosque, a new church, and a
new community center at the site of the destroyed
mosque/burned church. (Note the very different Embassy
on-the-ground account of this incident above.)


17. As for the most recent incident (D above),Fomba said
that the new pentecostal church had been built very close to
an existing mosque and it had insisted on very loud amplified
services precisely at the time of evening Muslim prayers.
The mosque had appealed to the church, to the community
chief, and then to the police, and finally, in exasperation,
the local police commander had himself gone into the church
and yanked out the speaker cords. When the police commander
was then attacked by the church members, Muslims outside
became enraged and retaliated. (Note: The Mission of Hope
Church claims that the police commander instigated the attack
on the church.)

--------------
Christian Views
--------------


18. On the Christian side, poloff first called on Pastor Ola
Macauley of the Flaming Bible Church in Ascension Town (west
of central Freetown),one of the larger, older, more
established pentecostal churches. Macauley said that the
Flaming Evangelical Mission had been founded 22 years ago by
its leader, Bishop Abu Koroma, by origin a Temne Muslim from
Magburaka, who had attended the same Christian boys' school
as President Koroma. Abu Koroma was converted by his elder
brother (who had been "saved," "born again," earlier) while
attending Fourah Bay College. Macauley said that he himself
was born a Methodist, his Krio father being Methodist; his
mother had been a Krio Muslim. Macauley noted that it was
"very common" in Sierra Leone for Muslims to convert to
Christianity. Outdoor revivals were now an everyday
happening in Freetown and throughout the country. The
Flaming Evangelical Mission had large congregations in
Freetown, Bo, and Kenema, and it was, he said, focusing its
present crusades up-country.


19. Macauley said that the Sierra Leonean Christian
population (30 percent of the total population, he agreed)
was now approximately one-third pentecostal. The pentecostal
movement was new; it had, he explained, started slowly in the
1980's and picked up momentum through the 1990's and the
2000's. The war in the 1990's was a stimulus, as the people
had sought solace from all the brutality. Macauley estimated
that 60 percent of the members of the Flaming Evangelical
Mission had originally been "orthodox" Christian (Methodist,
Wesleyan, Anglican, or Catholic for the most part); 30
percent had been other pentecostal (i.e., moving into the
Flaming church from other pentecostal churches); and 10
percent of Muslim origin. (The latter number, Macauley said,
included practitioners of traditional African religion, who
in Sierra Leone "invariably call themselves Muslims.")


20. Macauley said that his church saw no conflict with
Islam. Radical Islam would, of course, pose a terrible
problem -- as indeed would radical Christianity, Macauley
said -- but Sierra Leone was not at that point yet, and

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hopefully not near it. In his view, the recent minor
altercations were a product of Christian insensitivity. The
December incident (D above) involved, he said, a radical
pastor who openly condemned Islam, "and naturally the Muslims
reacted." By contrast, the Flaming Bible Church, he said,
never used outside loudspeakers except during revivals and
then only after discussing the timing with neighboring
mosques. He said his church did have prayer services on
Friday as well as Wednesday (while some pentecostal churches
now conducted prayer services every single day) but it
scheduled those services around Muslim prayer times.
Macauley noted that Muslims and Christians had always lived
amicably together in Sierra Leone, the Muslim call to prayer
being simply an accepted, natural part of the scene, and, in
his view, there was no reason for conflict if people behaved
with good sense and respect.


21. Poloff next called on Rev. Winston Ashcroft of the
United Methodist Church, at a church located in central
Freetown. Ashcroft said that the "intermarriage" of
Christianity and Islam had been a feature of Freetown since
its creation as a refuge for freed slaves. Freetown had
originally had a Christian majority but Krio Muslims, from
the first located especially in eastern Freetown, had been a
significant presence from the beginning, with Muslims always
coming into Freetown Peninsula from the east (the mainland).
The phenomenon of conversion in both directions had also
existed and been accepted from the beginning. Even Fula
(Fulani, Peuhl),the strictest Muslims of Sierra Leone,
converted to Christianity occasionally, and Ashcroft cited
several examples.


22. Ashcroft acknowledged that traditional churches had gone
through a period of significant loss of members, especially
among the young, to the new, "charismatic" churches. (He
preferred to avoid the term "evangelical" in referring to
those churches, as he viewed his own church as being
evangelical.) However, he believed that his church had
stopped the trend by taking up some of the methods of the
charismatic churches, while remaining faithful to its
liturgy. The formerly "stiff-necked" church had now
introduced two major "procedural" changes: in the music
(decreasing the use of the organ in favor of amplified drums
on keyboard) and in the style of sermon (the pastor leaving
the pulpit and going down to energize the congregation). The
church had also introduced a "praise time" of energetic
singing and chanting and rhythm.


23. Ashcroft said that the United Methodist Church had not
yet suffered any sort of violent incident involving Muslims.
There had been threats to the church from Muslims, but, so
far, these had been peacefully resolved. According to
Ashcroft, "Christians have the philosophy of turn the cheek,
which is nonexistent in Islam. In every case, the Christians
have to compromise, while the Muslims are quick to threaten."
There was no doubt, he said, that Muslims were becoming more
self-aware and intolerant, but he remained "optimistic that
Sierra Leone will avoid the rise of Islamic fundamentalism."


24. Subsequently, poloff called on Rev. Father Vincent
Davies of Sacred Heart Cathedral in central Freetown. Davies
said that Catholicism had come relatively late to Sierra
Leone (in 1860) and the Catholic population amounted to only
about 10 percent of Christians (or three percent of the
general population). However, he said, the mainly Irish
missionaries had left a massive legacy behind: over forty
percent of schools in Sierra Leone today were Catholic or at
least had a Catholic origin, he said. Most of those schools
had, and always had had, a majority of Muslim students.
There had been no Catholic-Muslim incidents, and the Catholic
Church had no cause for complaint in that quarter. It had,
however, seen a palpable recent loss of members to the
charismatics. Davies said that he was one of three priests
whom the bishop had recently allowed to conduct "healing
masses" with loud singing, shouting, dancing, and use of
local instruments, as a way to stem the exodus.


25. Finally, poloff called on Rev. Usman Fornah, leader
("National Superintendent") of the Wesleyan Church of Sierra
Leone, who is at present also the general secretary of the
Inter-Religious Council. Fornah explained that, as his name
suggests, he was born a Muslim (his parents are still
Muslims),went to a Christian school, and was converted at
the age of 19. He said that the Wesleyan Church, an American
offshoot of the Methodist Church (disavowing episcopal
usages, such as bishops and robes),founded its Sierra Leone
branch in 1889. The Wesleyan Church was, he said, avowedly
evangelical but not pentecostal or charismatic, the latter
characterized especially by speaking tongues and claims of
miracles, especially miraculous healing.


26. Fornah laid blame for the three most recent
inter-religious incidents of violence on the charismatic

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churches. (He was not aware of the 2005 incident involving
the veiled woman.) He said that some of the charismatic
churches exemplified a disturbing trend of arrogance and
insensitivity. This fringe took a particularly hostile
attitude toward Muslims and was boosted by considerable
external monetary support, especially from the United States.
For example, the Lord's Mission, which Fornah understood to
have destroyed an existing if derelict mosque in Kambia
district (C above) in order to erect a church, had received
ample donations that had come pouring in from the United
States when people there learned that the female missionary
had, supposedly, raised an old man from the dead and had
converted Muslims.


27. Fornah said that the Inter-Religious Council was doing
the best it could to investigate these incidents but it had
no resources, no staff, no vehicles -- he, for example, was
serving as interim general secretary of the Inter-Religious
Council while being head of the entire Wesleyan Church in
Sierra Leone, two full jobs at least. He said that the
Council would soon be making its recommendations to the Vice
President on the Kambia incident, which would include:

-- Registration of all religious entities by the Ministry of
Social Welfare (which has responsibility in the religious
sector). (Fornah explained that the Council had no desire to
limit religious freedom, but some of the charismatic groups
had no evident structure or person in charge to hold
responsible.)

-- Establishment of a basic code of conduct for all religious
entities, to cover respect for prayer times and ending of
religious slander on both Christian and Muslim radio
stations. (Fornah said that both the charismatics' BBN --
Believers' Broadcasting Network -- and the Voice of Islam
carried outrageous broadcasts casting aspersions on the other
faith.)

-- Requiring a reasonable distance between new churches and
existing mosques (and vice versa).

-- Establishment of a National Council for Prevention and
Management of Religious Conflicts with representation of all
concerned parties, replicated at district level. (Fornah
said that the problem would be funding, but he hoped that
there would be donor interest. He also hoped that the key
religious leaders, not politicians, would have the primary
role).

-- Holding of a National Religious Conference to discuss
openly all causes of religious tension and to find solutions.
(Donor support would be needed.)


28. Fornah lamented that the Inter-Religious Council had at
present no representative from the charismatic churches.
There had been a charismatic participant when the Council was
first established but not for some years. The charismatics
appeared to dislike working with the main-line churches, did
not like to compromise, and, in the more radical cases,
refused to sit down with Muslims as being heathens.


29. Fornah said that he remained hopeful that Sierra Leone's
tradition of tolerance would prevail in the near future.
Over the longer term, the future appeared to be less
positive. At present trends, the charismatics would become
ever more radical, and the Muslims would be subject to ever
greater external influence. Formerly, Muslim parents who
wanted a good education for their children sent them to
Christian schools, and many Muslim parents continued to do
so. But Muslim education, like the use of the headscarf, was
growing, and the web of interaction and points of contact
between the two communities appeared slowly to be dwindling.
CHESHES