By: Kemo Kanyi
The Minister of Information, Media, and Broadcasting Services, Dr. Ismaila Ceesay, has stated that Imams should be responsible enough to preach in a manner that promotes the peace and stability of the country, adding that they [Imams] should not use their platforms for sowing seed of discord.
Dr. Ceesay said everyone has a right to criticize the government and proffer solutions.
According to him, some Imams are seemingly affiliated to opposition political parties, and all they do is try to incite the population against the government. He maintained that when you listen to some Imams in their pulpits, you wonder if they are trying to destroy this country or not.
Clarifying the position of the minister responsible for religious affairs on the matter Amat N.K. Bah, the information minister added that those were the kind of issues his fellow minister meant to address because that falls within his [Amat N.K. Bah] purview as religious minister.
“This was a gathering with religious leaders. The message was that ‘please inform your fellow Imams when they are using their pulpit to preach, let them use it in a responsible manner’. That was the clear message, but clearly, there are Imams who don’t do this. Instead, they are bent on finding ways to incite the public into violence every Friday, and we can’t accept that as a government,” Dr. Ceesay stressed in an interview with Coffee Time With Peter Gomez on Tuesday.
Dr. Ceesay added that during the previous regime, the class of people who suffered the most was the Imams and journalists, stating: “Barrow’s government is peaceful and respect the freedom of the people to speak and write what they want to, but it must be done with responsibility.”
He revealed that the government has a very powerful intelligence apparatus that they use to get facts and speak about them, saying it [government] knows the political affiliation of some of the Imams in the country.
“We know these, Imams. We know their political affiliations. We know exactly what they are. Don’t understand estimate this. If the State wants to know anything, they know it. Our intelligence infrastructure is extensive, so we exactly [know] the intentions and actions of each and every person. The State has a very powerful architecture. We speak based on facts. The facts are that some Imams use their pulpits for politics and to create discord in this country,” he further alleged.
Journalists
Dr. Ceesay alleged that some journalists are biased in reporting, saying: “Some journalists are not fair in reporting, all they want to do is to paint the negative picture of the country because they are politically-affiliated. That’s a fact.”
