National Imam of the Shia Muslim Community, Ghana: His Eminence Sheikh Abubakar Ahmad Kamaludeen
The National Imam of the Shia Muslim Community of Ghana, Sheikh Abubakar Ahmad Kamaludeen, has condemned the terrorist attacks on Wednesday, October 26, 2022 in the two provinces of Shiraz and Yasuj of the Islamic Republic of Iran that reportedly claimed 15 lives including women, children, wounded over forty people and destroyed several properties.
As the people of the Islamic Republic of Iran bid farewell to the victims of the terrorist attacks on the two worshipping centres, “we express our sincere condolences to the Islamic Republic of Iran and pray for Almighty Allah to grant the souls of the Martyrs eternal repose,” he stated.
The religion of Islam, he said, is peaceful and non-threatening. To discover the reality, he stated “it was the inner core of Muslim scientists like Ibn Sina, Ibn Yunus, Mulla Sadra, Averos etc that produced, developed and contributed tremendously to the development of human civilisation.”
However, religion has been interpreted and used as an instrument for intolerance, hate, cruelty, murder and destruction, he said, adding “we have seen many places like Raqqa, Timbuktu, Carbo Delgado, Mosul, Chibok, Kompienga etc where religion actually destroys the God-given rational faculty of the human being.”
In the Ghanaian setting, for instance, he recalled “we have witnessed promising youth like Nazir Alema, Abu Dujana etc who have been brainwashed by the ideology of renegades and suicide bombers like Boko Haram, ISIS, al-Qaeda to think that knowledge and achievement endowed unto them by Allah were rather been established in them by the Devil to distance both the individual and the society from Allah and eternal residence.” This ideology, is by far the virtual womb that incubated the existence of the murderous extremists groups that we encounter everywhere around the world like Boko Haram, ISIS, al-Qaeda, ISWAP, AQIM, the Salafis in Burkina Faso etc, he said.
“Our security apparatus must avoid complacency, as terrorists always take advantage of the unvigilant nature of the security system of the state to carry out attacks,” he pointed out.
In order not to constrain civil liberties, we must also adopt measures to prevent suspected terrorists from entering into the country.
It is absolutely a crime of the highest magnitude, he said, to take the life of the human being or cause chaos upon the human environment as the Holy Qur’an states: “….whoever kills a human being for other than murder or chaos upon the land, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whoever saves the life of a single human being, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind..” 5:32
“…and do not create mischief in the land, for Allah loves not those who create mischief.” Qur’an 28:77.