I am writing about His Excellency, Babili Mansa and his 20 years in power in this country. This is exceptional because the July 22nd Revolution was built on pillars of accountability and transparency. Since taking the mantle of leadership, the need to enhance public trust and confidence among the citizenry has been a central focus of President Jammeh. Babili Mansa realised that nation building relies on public support and people’s willingness.
It is obvious that our backwardness in our first thirty years of self-government can be explained by the high level of corruption. Today the country has good roads, hospitals, adequate water and electricity supply countrywide and a host of other development projects because the current leadership has engendered transparent and accountable government.
Your Excellency has mercy for humanity for which God will always continue to protect and guide him, his family, the government and the entire Gambia people. His generosity and support is for humanity and not limited to the Gambian people but beyond our borders even to those countries where there is chaos and anarchy. President Jammeh has restored the health of the sick and brought hope to the hopeless, helped the most vulnerable mainly women and youh irrespective of political affiliation, religion or ethnicity.
Mr President, Babili Mansa is a good son of the land. He is a diamond not only in the eyes of the Gambian people but also beyond our borders. May the Almighty Allah see him through in achieving his aims and objectives encapsulated in the blueprint of Vision 2020 and Vision 2016 on rice self-sufficiency.
Mamudou Jallow
APRC militant
Brikamaba
I do not support Dr Zakir Naik… Surprised?
Dear editor,
Few months ago I joined a community on Facebook, titled, “We Hate Zakir Naik”. What followed next was not less than a furor, comments after comments justifying why I should unjoin the community and how Zakir Naik is this Ultimate man. For a moment I felt that I wrote something against Prophet Mohhamed (PBUH). Heaven’s forbid.
I understood that people who love him could not see a hateful gesture against him, but I still cannot understand who were they to question my knowledge of religion and my freedom to criticize a human being?
I was told that as I am not a Muslim I have no right to make comment about him… seriously … is that so? Only the people who follow Islam have a right to discuss it, and the others have to face ‘tohmat’ for doing so?
Anyways coming back to the topic that why I hate him. If you notice any of the lectures of Zakir Naik you will find a typical scenario, where he is speaking or debating in the presence of a sizable crowd which includes non-Muslims. He give stunning answers which leaves the people spell bound, people are seen nodding their heads in agreement and applauding him for giving a ‘shut your mouth’ reply to the questioner. Not ones or twice but I have heard him often, and I always do whenever I get a chance, whether it’s on QTV or Youtube. But in vain I find nothing but the same things. He has become nothing but a messiah of answering repetitive technical questions on polygamy, eating pork, purdah, and a few more. With his phenomenal memory he quotes the verses of Quran and other hadith and give striking reply to the people… they might find them wondrous but I feel like crying out loud… and say O MY GOD please stop… simply stop it…
Islam is to explore… Islam is to learn … Islam is to grow… and Islam is not a history chapter which you mugged from the fear of a teacher.
I simply pity when he is called a scholar, his logics are nothing but hilarious… one of his really hysterical one is about inter religious marriage. The logic he gives to justify that inter-religious marriages should not take place is that of putting a cycle’s tire in a car’s tire… will it move? It will not, similarly spouses with different religion cannot work out things… *yawn* it would have been much better if he would have simply said that Qur’an forbids it rather than making a fool of himself by uttering this…
You cannot compare life to science, you cannot put a cycle’s tire in a car. This is a fact, but a Muslim marrying a non-Muslim is not a physics experiment which will certainly have the same result.
Again science reminds me of his claim that Qur’an has scientific proofs… which modern day scientist have proved. Qur’an is a scientific document… I was literally bowled over…
Religion and science? Really? A sacred document which beautifies the love and command of God needs to be compared with science and also needs modern days scientist to prove it so that people can believe it.
Religion doesn’t need scientific proves, it’s a philosophy which needs your faith. The scientific claims which he feels Qur’an proves are not new to mankind… really. Astronomy has various evidences which proved that earth is round, why solar eclipse occurs, how children are born, etc. Galileo didn’t read Qur’an , he proved it on his own skills.
What I always understood of Islam was its essence of love, peace and good for humanity, which preachers like these have riddled and confused with petty issues of burqa, television, marriages, western society, and what not. For them religion is technical, robotic rather than philosophical and dynamic. They are treating it like a list of dos and don’ts rather than understanding and developing. They consider it do or die rather than live and let live.
I keep silent when people call him a scholar but inside I feel, when I consider Rumi, Khayyam, Nizammudin Auliya and others as scholars how can I fit him in the same category? You might think he is doing well for Islam but think again, he is spoon feeding you all what he has read and learned… Islam has to rise above these speakers and debaters, and their minor issues to make it progressive.
Think and act yourself… Prophet Mohammed PBUH asked you to do that yourself and not asked you to be on a mercy of Dr Zakir Naik to tell you.
Bai Samateh
Kanifing
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