L’imam Et Le Tyran (Par Tierno Monénembo)

This is the kind of thing that can only come from the mouth of a Guinean marabout. Mamadou Saliou Camara, the imam of the Fayçal mosque in Conakry, has just paid a vibrant tribute to the very tyrannical first president of Guinea: « I would like to pay tribute to the founding president of the Guinean state, Ahmed Sékou Touré. »

Moreover, the same guardian of religious morality issued a sermon, or a fatwa, to our tumultuous youth: « A good Muslim has no girlfriend. He can have a wife but a girlfriend, that’s a no. »

Ah, the beautiful morality!

I read these two statements of our venerable marabout and the questions jostle in my head. Leading the life of a tyrant and having a romantic relationship with a girlfriend, on which side is the sin? Offering flowers to one’s beloved or weaving wreaths to a bloodthirsty one, which way will the scales tip on the day of judgment?

I suppose that if there is a hierarchy of sins, tyranny would occupy the highest degree. In any case, it was always tyrants who martyred the prophets: the pharaoh in the case of Moses, Pontius Pilate in the case of Christ, and the kings of Mecca in the case of Muhammad.

Is it Muslim to cheer on a president who has staged a series of public hangings and incited the crowd to lodge metal rods in the genitals of corpses? Before God as well as before men, does an imam have the right to praise the founder of Camp Boiro? That sinister concentration camp where confessions were taken under torture, where inmates were deprived of food and drink until they died?

I assure you, Mr. Imam, that if a Senegalese president tried even 1% of what the evil Guinean leaders are doing, all the marabouts of Senegal would gang up to curse him. It is understandable why the wind of God’s blessing never blows in our country. There are some things that God does not forgive.

In Sharia law, as in modern habeas corpus, every defendant is entitled to a trial. At Sékou Touré’s, never! In Sharia law, as in African customs, every deceased person has the right to a grave. At Sékou Touré’s, never! What is this monstrous society of ours where we forget to bury the dead?

According to Amnesty International, the bloodthirsty « Supreme Leader of the Revolution » has killed nearly 50,000 Guineans. « Whoever kills a man has killed all mankind, » the prophet once said. Have we seen a single Guinean priest, a single Guinean marabout propose a mass, a janaza salat or even a symbolic funeral for these thousands of wandering souls who haunt our nights and heavily overwhelm our national conscience? No, our religious leaders are never on the side of the widow and the orphan but always on the side of power to beg for a bowl of okra or a gourd of burakhe. They are all closer to their personal comfort than to the word of God.

Have you noticed, Mr. Imam, that God has never chosen his prophets from the rich and powerful, but always from the humble, the unfortunate, the misquines, as the Arabs say? Moses was an abandoned child, Jesus was the son of a carpenter, and Muhammad was a poor and orphaned child.

Get out of the presidential palaces and ministries, gentlemen of the religious leaders, go to the hospitals, the prisons, the dying rooms, etc. You can’t believe in God and associate yourself with these Kaffir African presidents who are fond of black magic and human sacrifice. God is on the side of the victims, not the executioners!

By Tierno Monénembo