Religion of Thursday, 10 June 2021
Source: universnewsroom.com
2021-06-10
Security Analys, Irbad Ibrahim
Security Analyst, Irbad Ibrahim has attributed the low patronage of the population census in the Muslim community to a lack of sensitization.
Mr Ibrahim says that the Muslim community are late starters in terms of educational matters in the country.
According to him, some people even consider the census as an avenue for the government to know their secrets.
Speaking on Islam in Focus show, Mr Ibrahim urged the Muslim communities to avail themselves in the decision-making processes of the country.
“We are late starters. So when the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) even recruits people for the enumeration, there are very few people who come from our communities. It will shock you that as an educator as you are with your colleagues here at the university, you didn’t even have a wind that GSS was recruiting people, so how many people out of the 200,000 who will crisscross the nation to count us come from our communities. So they don’t understand our culture. They don’t understand our religious sensibilities and so people don’t really understand the essence of standing up to getting counted because we are late starters in terms of education and the need for us to be a part, we should be at the table of men partaking in decision making” he said
He further questioned the statistical agencies on the level of engagement done with the Muslim communities on separating the Ahmadis from Islam.
“When it come to religion on page 5 they categorized Islam as a religion and then brought Ahmedis as an independent checklist for you to check. And so the point is, do you consider an Ahmedis to be less of a Muslim and how much engagement was done with the Muslim communities to let them know that, just as you have denominations, Catholicism, Protestantism we fall under the same umbrella of Islam. When you count us as Islam and count others as Ahmedi at the end of the day when you do the tally will the Islam only be there for the total population you gave us as 17% 10years ago or 11years ago, or Ahmedis will also stand out as 1.5%or 2% of the total population? “ he added.