“Most of the displaced people in the province are Muslims”, explains the leader of the Islamic Community in Mozambique.
In exclusive statements to PLATAFORMA, Abdul Rashid Ismail guarantees that “Cabo Delgado is not a religious conflict”. The militias, which lately spread the Islamic State narrative, “want to denigrate the Muslim community,” he guarantees.
The thesis that the Islamic State is behind the massacres in the region rich in minerals and natural gas is flatly denied by the religious leader, who recalls other regions of the country inhabited by members of the Muslim community, where there are no conflicts. Why? For Abdul Rashid Ismail, the explanation is simple: “In these areas nothing happens because there is nothing there, there is no wealth that exists in Cabo Delgado”.
This is “simply a call for peace”, stresses Ismail, laments the behavior of other countries and institutions operating the massacre of more than 1,100 people and the terror in which 200,000 displaced people live: “The international community speaks a lot about human rights , but so far it has done nothing ”. For this reason, his appeal is not addressed to the international community, but “to humanity, especially to Portuguese-speaking countries, to help in the definitive resolution of this problem”.
Radicalism and fundamentalism exist in all societies and religions, the leader of the Islamic community assumes. But in this case, someone “is manufacturing these extremists and there are external interests from companies and countries” that help explain the armed conflict. “Those who attack are like actors who play the role of Muslims… There are many‘ Anthony Quinn’s ’there, who want to denigrate the image of Islam,” he concludes.
From the height of his more than 60 years, the religious official guarantees that “he never met a violent Muslim in Mozambique”. And he launches the appeal: on the ground, in Cabo Delgado, there is no support, nobody is helping. The refugees are “left to their own devices and only ask for food and a roof”. Especially because “the local government is unable to support the number of people who have left their places of origin”.
The Muslim community has been delivering food there… and it is also the Islamic community that will launch “a project to build 200 houses, in a condominium that should also have a primary school, a health post, a police post and a garden. ”, Describes Ismail.
If he could meet with the President of Mozambique, Filipe Nyusi, the Islamic leader has only one request: “Mobilize the military forces necessary to stop the conflict”, which has been going on for more than two years. If the country had the means to fight a war for so many years, “how is it possible that it has no means to send it to Cabo Delgado and to this conflict?”, asks the religious leader.
