This week, Liberians from all walks of life paid their respects to the late Muslim leader and peace advocate Sheikh Kafumba Konneh during a funeral that drew hundreds of people and featured high-profile government and private sector officials, including Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
But the passing of the prominent figure, who served as the head of the Muslim Council of Liberia, comes at a time when religious tensions in Liberia are running high. There’s a possibility that Liberia may soon officially become a Christian state — a change that some citizens say could cause another civil war. That outcome is likely the last thing that Konneh would have wanted to see.
Konneh, who died on Monday after a brief illness, railed against global Muslim fundamentalism and helped quell inter-ethnic and religious tensions during Liberia’s 14-year civil war. As a founding member of the Interfaith Committee of Liberia, Konneh participated in peace talks throughout Liberia and neighboring Sierra Leone with other faith leaders. After the war ended in 2003, he joined Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, maintaining his reputation as a unifier until his death.
At his funeral on Tuesday, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf sang the late Konneh’s praises, telling mourners that “a great tree has fallen.” Other public figures and publications extolled him as a “religious hero” who “preached a message of peaceful coexistence.”
Being a Liberian was not a personal belief, it is a collective affirmation and aspiration.
Liberian columnist Jones Nhinson Williams argued that Konneh “lived up to what it means to be a Liberian” and his life “urges us to put Liberia first and our socio-cultural attachments second.” Writing in The Perspective, a Liberian online media outlet, Williams concluded, “Yes, we are Christians and Muslims and even Buddhists or Traditional African Religion adherents. [F]or the Sheikh, those attachments were personal beliefs that require and should limited to personal commitment. Being a Liberian was not a personal belief, it is a collective affirmation and aspiration.”
But not everyone in the country agrees with Konneh’s and Williams’ message about maintaining the separation of church and state. In April, lawmakers successfully proposed a constitutional amendment that, if approved, would reinstate Christianity as the official state religion. This attempt follows Christian leaders’ fruitless efforts in 2013 to submit a similar petition to lawmakers in the Liberian House and Senate.
Now that it’s in President Sirleaf’s hands, the proposal could appear on a national referendum next year — a possibility that troubles Liberian followers of Islam who are concerned about the advent of state-sanctioned persecution and marginalization.
Liberia is not for Christians. Liberia is not for Muslims. Liberia is for everybody.
Earlier this year, protesters converged on the site of a constitutional conference to demand the constitution remain unchanged. “Liberia is not for Christians. Liberia is not for Muslims. Liberia is for everybody. We don’t want Liberia to be for only one group of people,” protest leader Hajah Swaray told the Anadolu news agency. “It would not be fair to see one group marginalized. We have 16 tribes in Liberia. Some people are Muslims, while others are Bahai or embrace traditional religions. Let’s just live as we are.”
However, Christians supporters of the amendment say differently, citing a poll that shows support among 99.4 percent of Liberians. Christians account for nearly 85 percent of Liberia’s population, compared to 12 percent of Muslims, according to 2008 census figures. A 2012 Liberia International Freedom Report however, disputed that data, stating the proportion of Liberian followers of Islam falls somewhere between 10 percent and 20 percent.
While the growth of the Muslim population in recent decades has caused some tension, U.S. State Department officials contend that those conflicts haven’t gone to the point of crippling Liberia.
Perhaps that’s due to Christianity’s dominance in Liberian life. Even with the 1986 deletion of a part of the national constitution that thanked God for “the blessings of the Christian religion,” the religion permeates governmental affairs. Christian leaders have taken part in annual National Day of Prayer activities every April. Last year, the Christian faith stood front and center at the height of the Ebola outbreak when Liberia’s Council of Churches organized mass fasting and prayer for three days to defeat what some described as a “curse.”
Historians trace Liberia’s heavy Christian influence to its establishment as a colony for freed blacks in Africa in the 1820s. The 11 American men who created the American Colonization Society — the organization that facilitated the repatriation of 13,000 freed African-Americans to the Motherland and later secured Liberia’s independence — resided over Christian churches of their own. The group aided freed American blacks in their effort to return to Africa out of a belief that they could spread Christianity and “civilize” their native African counterparts, as outlined in a Congressional report. Christopolis, the original name of Liberia’s capital city, also spoke to this mission.
However, discouraging ancestor worship and other spiritual traditions among native Liberians proved to be a huge undertaking. For much of the century after the first settlers touched down along Liberia’s coast, they clashed with indigenous Liberians wary of the minority group’s attempts to exert religious and political control over them. Many of the natives who converted to Christianity integrated it with their traditional practices, and freemasonry to a degree. Liberian heads of states in the 19th and 20th century legally recognized Poro and Sande, secret societies for men and women, respectively, even creating a department for its practice in the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Some Christians say that this succession of events impeded Liberians’ efforts to realize its vision as a stronghold on the African continent — a sentiment that has compelled calls for Liberia to become a Christian state again. Liberia 2027, an organization that wants to make Liberia a Christ-centered nation, said that aligning its values with those outlined in the Holy Bible will address issues of government corruption, illiteracy, and what it describes as the negative influences of Konneh’s Interfaith Committee of Liberia.
Native Liberian Daphne Mallory, an entrepreneur and self-described follower of Christ, agrees. Mallory told ThinkProgress that Christianity’s power can ultimately help Liberia stand on its own, and the constitutional amendment provides an opportunity for Liberians to make the country more financially and politically independent.
Mallory drew parallels between the biblical themes of self-determination and faith-based works to Liberian officials’ efforts to strengthen the country’s infrastructure in the aftermath of the Ebola epidemic, which killed thousands of people in the West African region last year. She said that, regardless of religion, Liberians can take those ideals as their own.
Christianity is not a religion. It’s a set of principles that allow us to succeed, not rely on foreign aid, and develop ourselves from the inside out.
“[In this context], Christianity is not a religion. It’s a set of principles that allow us to succeed, not rely on foreign aid, and develop ourselves from the inside out,” Mallory said. “While I’m appreciative of foreign aid, the true turnaround will happen when Liberians can understand the importance of entrepreneurship and building up their own communities. It doesn’t mean that you have to go to church every Sunday.”
But some critics disagree with Mallory, pointing out that centuries of ethnic and inter-tribal tension laid the foundation for the 1980 coup that brought Samuel K. Doe, Liberia’s first indigenous of state, into power and the civil war that erupted nine years later. After the war ended, conflicts between Christians and Muslims persisted, with deadly melees in the streets of Monrovia, Liberia’s capital city, in the mid-2000s.
Similar conflicts have unfolded in other parts of Africa. The United Nations, for example, recently dispatched peacekeeping forces to the Central African Republic to quell Christian-Muslim tensions that has resulted in more than 5,000 deaths. In Nigeria, Muslims in the northern region have fought with their Christian counterparts in the South since Great Britain merged the two colonial territories in 1914. A similar move by the British and Arab-Egyptian colonizers to unite Sudan — a region with Muslim and Christian groups — preceded two civil wars over a 50-year span and a violent conflict in Darfur in the early 2000s.
Konneh spent a great part of his life trying to prevent such a spiritual war from unfolding in Liberia. In recent years, he had quelled potentially explosive situations between Christians and Muslims. He continued to do so amid calls to make Liberia a Christian state by organizing a 100-man committee to consult with leaders on the matter.
Days after Konneh’s burial, Muslims peacefully protested the controversial proposal, calling out President Sirleaf for her lack of support for Muslim customs, a move they say endorses anti-Muslim sentiments. In his column, Williams struck a similar tone, saying that all Liberians should continue Konneh’s work in his absence or risk not realizing the goal of Liberia’s stability.
“One way to honor this great Liberian who strived for decades to foster mutual respect, understanding and cooperation among the various faith groups of Liberia is for all Liberians to desist from using religion in our political discourse and thinking, in our politics and socio-economic interactions, and above all, in our government.”