Ghana is one of the best and most peaceful countries in the world. Yet sometime we Ghanaians take it for granted inciting tribal, ethnic and religious violence. Thinking that the peace and recognition that we’ve achieved and tried as much as possible to maintain could be bought at any market place 24/7. In his article, Yaw Opare-Asamoa tried to throw dust into the eyes and minds of smart, wise and educated Ghanaian readers of this website. Yes Opare-Asamoa, we will respond and educate you in a civilized manner and with FACTS. As Mr. Opare-Asamoa stated that he “seriously does not understand any of this and needs some education on these matters”, I will take the time and patient to educate him paragraph by paragraph. I thought he would have sought that education before writing a piece with facts than the fictitious, inaccurate, distortion and misleading information he came out with. This is not about finding something “wrong with your article and firing away” from all angles, but about malicious fallacies you misconstrued and stated in your article that needs to be put in the right perspective. I would have loved to stay on the local front with the response, but since you choose to fly from Ghana to Darfur, Iran, Afghanistan and the US (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.), I will respond flying with you everywhere in each paragraph.

President Obama did NOT go to Egypt, as you claim, because of Islam. He rather went to Egypt to turn a new page on US negative image in Middle-East, present US as a friend but not an enemy anymore and move away from the policies of Bush/Cheney LIE that has made US unpopular. To build a better relationship with Middle-East, but not to fight, as Bush/Cheney did and learnt their lesson the hard way. Obama’s speech is still on you-tube, you can listen to it. He never mentioned the word terrorism not even once, since becoming the president, because it’s the fiction of Bush/Cheney government. To buttress my point, find out why Colin Powell resigned as secretary of State. He found out about the truth and how Bush/Cheney misled him. Out of ignorance, Mr. Opare-Asamoa does not know that Islam or Muslim cannot be defined “demographically-speaking. If he cares to know, ISLAM is the religion whose followers believe that there is ONLY one God and Muhammed is his messenger. This is a matter of religious believe, he can chose to believe in it or not.

The problem with most non-Muslims in the likes of Opare-Asamoa is that he has never taken the time to research and educate himself about Islam, while most Muslims have studied the Holy Bible while in school and have enough resources about the Holy Quran. Islam has NEVER transformed from being a religious entity to political entity. He has been brainwashed by the left-wing western media, who are biased and one-sided in their news from the Middle-East. If he has done enough research, he would have known that the volatility of Middle-East stems from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. How would Mr. Opare felt if Togo or Burkina Faso announces today that it has taken over Brong Ahafo Region, Northern Region and Eastern Region and starts building settlements, killing Ghanaians and the Ghanaians in that region become refugees and his country becomes fragmented? But the western media turns a blind eye on the issue. How would he feel, if he cannot move from Accra to Winneba without a permit from Togo? I don’t condone violence or killing in any form or shape, but let’s call a spade a spade.

If there was fair reportage from the Middle-East by the left-wing western media, which are mostly controlled by the Jews, then Mr. Opare would have known how many missiles are thrown into Palestine and how many people die daily. I don’t think he would be happy if Ghana’s economy is hijacked and controlled by Togo, as the Israelis are controlling the economy of Palestine. It is rather the likes of Opare that wants to transform Islam into a political entity, by trying to get the National Chief Imam to make political pronouncements about Darfur and Vote rigging in Iran. The Chief Imam is one of the few Noble men in our country who interact with people across the religious and political spectrum. The Chief Imam has NEVER solicited the President for any ministerial appointment for the Muslims. In this age of print and digital media, I thought the writer could have find out for himself either from Google, you-tube or any of the news papers in Ghana. He should remember that all these news items are available online. The chief Imam rather advised and encouraged Muslims to get involve, actively, in the day running of our government. This is a fact you can still cross-check, when the delegation of Muslim went to the castle to congratulate the president.

Opare could have done himself a favor and educate himself much better if he had checked the history of Hajj pilgrimage. The Hajj issue is not a headache for the government, but rather a source of revenue and extortion for the government. You can find out from the internet how much our Muslim neighbors in Togo and Nigeria are paying to make the same journey to Hajj. The government has been over-charging the pilgrims in Ghana, while our neighbors are paying a little more than half that price. Why do you think some Ghanaian pilgrims travel to Togo and Nigeria to make the pilgrimage? Because they pay much less than what they pay in Ghana. TAX-PAYER money indeed. If you know about Ghana’s economy, find out what percentage of our GDP comes from the tax-payer. There are Muslims who travel all the way from the three Northern region to get to Hajj, but could not make it due to the dubious activities of the government. These pilgrims do not get their money back. Can Mr. Opare find out where the Government keeps their money until the following year when they get the opportunity to travel to Hajj? Don’t tell me that their money lies in the bank idle without the government investing it into bonds or direct deposits? And if it’s used, what happens to the profit. Nobody in the history has ever gotten anything back.

I would like Mr. Opare-Asamoa to answer this question in the second part of his article before we delve deep into the issue of the slaughter houses. Would he be happy and ready to use a knife that was just used to slaughter a dog to slaughter his goat or chicken? I believe Mr. Opare will not eat the chicken or goat if he found out that his wife used the same bowl that was used to cook a dog meat for his goat. If Opare thinks Muslims are the only people who abhor pork, what about SDA who are also Christians. The Jews I know he’s ignorant about their Kosher believes. According the followers of SDA, ALCOHOL and PORK are not good. The issue of pork is a religious believe, he can chose to eat or not to eat. He can also chose to eat an animal slaughtered by anybody be it Muslim or Christian. But if Muslims chose to eat HALAL meat based on their religious believe, Mr. Opare I’m SORRY your ignorance cannot change that. This religious believe has been there since the birth of Islam, and if you just found out, welcome to the earth, you’re no more living in MARS. Historically, the meat industry has been look down on as the business of the people of the North and Zongos. While pigs are slaughtered and cleaned on the farm before being brought to the market.

The likes of Opare nor his relatives will never like to be associated with being a butcher and selling meat at the slaughter house with the Zongos. But he found it conducive to distort the facts and rather blame them. If he was a true patriot, he would have found out that Muslims are not the only ones selling at the market. Has he checked the number of Gas and Ewes, who are also butchers? These people come into the meat industry as Non-Muslims, and are employed by the Muslims you so much despised and not know how to put it, but to lie. While working in these slaughter houses, they mostly find God through Islam and their numbers are growing rapidly. Is that what is scaring you Mr. Opare. Without malice and hearsay, can you categorically give an example of a Muslim who does not worship in a particular mosque and was denied access to the slaughter house? What you do not know is that Muslim butchers do not come from the same vicinity. There are those who come from Nima, New town, Darkuman, etc. Most pray at dawn before coming to the slaughter house. So if not to create confusion how would one know where you prayed before coming to the slaughter house at dawn?

Yes there are minor differences within the Islamic religion, just as Christianity has Catholic, Protestants, SDA and those who do not believe in medicine. But if my dear friend cares to know, those minor differences are not on the OBLIGATORY (Farrilla) part of the religion, but the OPTIONAL (Sunna), and wherever a Muslim hears the call to prayer (Azan), we pray in that mosque. Can Opare tell the whole world if a Roman Catholic can wake up on Sunday and go to a SDA church? NO, because there are differences in their believes. President Obama is not the first to talk about the flourishing of Islam in US. There have been numerous articles about the rate at which people are converting to Islam in US, especially POST 9/11. There were those who did not know the difference between Arabs and Muslims. Arabs existed before the Holy Prophet was born. A lot of Americans and Europeans started researching about Islam post 9/11. That was the beginning of the flourishing of Islam and more mosques are springing up in every corner of the globe. Don’t be scared my dear brother, just believe in your God and stay focus.

Mr. Opare could have used a dictionary to help him in writing this piece, because he does not know the difference between an Arab and a Muslim. There are Arabs who are Christians. The first to denied Islam and tried to kill the Holy Prophet were Arabs. These are religious lesson you should have known before writing. It is a Left-wing western propaganda that churches are disappearing in Islamic countries. Did you even mention the word ABSENCE??? To set the records straight, can you please explain to our wise readers where those ARAB Christian that filled up the stadium in Palestine when the POPE visited and organized mass recently. To educate you more, 15% of Syrians are Christians, 7% of Jordanian population is Christians and between 40%-50% of Lebanese population is Christian. Manorite Christians are about 25% of the population including almost all Presidents of Lebanon. Greek Orthodox makes up 8%, the Melkites, Armenian Catholics, Syraic Orthodox and Protestant makes up the remaining percentage. HYPOCRICY, why not, when all you ever heard of since the beginning of the Bush/Cheney Iraqi war was the four churches the were burnt recently.

What of the countless number of mosques, some were filled with worshippers on Fridays that were bombed. Yes Saddam was Damned EVIL, but bombing of this magnitude never existed until Bush/Cheney (Christian) invaded. Anyway did you hear Obama, Clinton and John McCain denounce the war and how they were misled? You can also investigate how many Muslims were killed by Milosevic (Christian) and the ethnic cleansing in Chechnya. Was Mobutu a Muslim? Find out about genocide in Rwanda, the names of the perpetrators and their religious believe. What of Charles Taylor, a Muslim? One other thing you should have learnt was more Muslims were killed in Iraq than Christian and when Osama Bin Laden started his evil and heinous crime; it was against Muslims in Saudi Arabia. The first human blood on Osama’s hands is that of Muslims not Christian. When Benazir Bhutto was killed was she a Christian. My friend should have stayed in class during your school days, he would have learnt some important lessons in life, and that crime against humanity is and has been all over the world regardless of religion. For your information the chief Imam is not a political figure but her religious leader and there is only one president by our constitution. Neither did the president made a comment about the Iranian election and its aftermath. Because “it is an internal issue for Iranians”, these are the words of president of USA. Anyway can Mr. Opare state categorically if any Reverend in Ghana condemned the killings in Gaza in January, when Red Cross International, Amnesty International Human Right groups called it GENOCIDE?

The days of thinking that all Muslims are illiterate and cannot read nor write are over. Read, yes we do and when facts are distorted to create problems, will write the truth. Slavery was not the reason for the rapid expansion of Islam in Africa, but the true word of God. Slavery existed before the Holy Prophet was born, and if you care to know one of his early followers had to pay before BILAL (the man who calls people to prayers) was released. As a slave he was beaten and chained in the sun for declaring his life to Islam. It’s funny when I hear my Ghanaian brothers complaining about REPARATION. Just like I always tell my African-American co-workers to leave the whites alone, because if Opare’s grandparents had not been cheap and hypocrites, they wouldn’t have sold them into slavery. Remember, if there is nothing to sell, there would be nothing to buy. If they really want reparation, they have to come home to Africa and go after the likes of Opera and his family, because history will tell you that there was never a Muslim chief in those days. Sell you brothers, and sisters for a cheap wine and turn around to blame Arabs. Shame on you Opare. Do you know what they call us here in America? SELL-OUTS. No wonder your own Christian brothers (SDA) refused to drink alcohol. Have you prayed for forgiveness for your grandparents for such crimes against humanity? Those were the days, if this was today, your chiefs and their people would have been more dangerous than the people you call terrorists.

How can you hypocritically claim that the church was responsible for the abolishing of slavery, when they were rather killing innocent slaves who revolted? It’s unfortunate Opare does not know that the slave masters were Christians while they were getting his ancestors drunk, killing themselves and selling others. They built their church on top of the dungeons and while looking into the Holy Bible, they never found and a place or hole thru the holy book to hear and listen to the cry of the poor, pregnant slaves. What a HOLY BOOK. History teaches us that slavery would have been abolished in 1862, had it not been for the Christian Republicans in US who continue to oppose it until December1865 when President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation into law to become the 13th Amendment. There is a difference between slavery and racism. So don’t get confused about slavery. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has nothing to do with slavery, because it was abolished in 1865 while Dr. King was born in1929. He was a civil Right Activist who fought for racial segregation and discrimination, but not slavery. His operational techniques were not Christian oriented but he took it from Mahatma Gandhi. These are facts you can verify for yourself.

Ghana is a very peaceful country where Christians and Muslims co-exist in peace, respect for one another’s religion. Our respect for one another, maturity and growing above minor religious and political differences was why president Obama shunned his fatherland for Ghana. Life is precious. It is cheaper to create ethnic, religious and political violence, but incalculable to solve it. Please don’t incite violence where there is none. If you really had a just cause or problem, you would not be wobbling between Middle-East, Afghanistan, Martin Luther and all these gullible thoughts you have in your head. Let us live in PEACE. Just look around us from Togo, Cote D’ivoire, Liberia and Sierra Leone, we Ghanaians are JEWELS. If you have a second part, don’t hesitate to write, but write with FACTS. I will also urge all those who commented on Opare’s article not to insult, but respect his lies and refute it with facts. Remember Mother Ghana is the only country we have.

Muhammed Suraj Sulley Jawando (LRT) NYP Hospital, New York Msjawando@gmail.com