Declaring Gambia an Islamic Republic is irresponsible

Jammeh says the rights of religious minorities will be respected and that the government will not enforce a dress code. He argues that the vast majority of Gambia’s about two million people are Muslims, and likes to present himself as a devout follower of Allah. He does not feel obliged by the country’s constitution, according to which Gambia is a secular state, or by human rights, however. His track record of undemocratic repression is terrible. Human Rights Watch issued a long report on the country in September and summarises:

State security forces and shadowy paramilitary groups carry out unlawful killings and arbitrarily arrest, detain, and forcibly disappear people, causing hundreds to flee the tiny country.

The idea of secularism is not that a government should be anti-religious. It means that it keeps equidistance to all religious faiths, as I have argued before. That principle makes sense because it helps to prevent civil strife. Moreover, it provides some kind of safeguard against political leaders who claim their power is God-given and God-like – which is, of course, what Jammeh is hinting at.

Manipulating senses of religious affiliation for political purposes is irresponsible. That is especially so in an era in which terror militias such as Isis are claiming to act on behalf of the Almighty. This kind of populism means to play with fire.

Unfortunately, some politicians in western nations are just as destructive. Marine Le Pen, the leader of the French Front National, Donald Trump, the populist Republican who wants to become US President, or Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland excel in fostering and exploiting anti-Muslim sentiments. They will love Jammeh’s new stance. It serves their mad propaganda of western nations being under threat. And that propaganda, in a symbiotic way, feeds Isis propaganda of Islam being under threat.

Jammeh is not aligning himself to the terrorists, of course. He’s been in power for two decades, and is unlikely to surrender his power to anyone. What he is doing now is showing off in a big-man style. Apparently, that matters more to him than the question whether his rhetoric will frighten off some of the European tourists on whom Gambia’s economy depends.   

P.S.: Islam is not a monolithic faith, and the term “Islamic republic” does not have a single, coherent meaning. In Iran, it was introduced by the revolutionaries who toppled the Shah and established a fundamentalist Shia regime. A the time, Pakistan had been using the term for decades, and a particular strain of Sunni ideologists used it to promote radical ideas that do not reflect even the worldview of the Sunni majority.  In Afghanistan, however, the term was adopted after the fall of the Taliban. The idea was to counter the Taliban’s claim of acting on behalf of God.