Imam Ba-Kawsu Fofana Launches An Attack On The Jammeh State House Mosque!

By Karamba Touray

I listened to the tirade from Ba Kawsu Fofana that was ostensibly a Friday prayer Qutba in which he attacked Imam fatty of State House for using his perch at the Minbar on November 11 to deliver a campaign speech and engage in sycophancy bordering on hearsay.

There is nothing new in that reported conduct of Imam Fatty  because he has long established himself as a manifest hypocrite who routinely makes it his job to tailor his religious pronouncements to suit his fidelity to a tyrant. He fits no reasonable person's definition of an honest Muslim. He is and has always been a political hack who  uses the religion of Islam as a vehicle to cultivate and maintain favors. He is part of an insidious class of self proclaimed religious figures devoid of morality and constantly on the prowl for what they can get for themselves from anyone gullible enough to not see through their lies and schemes.

Ba Kawsu Fofana fits neatly in this terrible category of self anointed leaders. His feigned outrage at Imam Fatty is not borne out of any strong moral convictions but rather the product a craven desire to be the sycophant at statehouse instead of some mosque far from the seat of power. His strategy as is the case in all the politicized self anointed religious leaders is to use the veneer of piety solely for the purpose of material benefit and or notriety.The truth, conviction and basic adherence to the tenets of Islam are often jettison in the quest for the things they crave from Yahya Jammeh.

All of Ba Kawsu's public objections spring from his fervent desire that it is he who should be the tyrant’s religious consort and not fatty and the other cronies at the so called supreme Islamic council. He attempts to ride on the palpable contempt the vast majority of Gambians have for these entire class of hypocrites to advance his warped personal ambition of replacing them in their fraudulent agency with Yahya Jammeh.That was exactly the case last year when he pretended to take on SIC on the issue of their gratuitous attempt to dictate the Islamic calendar on the Gambian people.

Knowing full well that most communities disregard edicts of the SIC for obvious reasons, he nonetheless saw an opportunity to attempt a shameless power grab . The religious validity of the people's objection became a convenient tool for him to make an awkward attempt to ingratiate himself with the tyrant by tarring and feathering  his handpicked sycophants in the SIC.

He pretended to be wagging a righteous fight against a SIC that was wrong in its pronouncements and had no legitimacy in the eyes of the Gambian people. He started with strident statements of defiance with pledges of being prepared to sacrifice himself to defend the truth. The entrenched sycophants at SIC who are actually political competitors stemming from the contest to succeed Banding Drammeh were not about to let him publicly agitate against them. They quickly mobilized and slapped him with an unprecedented and illegal ban proscribing him from teaching in his own school and leading prayers from his own mosque.

And what did Ba Kawsu Fofana the self proclaimed soldier of Islam do about this seminal test of faith in which pretentious religious leaders were essentially divesting him of his rights to fulfill his obligation to GOD? He quickly folded and complied with the edicts of the SIC. Combining weak faith and insincerity , he could not muster the courage to stand up to the corrupt SIC and soon followed up with a letter to the President begging for an audience presumably to clarify his positions.

The President quickly convened what can only be described as a circus of the hypocrites in the full glare of TV cameras .Bakawsu made his entire remark about how he was cheated from being the SIC leader by underhanded tactics primarily driven by the men who ended being the crop of leaders feuding with him and how the illegal ban they slapped on him was sapping him of his livelihood since he couldn't teach or preach. He made no strong case for his purported convictions and made it clear that all he wanted was his meal ticket back.

Unsurprisingly,  both the President and his cronies unloaded on the visibly embarrassed Bakawsu calling him a liar and a fraud. He kept awkwardly fidgeting between sips of water and looking like someone nursing a fever. It was a thorough filleting of a man who loudly wrapped himself in the cloak of a great religion but the moment he was confronted with a simple test faith , he failed miserably.

To men like him it is always about what they can get from their professed piety not ever about fidelity to the very essence of the noble message they profess to believe in. A Muslim banned from his own mosque to not only comply with such a haram move but to compound that by groveling at feet of the same people that issued the edict illustrates just how morally bankrupt these class self proclaimed religious leaders are .

That is why these most recent pronouncements from Bakawsu played on Freedom should be seen for what they really are; which is an insincere outrage of one manifest hypocrite about the abhorrent conduct of another hypocrite. Neither of them meet the elementary standard of honesty and integrity.

Gambia, alhamddulahi has plenty of good and pious Muslims led by Imams who fear Allah and strive to do and say things for his sake. They are not looking for money, media exposure or gullible people to exploit. Thankfully they also pay no heed to these charlatans and manage their religious affairs the way they have always done.