General News of Monday, 6 April 2015

Source: starrfmonline.com

Sheikh warns Agyin-Asare to stop provoking Muslims

Bishop Charles Agyin-Asare is provoking Muslims.

That is the view of Islamic Cleric Sheikh Muhammed Zakaria Addo who spoke to Starr News’ Abena Owusu Nyamekye in an interview in reference to the Perez Chapel International founder’s Easter Sunday sermon which he used to urge Christians to stand up for their right to freedom of worship as guaranteed by the UN charter, in the wake of Islamist militant group al-Shabab’s recent massacre of 148 Christians at Garissa University College in Kenya.

"We won’t keep quiet anymore because one of the charters of the UN is that everybody should have freedom of worship, however, some people believe that they should kill others so that they are the only people who can worship their 'whoever'," Bishop Agyin-Asare said.

Sheikh Muhammed Addo said Bishop Agyin-Asare’s comments are "provocative" to Muslims and risk courting disaffection for the Islamic religion and its adherents.

Kenya held three days of mourning for the 148 victims of the militant group’s attack.

Easter ceremonies were held on Sunday to remember the dead.

President Uhuru Kenyatta has vowed to respond to the attack "in the severest way possible".

One of the gunmen has been identified as the son of a government official, the interior ministry has said.

Four gunmen were killed during the siege, and officials said they were holding five people for questioning.

On Monday, the East African country began bombing al-Shabab’s military bases in Somalia with fighter jets, its first military response to Thursday's slaughter.

The warplanes targeted two camps in the Gedo region, used by al-Shabab to cross into Kenya, according to the BBC.

Bishop Agyin-Asare said Sunday that al-Shabab’s massacre of the Christians was "unfortunate," adding that Christianity is the panacea to Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism and, therefore urged the UN "to do something about it."

"The reason why Islamist fundamentalists are behaving the way they are doing is because we haven’t given them the gospel," he said, adding: "If we had taken the Bible to them, they would not take the gun or the sword."

In his estimation, there are more than 200 million Islamic fundamentalists in the world on a religious cleansing campaign aimed at exterminating all Christians from the face of the earth.

According to his calculations, if between 10 and 17 per cent of Muslims are thought to be fundamentalists, then it means more than 200 million of the world’s 1.2 billion Muslim population is targeting Christians to harm them for being Christians.