The Conference of African Religious Ministers and Ulamas (African Ulamas Conference) gathering got underway at the Sir Dawda Kairaba Jawara conference center, Banju yesterday under the auspices of The Gambia’s President Adama Barrow. The Ulama is a body of Muslim scholars who are recognised as having specialist knowledge of Islamic sacred law and theology.

The conference under the theme: “Promotion of Peace, Understanding, and Unity among Communities and Nations,” is aimed at promoting peace, harmony, unity, and diversity within Africa, the Ulamas, and the world at large and it is designed to preach how people can live amicably, and allow people to accept each other’s views.

A total of 81 participants, including 11 ministers serving as heads of delegation, represent about 38 African nations at the conference.

“Recently, there has been a lot of misconception, non-acceptance, and non-tolerance of each other’s view resulting in chaos and fighting amongst people within African countries. So, Ministry of religious affairs is collaborating with the Muslim World League to organise this conference to clear these misconceptions and also enable people to be tolerant, accept each other’s opinion, and views and understand their difference with what they believed in. It is Gambia’s peacefulness, acceptance, and religious tolerance that motivated Muslim World League to avail us host the event,” Buba Sanyang, the Lands Permanent Secretary, spoke about the issue on Thursday.

Organising such an event is a litmus test for the secretariat and the local organising committees, according to Binta Jammeh Sidibeh, chairperson of the national organising committee, said.

“We already have committees in place responsible to implement the different tasks, namely the documentation which is very important to Muslim World League. They have three working documents Arabic, English, and French. The accommodation, the logistics, and transport committee, and most of them all security have been secured and we are looking forward to hosting a successful event,” she added.