Rebuking Kadaga is another form of extremism

By Nuwagaba Muhsin Kaduyu

The visit by the Speaker of Parliament, Rebbeca Kadaga to the shrine on Nheda Hill to reportedly pay homage and thank her ancestral spirits continues to attract radical outbursts and the latest being those of respectable religious leaders and politicians in the country.

As a Muslim, I do not think it is right for any person, more so a religious leader, to insult people's sacred values and cultures. Insults on some issues like people's sacred beliefs and values, worship places and cultures is absolutely against the divinely revealed religions, because with respect to their essence, such matters are held dearly and accepted by a good number of Ugandans.

People must be free to think, inquire and express their beliefs because to do so is what it means to be human provided that they do not harm others.

Secondly, if you are a religious leader and in position to represent an entire collective, you need to act with a lot of care, as an entire body of people pay for the consequences of the mistakes you make. The destruction could be very difficult to mend.

For this reason, Sheikhs, Bishops, Cardinals and other community leaders need to act much more wisely, think before taking every step, weigh the possible consequences of their statements and consider what feelings those words are likely to evoke in the other side.

Feelings of others should also be taken into consideration before speaking. If your home is made of crystal, you should not hurl anything harmful toward other people's homes.

Otherwise, you indirectly cause damage to your own building. In fact, this is clearly pointed out in the Quran as follows; "And do not(O believers) revile the things or beings that they have, apart from God deified and invoke, lest (if you do so) they attempt to revile God out of spite and ignorance" (Al Imran 6:108).

In this respect, we should always speak, write and act in accordance with the criteria of the divine religions that we profess, because certain attitudes and behaviours that have their roots in emotional reactions may cause grave effects with respect to our values. Hurling insults to the Speaker or any other person with regards to their cultural and religious beliefs is another type of extremism.

Before resorting to offensive attitudes and behaviours towards any person, individuals - whoever they are - need to learn to respect the beliefs of others and consider what the likely results of their actions will be, then speak and act accordingly.

We should always know our limits. Because, if the principle of respecting others' sacred values and individual beliefs - an important element of peaceful coexistence - is not observed, conflicts arising from such incidents of disrespect will make their presence felt as much more horrible and greater problems in today's globalised and shrunken world.

Finally, as Ugandans, we need to understand that a religiously intolerant society is harmful to dialogue and peaceful coexistence. We have made tremendous gains in as far as interfaith and intercultural understanding is concerned, we must protect these gains. In her book, ‘A Dialogue of civilisations', Dr. Jill Carrol says, "Often we may try to minimise our contact with those who are different from us, so that we do not have to extend outside our comfortable boundaries.

We may isolate ourselves and craft the arc of our lives into familiar orbits of people who look, think, speak, believe and pray like us, but this isolation or minimising of differences is not workable overtime. In today's world of global connectedness, we must develop our capacity to dialogue and create relatedness with people vastly different from us.

We do not need to be the same, but we should just find enough similarity between us that, for a certain distance down the road, we can hold hands as fellow travellers in this life, all the while mindful of our differences in myriad ways".

Let us always seek to understand and respect one another.

The writer is a peace promoter at Nile Dialogue Platform