From Ujah simon, Kaduna
An NGO, the Community initiative to promote peace (CIPP) in collaboration with Mercy Corp, have trained some Religious leaders and stakeholders in Kaduna state on prevention of all form of violent arising from religious extremism in the course of preaching in the state.
This was disclosed in the 3-Day training workshop on ‘countering and preventing extremism, held in Kaduna, as part of activities to mark the 2020 World day of peace,.
The workshop which drew Participants from four key local governments areas and communities across the state among others, as an Islamic cleric also observed that the bane of community violence is predicated on economic and political factors..
Speaking during the workshop, the project Director CIPP Pastor Dr. James Movel Wuye, said, the essence of the training was to look at practicable ways to prevent religious extremism.
He also state that the essence of inviting religious leaders is to train and developed them on how to speaks and ‘preach in ways that would be inclusive that make people not to go into extremism.
“We want to ensure that a new curriculum is developed that is inclusive to prevent people from taking extreme positions in their day to day life, particularly those that affect religious leaders which could invariably prevent violent resulting from extremism,” he said.While he expressed satisfaction with the training workshop especially in terms of frankness and openness of participants to each other, wuye noted that, ideas and feelings were freely exchanged, shared, while fears were shared and agreed by all participants to henceforth watch out.He also expressed pleasure that participants were blunt and telling each other to their faces, on the need to stop the hard preaching and relied on what will unite the people together.Also speaking, the lmam of Kano road Juma’at Mosque, Kaduna, pointed out that the bane of community violence is predicated on economic and political factors.He also called on followers to be tolerant, patient and considerate and also inculcate the fear of God in people so that kaduna-would have peaceful and tolerant community and Society.
Similarly, a participant and Zaria based man of God, Rev. Stephen said his take home from the workshop “is that the two major religions share the Abrahamic, root hence the need to coexist as brothers and sisters for peace to reign in our communities and society.Also in a communique issued at the end of the 3-day workshop on Friday stated that Christian and Muslim participants bared their minds on likes and dislikes on the practice of each other’s religions. “Issues that border on stereo-types and prejudices were debunked during the intra/inter session of the Workshop which led to connections between the Muslim and Christian participants. “Common grounds in the belief and practice of both religions were also highlighted.”At the intra and inter interactive sessions, was dominated with salient issues on countering and preventing extremism induced violent among others tactics were considered.
Indicators, radicalization, root causes of Violent Extremism (VE), recruitment tactics/Cyber Sanctuar, typology of Violent Extremism, Local and Global types of VE were highlighted.
Drivers of Violent Extremism Economic Exclusion, Limited Opportunity for Upward Mobility, Political Exclusion, Shrinking Civic Space, Selective Mistreatment among others also discussed.
Recommendations were also made that Christian and Muslim religious leaders should be courageous enough to eschew, exposed and stand by the truth in fighting violent extremism in their respective communities,report any indicators of
of possible instances of religious extremism.
