Mutare Muslims fight oppression

Tendai Gukutikwa
THE Mutare Muslim community has vowed on setting the record straight on the stereotype that the Islamic religion is the root of all violence and that all terrorists are devout Muslims.

Sheikh Mustafa Chindandari, a Dangamvura Islamic community leader, said this at Chancellor Primary School recently where members of the Muslim community from around Manicaland were gathered to commemorate the main Islamic religious holiday,’Yuam Ashura’ Day and at the same time coming together and fighting against religious oppression. “The Yuam Ashura Day is set as a day of remembrance, mourning and reflection for the Islamic community as they will be mourning and remembering the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, Imam Hussein, who rose against oppression and was killed at Karabala in Iraq,” said Sheikh Mustafa Chindandari, the Imam or leader of the Muslim community that was gathered at the school.

Sheikh Chindandari said the so-called Muslims who have been bombing other nations as terrorists were children and followers of Yazid who took it into his power to punish and kill the oppression fighter and true leader of Muslims, Hussein and not the devoted and faithful Muslims. Said the Sheikh: “In this contemporary world if we look at the Islamic world there are a lot of atrocities being committed on the pretext of jihad. Muslims and Christians are being killed by those who claim to be Muslims. These people are the children of the evil Yazid.”Quoting Charles Dickens, Sheikh Chindandari said, “If Hussein fought to quench his worldly desires, then I do not understand why his sisters, wives and children accompanied him. It stands to reason therefore that he sacrificed purely for Islam.”

Hussein as the grandson of the prophet and being the third Imam of Shia fought the cruel rule of Yazid and his men.

The decadent regime of the Umayyad was going to represent Islam as a despotic movement. His holiness, Iman Hussein, noticed that Yazid was destroying the ideology as well as misrepresenting Islam the faith that had come to reform mankind not accumulate power for itself. Also at the same event were Christians, who joined the Muslims in reflecting in the religious oppressions that are being faced by today’s religious man. A devoted Catholic, Ms Tsitsi Mtambanengwe, said the day had combined two great lessons in a single day, one being the urge to fight against religious oppression as Hussein did and the other being learning the knowledge that not all Muslims were terrorists, but the ones that bow down to the so-called cruel Yazid. The pilgrims had a massive mourning march from the city centre to Chancellor Primary School and had funeral tributes. As expected they were dressed in mourning regalia, shouting ‘Ya Hussein‘.