Adventists and Muslims Resolve Violent Conflict in Ghana
By AT News Team, Feb. 26, 2015: The Seventh-day Adventist congregation in Atebubu, Ghana, has resolved a land dispute with the local Muslim community, according to the Ghana News Agency (GNA). In an effort to mend relations after a violent confrontation in mid-February, the Adventist Church has given the disputed land to the Muslims.
The initial investigation revealed that twelve Muslim youth “spearheaded the misunderstanding between the two religious groups,” reported GNA. The Daily Guide described the destruction of property on February 13, reporting that a crowd of more than 1,000 Muslim young people “stormed the SDA church premises near the Atebubu Government Hospital on Friday afternoon after the mid-day prayers with guns and offensive weapons.” The crowd then “set the newly built mission house ablaze and further brought down the walls around the church and demolished the temple.”
The destroyed mission house “accommodated close to 20 teacher trainees who are doing their teaching practice in the school. They lost valuable items such as laptops, cellular phones, books and certificates, among others,” reported Ghana Nation.
To resolve the on-going conflict, the regional security council facilitated a dialog, which lasted more than five hours. At the conclusion, the two religious groups signed a peace pact, according to GNA. “We forgive our brothers who destroyed our property,” said Adventist pastor Paul Amo Kyeremeh, president of the Mid-North Ghana Conference of the Adventist Church. Kyeremeh continued, “We have surrendered the piece of land behind the controversy to you, our Muslim brothers and sisters, to end the rift.”
In response, “Alhaji Gyasi Ahmed Dauda, the Regional Board Chairman for Muslims in Brong-Ahafo, expressed his contentment that the misunderstanding had been resolved and gave the assurance that the Muslim Community would live peacefully with the other religious organizations in the Region,” reported GNA. Dauda stated: “We are very sorry about what happened and our position is to build a new mission house for the church.”
Despite Kyeremeh’s statement of forgiveness, the regional security council has ordered the arrest of the twelve suspects accused of inciting the February 13 attack.
In other words they gave in? And what were the legalities in this case? (Not that fanatical muslims necessarily abide by the law.)
My sentiments exactly
Can there be a more perfect example of the difference between Islam and Christianity? One storms another group’s sacred place with weapons and violence. The other turns the other cheek.
Isn’t it reassuring, however, to know that what these extremists did had nothing to do with the peaceful religion of Mohammed?
I only take issue with the article because it gives credibility to the young men who stormed and burned the Adventist buildings by calling them Muslim. Highlighting that it occurred after the Friday mid-day prayers slurs all people of Muslim faith by implying that what happened may have had something to do with their faith. And we all know that true Muslims would never do anything like this.
Also, the article fails to offer a balanced perspective by omitting reference to the fact that 1,000 years ago men did the same thing to Muslims in the name of Christianity.
On the brighter side, it is refreshing to know that the Ghana News Agency has adopted rhetoric that will surely auger well for peace. Using conciliatory terms like “resolution” and “surrender” will surely help to maintain open dialogue and resolve “on-going conflict.” It would be nice to have a bit more insight on what led to the “misunderstanding,” but the important thing is that there was forgiveness without any need for repentance.
When the Adventists in Atebubu are rounded up and beheaded by violent extremists – not Muslim radicals – due to misunderstandings (they didn’t understand how important it was to forsake Christianity and convert to Islam),GNA has given us some very useful euphemisms that can be deployed to explain what has happened. Relations have been mended; misunderstandings have been resolved; and peaceful relations have been restored.
Nathan not sure if that critique is overly harsh. Were not these 12 young men Muslims? Isn’t it relevant given the underlying cause of the violence had to do with a land conflict between two religious communities? If this was simply about a random act of violence involving a Muslim and an Adventist, which had nothing to do with religion, then I get that. But it is about a religious conflict – at least that is how I am reading the article.
As for 1,000 years ago – Adventists didn’t exist then. In our way of thinking, many who supposedly claimed themselves Christians back then weren’t. These Christian crusaders persecuted those who Adventists identify as our spiritual descendants, such as the Waldensenes. So I am not sure what collective guilt, if any, Adventists need to accept for 1,000 years ago?
Great piece of satire Nathan:)
Could this be only a temporary peace? There was nothing ordered for the Muslims to rebuild what they destroyed.
It is good to live in peace and harmony with others but that does not mean to be ever watchful. Just as we trust others, we lock our doors and insure our possessions
Social differences are never resolved by who is right and who is wrong.
I was all prickly over this report until I read that the local Muslim Community expressed their sorrow about what happened and took responsibility by promising to build a new mission house for the church and that the Seventh-day Adventist community forgave those who were violent toward them and their property.
This appears exceedingly rare in the ‘real world.’
This surely seems more in the spirit of Jesus than the report elsewhere on this site https://atoday.org/wilson-meets-president-tanzania-addresses-crowd-50000-national-stadium.html describing General Conference President Ted Wilson’s public response to a similar socially collaborative undertaking in Tanzania.
“In contrast to this emphasis on cooperation, Wilson expressed a more limited view in his Sabbath sermon, according to a transcript almost immediately published in the online edition of the Adventist Review. “We should not align ourselves with any other religious organizations or ecumenical bodies,” the transcript states. Wilson emphasized the “distinctive” aspect of the Adventist faith, stating that “in the last days … anyone worshiping on another day that the seventh-day Sabbath will receive the mark of the beast.” He specifically included language that is proposed but has not yet been voted as part of the denomination’s official Statement of Fundamental Beliefs, that Earth was created “in six literal, consecutive, contiguous, 24-hour days.””
When it is about the church at the expense of the Gospel of Jesus it is always a dark day even when the sun is shiningly hotly.
The Gospel of Jesus was testified to by Paul Amo Kyeremeh, president of the Mid-North Ghana Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. And not so much and quite probably not at all to many hearing Elder Ted Wilson’s speech in Tanzania.
Ghana proved that the church can be wronged and be right, while Elder Wilson evidenced and some will say confirmed that one cannot be right by declaring anyone wrong.
For God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through his might will be saved.
Thanks to the AT News Team for reporting the triumph of the Gospel of Jesus in unifying humanity against all odds.
You gotta be kidding, Bill. “We’re sorry about what happened.”?? Not that we take any responsibility for it. It just happened. All this nonsense about forgiveness and surrender is just empty rhetoric to placate and give credibility to crazy religious extremists.
The obvious underlying reality is that everyone, including the GNA, is scared to death of these terrorists, and they are responding the way captives would respond to captors who will do even more bad stuff to the captives if the captives don’t do everything they demand of them. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if part of the settlement was that the Atebubu Adventists will start paying their tithes and offerings to the Regional Board Chairman for Muslims in Brang-Ahafo.
So nice to see how wonderfully the gospel of Jesus triumphs when it is confronted at gunpoint by angry extremists. With more triumphs like these, ISIL and the rest of the Muslim world will soon be mere putty in the hands of Adventist Christians.
Thank you, Chris, for recognizing that I was being sarcastic in my first comment.
Read carefully the quote from the leader of the Muslim council:
“We are very sorry about what happened and our position is to build a new mission house for the church.”
I take that as an offer of restitution from the Muslims for an illegal and unfortunate action. Of course no amount of persuasion would ever change those on either side who already have made-up their minds about the other religion.
And the perpetrators were ordered to be arrested.
Did some of you commenters actually read the entire article?
Worse than Ghana, Christian properties and land stolen are an everyday occurrence in Israeli occupied Palestine by the Israelis. Christian churches have been destroyed, along with many standing churches displaying graffiti put there by illegal Israeli settlers and their military. Christian schools (no Adventist schools there), built and paid for by Presbyterian, Lutherans, Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and various other religious groups, are constantly having to replace bombed out schools, parks, and housing in the Palestinian communities. Getting supplies to replace the various properties is almost impossible as permits from the Israeli government are required and usually rejected. Few people in the west realize that many Palestinians are Christian, although that population is diminishing.
Not sure I follow you here, Carolyn. You’re saying Israelis are destroying Christian churches that are merely being used as houses of worship in The West Bank? What is your source for this information. I didn’t know The West Bank was a haven for Christians in the region of the Leviathan. I follow the news pretty closely. I know the PLO would never try to use Christian houses of worship as shields for anti-Israel military operations. (LOL) And I know, from “authoritative” sources like “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” that the Jews do pretty dastardly things to Muslim Arabs. I just didn’t realize that peace-loving Arab Christians were being targeted by Israelis. I’d need to see some good independent verification to swallow that one.
Nathan,
This is from the website of the “Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation” that I received today. (I never mentioned the West Bank.)
Arson Attack Against the Orthodox Theological Seminary in Jerusalem PDF Print E-mail
Thursday, 26 February 2015 16:57
In the early hours of today, Thursday 26 February, an arson attack damaged the Greek-Orthodox Patriarchate’s Theological Seminary of Jerusalem, not far from the Old Town. The fire devastated a hall of the seminar and some annexes. The unknown attackers also wrote blasphemous sentences against Christ on the walls, written in Hebrew.
The act was immediately Condemned, by the Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land.
The way in which the attack was carried out and the writings on the walls suggest that the attack against the Greek-Orthodox Seminary represents yet another episode in the long series of desecration and intimidation committed by groups of extremist Jewish settlers to the detriment of Christian monasteries, churches and cemeteries starting from February 2012. Since then, militant extremist groups close to the settler movement have also led attacks against mosques frequented by Palestinian Arabs of Muslim religion. Yesterday Jewish extremists burned a mosque in the city of Jabaa, southwest of Bethlehem.
This is helpful, Carolyn. Still not sure where you get the Israeli military involvement or the claim that the individuals who have done these things are illegal Jewish settlers. Where is the source for your claim that it is an every day occurrence? Given the vandalism and arson staged to appear as racially or gender motivated in the U.S., I think it wise to require proof rather than presumption in these matters.
Notwithstanding the reality that Israel undoubtedly is home to some violent Jewish extremists, Christians and Muslims have more freedom and security in Israel than anywhere else in the Middle East. Your characterization of Israel as an “occupier” betrays strong bias on your part.
That the Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation seems to feel that Palestinian autonomy is even possible or that Arab Christians in the “occupied” territories would be better off without the Israeli presence speaks volumes about its naïveté and biases.
Under international law, Israel is an “occupying power” in the West Bank which is outside the internationally recognized borders of Israel. The West Bank is ruled by de facto Apartheid policies.
Do you really think Muslims are better-off in Israel than say, in Turkey? Or perhaps Turkey is not in the Middle East?
Israeli law discriminates against Christians and Muslims within its recognized borders. They are tolerated minorities without full political rights in a “Jewish state”. Sort of like the status of Afro-Americans for about 100 years in the US of A. Citizens on paper but not in practice.
If Muslims were represented in the Knesset in actual proportion to their population, they would be one of the stronger blocs in the Knesset. Instead under Israel’s elaborate proportional representation formula they are systematically limited to a small number of seats. And their representatives are routinely harassed and even arrested for “anti-government” activities.
Ditto for discrimination in the courts and in the military.
Sorry Nathan, your “separate but equal” plea somehow rings hollow.
Compare the disproportionate influence of the Haredi in Israeli politics, with that of the Arabs. There are twice as many Arabs (mostly Muslims but also Druse Christians) as Haredi in Israel. The Haredi wield influence in the Knesset far beyond their numbers; the Arabs are barely represented by a few token delegates.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Israel
In the first half of the 20th century the argument was made that Afro-Americans were better-off than Black Africans.
This did NOT justify or deny discrimination against Afro-Americans. Rather it was damning American racial policies and practices with faint praise.
You can always make excuses for oppression by saying that things are even worse somewhere else.
Jim, here’s an article you should read
http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2015/01/hacks-guide-covering-israel/
That you would compare the status of Arabs in Israel with Blacks in the South under Jim Crow laws and Separate but Equal policies, indicates a profound, and probably willful, lack of understanding of the Middle East and the history of the Jewish State, Jim. It is somewhat shocking that you would infer a moral equivalency between Southern States’ discriminatory treatment of peace-loving Black Americans and Israel’s discriminatory policies toward Palestinian Arabs who choose for their government a terrorist organization with genocidal aims toward the Jewish state.
I don’t think I ever said Muslims or Christians in Israel had the same civil rights and liberties as Jews. Even all Jews do not have equal rights in Israel. It is, after all, a religious state. To grant Israeli Muslims or Arabs political power proportionate to their numbers in Israel would be tantamount to national suicide for the Jewish state. How many children in Palestinian schools can find Israel on the political maps in their classrooms and textbooks? That’s right – zero – because Palestinians refuse to acknowledge the right of Israel to exist as a state. How many Palestinians have any national loyalty or patriotism toward Israel?
What do you think would happen if all the sworn enemies of Israel disarmed? That’s right. There would be peace in the region? What do you think would happen if Israel disarmed? If you answered, “Israel and it’s citizens would be wiped out in a heartbeat,” go to the head of the class. Doesn’t that really tell you all you need to know to give up on your foolish attempts at moral equivalency?
BTW, the article referenced by Chris Barrett – below – is excellent. I hope you read it.
Actually I follow events in the Middle East quite closely. I have people close to me on different sides of that situation (and there are many more than two sides), both within the region and who have left.
Nothing I wrote is intended to be a defense or justification for the duplicity and treachery of the leaders of the various Palestinian factions, nor of some other Arab and Iranian players in the region. But the same can also be said for many of the Jewish leaders, going all the way back to the Haganah.
The unfortunate truth is that the Arab populace (Muslims and Christians) in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza, and in refugee camps in neighboring countries, are pawns and hostages in a vicious zero-sum game between various power elites, none of whom actually show any evidence of actually caring about those who suffer the most.
One major reason there is no hope for peace in Palestine is because both the Jewish leaders and their sworn enemies, have too much vested interest in maintaining and even exacerbating the current situation. Many Palestinian Arabs and also many Israeli citizens recognize and even acknowledge this inconvenient and unpleasant truth. Many people outside the region choose to cast a blind eye.
If the sworn enemies of Israel disarmed, Israel would swiftly annex all of the West Bank. Then having absorbed Judea and Samaria, they would begin to clamor for the Land of Gilead (northern Transjordan) as part of their Biblical heritage..
Regarding Palestinian Arabs you would see even more blatant Apartheid polices than already exist.
You can always force the other side to break any cease-fire by steadily advancing upon and even over-running their positions. What Putin is doing in Ukraine is exactly what you would see happen in Palestine.
How can you or any other rational person expect Palestinian Arabs to keep turning the other cheek while Israel steadily annexes more of the West Bank each year with so-called “settlements”.
Does anyone see any resemblance to the “conflict” between the Europeans and the Native Americans that went-on for centuries, until almost every significant native population was expropriated and subjugated? This old story of invading peoples gradually or swiftly over-running other peoples and eliminating and/or expropriating them has been played-out many times over in the course of recorded history.
Israel cannot maintain its expansionist stance and also its “democratic” form of government. It is in the process of surrendering the latter in the interest of the former. The most likely result will be an era of Apartheid, where a Jewish minority asserts its prerogative of absolute control over an Arab majority. The alternative would be an Arab-majority state which is of course anathema to the current Jewish majority.
I am not the inventor of these scenarios. If you bother to follow what remains of the Israeli free press (I do) you will see these possibilities being openly discussed, pros and cons. Israel faces a demographic time bomb because even within its current borders the Arab population is growing faster than the Jewish population. As Jewish immigration has crept to a trickle, and as Israel continues its de facto annexation of Arab land, things WILL change and probably not for the better.
For example, how do you maintain a police force and a military, when the fastest-growing segments of your populace are Arabs who you fear to arm, and ultra-Orthodox who claim exemptions from bearing arms?
One can look to the historic South African precedent for answers, and right-wing Israelis are doing exactly that. it is no accident that Israel and the former South African regime were close allies and jointly developed many military technologies and sold arms and other strategic goods to each other.
So Nathan, since you follow Israel so closely, I am sure you are already aware of everything I have written here. It is of course a very inconvenient truth for Americans of various political stripes. But the cost to America of our political charades of “peace-making” and denial continues to grow.
I do NOT blame America for the current mess in the Middle East. Mostly we are taking-on the consequences of the mess left by the British and the French when they carved-up the region after WW I.
But in many ways it has now become our mess, and even more so after Bush’s wars which, whatever else you may choose to believe, have left Iran as the strongest nation standing in the region. Be careful what you ask for because you may get it.
Nathan, Yes, peace-loving Palestinians (whom you elect to lump into the broader category of Arabs) have assuredly been targeted by Israelis. Apparently you are not following the news as carefully as you thought. Vicious Israeli settlers, using their “price tag” excuse, have attacked Christian churches with graffiti and worse. But this is just a more recent and visible attack on Christians, in addition to the persistent provocations ever since the onslaught of Zionists, which has caused the Christian population to go from 18% to less than 2%. (This percentage is somewhat comparable to the 45% of Palestine awarded to Palestinians in the 1947 Partition to the present-day percentage of less than 20%. Israel is making consistent progress in stealing Palestinian land.)
Israel has used a combination of restrictive and humiliating checkpoints, separation wall (500+ miles paid for by the American taxpayer), land confiscation (80% of Pal.land since 1967), harassing legislation and collective punishment to push Christians off the lands they have occupied for thousands of years (and much more consistently and over longer periods of time than have the Jews).
For independent verification, try subscribing to the “Washington Report on Middle East Affairs”. You will find much more reliable information there than in the U.S. mass media.
This is a pointless discussion,Carolyn. You have deep and intense emotional investment in your perspective, framing of issues, and selective choice of “facts.” There are very few “independent” sources of commentary or information when it comes to disputes between Palestinians and Israel – certainly not the U.N. or the Washington Report. The Palestinians have chosen terrorist organizations to provide political leadership. The Palestinians first of all abandoned their homes in Israel to facilitate the Arab attack on Israel in 1948, and then had more land taken by Israel in wars of aggression launched by them and their Arab allies to wipe out Israel. And then, as Israel showed restraint and good faith, Palestinians reciprocated by using geographic advantages to launch Intifadas and civilian bombings, which necessitated retention of captured territory, checkpoints and fences. How many murders do you estimate the checkpoints and fence have prevented? Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in return for one thing – peace. And how has return of Gaza worked out for Israel?
Yes, of course there are the Baruch Goldsteins still there. But two very simple concessions by the Palestinians would greatly reduce tensions, and go a long way toward a solution -Renounce terroism, and acknowledge Israel’s right to exist as a sovereign Jewish state within its 1948 borders.
The issues defining the conflicts are complex. The underlying realities less so. Israel wants peace and recognition by its neighbors of its right to exist as a nation. Palestinians and their Arab allies are willing to die, and take as many innocents with them in the process, if necessary, to prevent that outcome.
This is of course far off topic, but we cannot separate how Arab Christians fare in Israel and the occupied territories from the laerger conflicts and issues in the region. Understanding those issues makes it preposterous to suggest a moral parallel between how Jews treat Christians inIsrael and its occupied territories, and this story of how Muslims treated Christians in Ghana.
” You have deep and intense emotional investment in your perspective, framing of issues, and selective choice of “facts.” ”
Here doth the pot and the kettle each call the other black 8-).
“Israel wants peace and recognition by its neighbors of its right to exist as a nation.”
Can you cite any concrete evidence, as opposed to rhetoric, to support this claim?
I do believe that many Israelis want peace. Unfortunately the current Israeli regime shows absolutely NO evidence that it wants peace. Not only have they broken many promises to halt settlement construction, they are expanding this form of economic and territorial aggression.
Please note that I don NOT here claim that the Palestinian leadership truly want peace either. Both sides have a strong vested interest in the current mess as it suits their political purposes and agendas.
Repeatedly, Israel has ignored the agreement made and has taken land designated for the Palestinians. They subsidize new Jewish settlers there, their housing and set up ballot boxes immediately to gain more Israeli votes.
The daily difficulty of Palestinians going to work in Israel, and long wait lines to hospitals. The Israeli government has continually broke their agreements and cannot be trusted to accede any of Palestinian former territory. It is similar to the Berlin Wall which they have erected to keep Palestinians OUT.
But it is Christian Right that has joined hands with the Zionists to support the “Right to Return” and given huge sums to Jews in the belief that soon, Jerusalem will be restored as predicted in OT prophecy.
Your dogmatic, ad hominem generalizations speak for themselves, Elaine. How can Israel be expected to trust a Palestinian population that wildly cheers terrorist attacks and votes for a perpetual state of war with Israel?
What nations can you name that have been expected to return territory gained in wars against aggressor neighbors who, even in defeat, refuse to surrender and refuse to acknowledge the right of the victor to even exist?
Is that at all relevant to your reflexive leftist antipathy toward Israel? Overwhelmingly, Christians support for Israel has nothing to do with any prophetic aspirations. Israel, whatever it’s flaws is the only beacon of freedom and democracy in the Middle East.
Beohner’s chutzpa has only been exceeded by Netanayu.
Elaine, I do agree with you regarding the danger of RR’s support for the take over of Jerusalem for the temple’s re-construction thus allowing Jesus to return.
This is a very destructive misinterpretation of prophecy that will possibly be the fulfilment of another prophecy—Armageddon.
Adventist preachers and teachers long taught that Armageddon was to be a literal battle located in the Meggido valley near Jerusalem when their end time prophecies were fulfilled.
Maybe in 1937 when you attending the SDA Church Elaine.
Revisions of Adventist prophetic predictions are normal.
Imagine the following headline:
“MOTORIST AND PEDESTRIAN RESOLVE VIOLENT CONFLICT IN SHOPPING CENTER PARKING LOT”
You read the story and learn that the motorist turned his car over to the pedestrian when the pedestrian confronted the motorist with a gun and demanded his car key.
Wouldn’t you wonder about what mindset would induce the newspaper editor to employ such a misleading, twisted headline? What toxins prevent journalists from telling the truth about reality, and describing evil accurately?
“To resolve the on-going conflict, the regional security council facilitated a dialog, which lasted more than five hours.”
In the heated discussion of the article I didn’t find a reference to this central piece of information – an intense, apparently moderated dialogue. Perhaps we should acquaint ourselves with how African cultures solve conflicts by dialogue before attacking our Christian brothers as “softies” who just gave in and our Muslim brothers (note the wording in the article…) as “vile criminals”. The article certainly gave a more differentiated picture.
Muslims invade a land that belongs to a Christian church, burns down their mission house housing 20 teachers and the Christian church reacts by giving the said land back to the marauding Muslims?? What prevents other Muslim communities from following this example by similarly invading Christian homes and taking over their properties?? This is a weak reaction from these adventists!!! Unless the adventists knew this contentious land does not belong to them, i see no reason why they should have handed this land back to them!! I can also see that the Muslims only expressed sorrow of what happened but did not acknowledge the wrongfulness of their action! The adventist were weak!! This weak reaction to this Jihadist violence will further encourage extremist Muslims to embark on further violence against Christian properties with the hope of other Christians following the example of these weak adventists by handing over their properties to them!! The only way to cure Muslim madness is to react with equal measure and probably even more violence!! Muslim extremists thrive on weakness. The more you placate them, the more they ask for me. This is a shame and a disgrace to all Christiandom! The SDA Church is weak!!