By Joseph Fitzgerald Kamara Esq. (JFK)
Sierra Leone’s proposed policy on religious practice is not the framework for harmony it claims to be. It is a quiet attempt to bring the sacred under state control, such as licensing imams, certifying pastors, registering traditional healers, and regulating the volume and timing of worship itself.
Under the guise of promoting tolerance, the policy introduces a National Religious Registry, mandatory certification, and a code of conduct so vague that a sermon criticizing a local official could be read as “incitement to hostility.” These are not safeguards. They are levers of coercion.
Let us be clear, the same state that cannot guarantee clean drinking water, reliable electricity, or functioning hospitals now claims the moral authority to decide who may speak for God.
What happens when an imam refuses to endorse a ruling party candidate? What happens when a pastor preaches against government corruption? Under this policy, those religious leaders could be silenced through decertification, or permit denial.
Supporters of this policy will say, they have added safeguards: an independent tribunal, protection for political speech. These are welcome improvements, but they miss the deeper point. The state has no business certifying religious leaders at all.
A genuine religious leader gains authority from their scholarship, moral example and not from a government stamp. Handing the state a veto over who may preach, is likened to the Igbo proverb, ‘when a Hawk guards the chicks, it counts them for dinner’.
Sierra Leone does not need more bureaucracy at the altar. It needs interfaith dialogue, accountability, and a government that knows its boundaries, that is, governing the secular realm, and leaving the soul to its own conscience.