Is Ijtma effective enough to solve challenges facing Muslims in Malawi?

From Friday October 17 to Sunday October 19, Muslims from across the country gathered at Zomba Islamic High School for the Islamic annual gathering called Ijtma.

The event, which was organized by Majilis Ulama under the theme ‘The Future of Islam in Malawi’, also attracted other prominent Muslims from South Africa, Tanzania, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

With this year’s theme, Muslims expected a lot considering the fact that there have several resolutions made in the past events that are yet to be implemented.

However, it has observed that the failure of implementing the resolutions made at these annual Islamic conferences is mainly due to the reason that the forum is not an effective platform to strategize methods on how to deal with some of the challenges Muslims are facing in the country.

For example, as usual, during the opening ceremony of the event, some Muslims are seen moving around  with the remaining few offering little attention to the speeches.

And in a random interview with some of the participants of this year’s event, Malawi Muslims official website noted that most of them attend the function to listen to lectures from prominent and powerful sheikhs on how they can be good Muslims and other relevant topics for the betterment of their spiritual lives.

For instance village headman Pias from the Traditional Authority Nsamala in Balaka district, who was attending the Ijtima for the fifth time, said he is always swayed to attend the Ijtima because it brings to him a rare opportunity to listen to lecturers on how he can be a good Muslim and not otherwise.

His views were echoed by Mustafa Julius from Mangochi who said there is no any other reason which forces him to go to the event than spiritual upliftment.

“This event helps me a lot because I always go back home a changed person due to the powerful lectures the sheikhs give us. This is my tenth time to attend this event and I come here with one reason – to boost my imaan,” he said.

Speaking in an interview with Malawi Muslims Official Website, one of the invited guests to this year’s event who pleaded for anonymity observed that it was always going to be difficult to make those agreements come into reality considering the fact that Muslims attend the Ijtima with different purposes.”

“Let’s come in terms with the reality, the way this event was designed cannot help in solving the developmental issues that Muslims in the country anticipate for –this is a platform for spiritual upliftment only,” he explained.

But in his remarks, chairperson for organizing committee Saizi Bakali said his committee believes that the resolutions made at the event this time around will be implemented.

“Remember we have formed that special monitoring and evaluation committee whose aim is to see to it that the all the resolutions are implemented accordingly. We have already given all the resources to make sure that we have answers to this year’s resolutions before another event comes in,” he said.

Meanwhile, this website has observed that despite having a low turnout compared to last year, this year’s event was well organized and there were no many challenges reported by participants.

What are your views on this issue?