After Muslim Association of Malawi (MAM)’s elections, which saw Sheikh Idrissa Muhammad winning the National Chairmanship with a landlisde victory, there has been disagreement between the new leader and his rival Dr Sheikh Imran Shareef who also contested the same position.
At the beginning, people thought that Dr Shareef was just bitter because he lost the elections without realising the root cause of the problem.
However, Malawi Muslims Official Website tried to trace the root cause of these misunderstandings and has this story to tell.
Prior to 2011 MAM polls, Dr Shareef asked the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) and Muslims World League (MWL) to assist the Muslim community on several developments
The donors then ordered him to send title deeds as well as other relevant documents, which he did. The proposal again was accepted and by realising that he could not handle the whole project alone, the committee was formed headed by Dr Salmin Omar. As people from Saudi Arabia needed the assurance of security, the committee also engaged Mia from the government side. Mia is also the Deputy Chairman of MAM’s Board of Trustees.
However, the time when all these things were happening, Sheikh Idrissa had already agreed to support Shareef and opted to vie for the regional chairmanship position.
Since they were in the same camp, Dr Shareef forgot the proverb of saying ‘there is no art to find mind’s construction in the face’ and revealed to his colleagues (Sheikh Idrissa and Salmin and Mia) the projects were campaigning tools for him to attain the chairmanship position of MAM.
In a twist of events, Mia allegedly then asked Sheikh Idrissa to discard the idea of becoming a regional chairperson but eye for the National Chairmanship role.
Sheikh Idrissa agreed to the suggestion since Mia offered him financial support.
Reports indicate that Mia took this action because he strongly believed that Dr Shareef was a United Democratic Front (UDF) sympathiser and that it would have been difficult to turn Muslims of which majority of them are said to be linked with the opposition party into then ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
After Idrissa had agreed, they all decided to pull out from the committee saying they would resume it after the elections, to the disgruntlement of Dr Shareef who had no option but to contact the donors to halt the projects until further communication.
However when the battle line was drawn with both Dr Shareef and Sheikh Idrissa vying for the leadership role at MAM, Dr Salmin Omar who was also a close ally to Dr Shareef after being promised to be offered the SG role remained with one foot in Dr Shareef’s camp and another one in Sheikh Idrissa’s camp.
However, after also promised the chairmanship role in Sheikh Idrissa’s camp, it is alleged that Dr Salmin started leaking information from Dr Shareef’s camp to the Idrissa’s side.
After the elections were conducted and eventually Idrissa becoming the leader of the Muslim’s mother body Sheikh Salmin was awarded his current role at MAM – to the surprise of many Muslims in the country, for his effort of disrupting Shareef who has been his close friend to attain the top position.
This did not go well with Dr Shareef and the battle between the two camps began.
After seeing that he has nothing to do, Dr Shareef grabbed Supreme of Ulamah Council’s Chairmanship position from Mufti Abbas Cassim (though he says proper procedure was followed), presumably with an intention to fight against the new MAM leadership.
This was witnessed after MAM had failed to organise the Ijtmah last year. Dr Shareef went on Radio Islam saying his organisation would be responsible in organising the event starting from this year.
Last week, he revealed to this website that his organisation still geared to hold the Islamic gathering this year.
Dr Shareef and his team are also planning to register the council, which is currently working under the banner of MAM.
