{"id":95327,"date":"2015-03-01T12:08:48","date_gmt":"2015-03-01T12:08:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=95327"},"modified":"2015-03-01T13:19:07","modified_gmt":"2015-03-01T13:19:07","slug":"we-wont-attend-devotion-muslims-reject-ges-directive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=95327","title":{"rendered":"We won&#8217;t attend devotion &#8211; Muslims reject GES directive"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Ghana Muslim Students\u2019 Association (GMSA) has directed all of its members to disregard the directive of the Ghana Education Service (GES)\u00a0instructing\u00a0all students to attend morning devotions in their schools.<\/p>\n<p>The GES served notice to the\u00a0students to <a href=\"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/2015\/02\/27\/all-students-must-attend-morning-devotion-ges\/#sthash.sGh05BvN.dpbs\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"color: #666699;\"><strong>participate in the morning devotion<\/strong><\/span><\/a> if it was part of the school&#8217;s rules.<\/p>\n<p>[contextly_sidebar id=&#8221;4xOsTSRod5v2527LBmTN8dJJSVEpKl07&#8243;]However, the GMSA\u00a0has rejected the directive from the GES and called on all Muslim students all over the country to do the same.<\/p>\n<p>The President of the Muslim Students&#8217; Association, Andani Hussein, in an interview with <strong>Citi News<\/strong>, lamented over the GES&#8217; decision stating that it was not fair that the Muslim students were made to join in Christian prayers often<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We go for morning devotion every day. We have our Fajr which start at 5 am We don\u2018t ask people to come and join us. So why should we [join in Christian prayers] after praying aside. In some circumstances [their prayers] clashe with the time of our prayers and students are made to abandon the Islamic worship and attend church services. Is that fair?,&#8221; he fumed.<\/p>\n<p>The GES said that the directive was necessary in order to promote discipline and national unity in the schools.<\/p>\n<p>The Public Relations Officer of the Service, Charles Parker Allotey \u00a0in an earlier interview with <strong>Citi News<\/strong> said:\u00a0\u201cWe are trying to encourage our students notwithstanding their faith to come together to worship and it brings about national unity. If a Muslim takes part in morning worship it doesn\u2019t mean the person it being forced to convert to Christianity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Click on audio below to listen to Parker Allotey<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/193338055&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;visual=true\" width=\"100%\" height=\"450\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>However the \u00a0GMSA rejected this insisting that in order to maintain national unity one religion cannot appear to be dominant over another.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-95376\" src=\"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/muslim-demo-in-WR-28.jpg\" alt=\"muslim-demo-in-WR-28\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" srcset=\"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/muslim-demo-in-WR-28.jpg 600w, https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/muslim-demo-in-WR-28-300x169.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The Ghana Education Service that they want to promote discipline and national unity. Which national unity will be achieved by worshiping one religion. If they want to promote one religion, they should come out and tell us,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>The Muslim Community in the Western Region demonstrated to\u00a0in a bid to draw the attention of the government to the discrimination they face.<\/p>\n<p>The government responded to the demonstration by threatening <a href=\"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/2015\/02\/20\/schools-that-force-muslims-to-take-of-their-hijabs-to-be-sanctioned\/\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"color: #666699;\"><strong>sanctions against schools<\/strong><\/span><\/a> that infringe on the rights of Muslims.<\/p>\n<p>President Mahama also reiterated this\u00a0in his State of the Nation Address last Thursday, asking heads of public institutions, including schools, to <a href=\"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/2015\/02\/26\/well-sanction-heads-of-institutions-infringing-on-rights-of-muslims-mahama\/\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"color: #666699;\"><strong>desist from forcing Muslims<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0to compulsorily join Christian fellowships.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>By: Edwin Kwakofi\/citifnomline.com\/Ghana<br \/>\n<a class=\"twitter-follow-button\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/EdKwakofi\" data-show-count=\"false\">Follow @EdKwakofi<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Ghana Muslim Students\u2019 Association (GMSA) has directed all of its members to disregard the directive of the Ghana Education Service (GES)\u00a0instructing\u00a0all students to attend morning devotions in their schools. The GES served notice to the\u00a0students to participate in the morning devotion if it was part of the school&#8217;s rules. [contextly_sidebar id=&#8221;4xOsTSRod5v2527LBmTN8dJJSVEpKl07&#8243;]However, the GMSA\u00a0has rejected [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":95370,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[43,38,16],"class_list":["post-95327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-foresight-medical-center","tag-palaver-newspaper","tag-shooting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=95327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95327\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/95370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=95327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=95327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=95327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}