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UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 06 FREETOWN 000067 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PHUM PREL SL
SUBJECT: SIERRA LEONE:  ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY 
 
 ¶1.  Summary:  The four minor incidents of inter-religious 
violence over the past five years are the first such 
occurrences in Sierra Leone.  As Christianity becomes less 
orthodox and Islam more so, such incidents are likely to 
recur or worsen, but Sierra Leoneans, both Muslim and 
Christian, are proud of their reputation for tolerance and 
will strive to maintain it.  End Summary. 
 
¶2.  Sierra Leone has a history of religious intermingling and 
tolerance that is, or should be, the envy of most other 
countries with significant Muslim and Christian populations. 
Muslims form the larger group, perhaps 70 percent of the 
population, as is generally acknowledged by Christians.  Many 
extended families contain both Muslim and Christian members, 
and conversion from not only Christianity to Islam but also 
Islam to Christianity (rare in other parts of the Muslim 
world) is common, with a wife (and children) invariably 
acquiring the religion of the husband/father.  A Christian 
president was elected to succeed a Muslim president in 2007, 
in each case balanced by a vice-president of the other faith. 
 Religious symbolism is sufficiently politically important in 
Sierra Leone that the present Vice President Sam Sumana 
converted from Methodism to Islam, and went on the hajj, 
before the election.  (Note:  Inter-religious tolerance does 
not extend to traditional African religious beliefs.  Both 
Christians and Muslims share an aversion to traditional 
African beliefs and practices which they dismiss as 
witchcraft or black magic.  Openly admitted adherents of 
traditional religion appear to number less than one per cent 
of the population, but many beliefs and practices remain 
ingrained, especially in the up-country.) 
 
------------------ 
The Four Incidents 
------------------ 
 
¶3.  The four incidents of inter-religious violence 2005-09 
(three of them occurring in the last year and a half) are 
therefore a source of discomfort and some anxiety for both 
Muslims and Christians.  They are tame by comparison to 
events elsewhere (including at nearby N'zerekore in January), 
and Sierra Leoneans are quick -- perhaps a little too quick 
-- to dismiss their importance.  In each case, Muslims were 
provoked by Christians and retaliated with violence to 
property.  To review: 
 
¶A.  In May 2005 Muslim youths stoned an Anglican church and 
primary school in eastern (predominantly Muslim) Freetown 
after pupils from the school taunted a Muslim woman wearing a 
veil.  The woman fell or was pulled down.  (Note:  The 
practice of wearing a veil remains unusual in Sierra Leone 
although head coverings are becoming a practice especially 
among women of the Fula tribe and are mandated for 
schoolgirls in Muslim schools.) 
 
¶B.  In September 2008, Muslims attacked a pentecostal church 
in eastern Freetown, when the loudspeakers at the church were 
turned up loud enough to drown out Ramadan prayers.  Church 
members retaliated by breaking windows in a nearby mosque. 
 
¶C.  In April 2009, Muslims who claimed to be acting on the 
orders of an imam burned down a pentecostal church in a 
village in Kambia district near the Guinea border.  The 
church had recently been erected near where a mosque or 
Muslim prayer site had existed.  The perpetrators came from 
outside the village. 
 
¶D.  Most recently, on December 15, 2009, Muslims attacked a 
pentecostal church during a Tuesday prayer service, damaging 
the pastor's Range Rover, the roof of the simple church 
structure, and the church's audio equipment.  Members of the 
nearby mosque had repeatedly warned the pastor to reduce the 
volume of the loudspeakers. 
 
------------- 
Muslim Views 
------------- 
 
¶4.  Poloff called on a number of Muslim and Christian leaders 
February 11-15, starting with Shaykh Abu Bakr Conteh, a 
senior imam in Freetown center city and a member of the 
Inter-Religious Council.  Conteh said that the 
Inter-Religious Council was formed in 1997 at the USIS office 
when a delegation came from the United States representing 
the World Council for Peace.   Sierra Leone was in the midst 
of its internal war at the time, during which religion was 
not a significant factor, Conteh asserted; rather, the 
impetus to establish the Inter-Religious Council was mounting 
global concern about Muslim-Christian friction elsewhere and 
a desire to ensure that such friction would not spill over 
into Sierra Leone. 
 
¶5.  Conteh pointed out that Islam had been rooted in Sierra 
 
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Leone for many centuries, as far back as the Kingdom of Mali 
in the fourteenth century.  Much later, the Anglicans and 
Methodists had come by sea with the founding of Freetown in 
the late eighteenth century, Catholics following in the 
nineteenth century.  These Christian groups had set up 
schools throughout the country, to the benefit of Muslims and 
Christians alike.  Conteh, who speaks fluent Arabic and has 
spent many years in Saudi Arabia, said that he -- like most 
older Muslims -- had gained "95 percent" of his education 
from Christians, and indeed he had been brought up by a 
Christian woman.  Conteh said that there was, in Sierra 
Leone, a thorough mutual understanding among Muslims and 
Christians of each other's practices and beliefs.  He said 
that, on the one hand, it was lamentable that Islam in Sierra 
Leone was, as he put it, so "shallow," both in the sense of 
shallow-rootedness (Muslims too easily converted to 
Christianity), and in the sense of shallowness of 
understanding of Islamic doctrine and insufficient attention 
to Islamic practices.  (Christianity, he claimed, was 
similarly "shallow" in Sierra Leone.) 
 
¶6.  On the other hand, Conteh said, for all the shallowness 
of their religious understanding and practice, Muslims and 
Christians in Sierra Leone had, through their age-old mutual 
accommodation and trust, demonstrated a "true interpretation" 
of the Koran and Bible.  Formerly, there had been few 
"prayerful" people in Sierra Leone but "many God-fearing 
people."  Now with the advent of greater "religious 
awareness," there were more and more prayerful people, but 
fewer God-fearing ones.  Conteh viewed his life's work as, on 
the one hand, to show Sierra Leonean Muslims the way to a 
deeper, more correct Islam, while somehow striving to keep 
them tolerant. 
 
¶7.  Yet, he feared that the younger generation of Muslims and 
Christians was moving away from traditional Sierra Leonean 
tolerance.  The recent minor incidents of inter-religious 
violence, he said, could become major without careful 
management.  The 2009 Kambia incident (C above), he said, 
demonstrated the ill-effects of insensitive Christian 
evangelism.  A charismatic female preacher had convinced 
local Muslims that she had raised an old man from the dead, 
converted some of the villagers, raised money from the United 
States, and bought land on which the mission had built a 
church.  Unfortunately, the land was the site of a 
dilapidated mosque which was still considered a holy Muslim 
place, outsiders got wind of what had happened, came to the 
village, burned down the church, and even poisoned the new 
water sources that the church had installed for the village. 
The Inter-Religious Council participated in a delegation, 
with government, UN, and embassies' representation, that 
helicoptered to the site immediately.  (Note:  Embassy 
employee who flew with this delegation reports that there was 
no "mosque" there at all, but only a open "prayer area" 
located at some distance from where the church was built, 
that it took three years for the church to be built, and that 
only after that did outsiders come to burn it down, 
instigated by an imam in Freetown.)  Conteh said that the 
Inter-Religious Council intended soon to present a full 
report on the incident, with recommendations, to Vice 
President Sumana.  One recommendation would be that holy 
sites of one religion, however "dilapidated," should never be 
used by another religion. 
 
¶8.  Conteh said that the first incident, involving the veiled 
woman (A above), was brought to an amicable solution for both 
sides, when it was understood that the woman (though taunted 
by children) had not been intentionally pushed down.  Conteh 
noted that the hijab was mandated by the Koran.  The state of 
morality among women in Sierra Leone, he said, was "lax" and 
the use of the hijab (both head covering and veil) would help 
to reduce that immorality. 
 
¶9.  Both of the other incidents (B and D), according to 
Conteh, derived from extreme insensitivity by new pentecostal 
churches to their largely Muslim surroundings in eastern 
Freetown.  These churches frequently put on revivals and 
sometimes had prayer sessions every day of the week, using 
amplification systems at maximum loudness.  In the most 
recent case (D above), the church had established itself 
within close proximity of a mosque.  Conteh claimed that most 
of the stone-throwers were "not really Muslims" but "idle 
youths," and not members of the nearby mosque.  This incident 
was brought immediately to the attention of the Vice 
President (who received the church's pastor within six days 
of the incident).  The Inter-Religious Council intended to 
release a statement soon on the incident and step up its 
efforts on inter-religious sensitization.  Otherwise, Conteh 
lamented, "a volcano awaits." 
 
¶10.  To poloff's questions about the doctrinal nature of 
Islam in Sierra Leone and the role of foreign Islamic donors, 
Conteh said that Sierra Leonean Islam was overwhelmingly 
 
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Maliki Sunni, with little presence of Sufism or the Tidjani 
sect.  The Ahmadiyya movement had arrived via Pakistan and 
the United Kingdom (and was given a further boost with the 
presence of Pakistani UN troops during the war) and was 
instrumental in establishing Muslim schools, which had 
previously hardly existed.  There was some foreign money 
involved in the widespread, on-going construction effort -- 
the Kuwaitis in particular were supporting the construction 
of small new mosques.  Qadhafi had financed entirely the 
construction of a large new mosque in eastern Freetown. 
However, Freetown still lacked a "Grand Mosque" typical of 
most capitals of Muslim countries.  Ten years ago, Sierra 
Leonean Lebanese (who are overwhelmingly Shia), with help 
from Iran, had begun building a large mosque dominating the 
quay of central Freetown, but it remained unfinished, and 
while it was generally called the "Central Mosque," most 
Sierra Leoneans refused to consider it the "Grand Mosque," 
because it was Shi'a-inspired.  (Note:  According to press 
reports, at the beginning of February, the Iranian ambassador 
presided over a ceremony at this unfinished mosque, 
celebrating "The Islamic Revolution as a Continuation of the 
Prophet Mohamed's Misson."  Head of the Ahmadiyya Mission in 
Sierra Leone Amir Saeed Ur Rahman, in his speech, noted that 
"before the Revolution there was no Islamic tradition in 
Iran."   Sunnis were represented at the occasion by the 
Secretary General of the United Council of Imams in Sierra 
Leone, al-Hajj Madani Kabba Kamara, who said that "imams in 
Sierra Leone have benefited a lot from the Iranians in terms 
of education and welfare.") 
 
¶11.  Conteh said that the Saudis had proposed three years ago 
to finance the construction of a Grand Mosque and had sent 
several delegations to Freetown for the purpose.  The 
previous government (under a Muslim president) had appeared 
favorable.  However, the present government (under a 
Christian president) had not yet authorized the project. 
 
¶12.  Subsequently, poloff sought separate appointments with 
the President and Spiritual Guide (or "Amir") of the United 
Council of Imams, al-Hajj Yahya al-Din Kamara and Abu Bakr 
Kamara, respectively.  However, these worthies surprised 
poloff by receiving him jointly and in the presence of twenty 
other imams and staff.  The occasion, replete with cameras 
and microphones, turned into a speech-giving event with 
little substance and prayers and recitations from the Koran. 
There were, however, a few interesting tidbits emerging from 
this otherwise controlled, formalistic, and tedious exercise. 
 Speakers extolled Islam as a religion of peace (remarking on 
the core root of the word as meaning "peace," even if the 
word "Islam" itself means "submission") and praised Sierra 
Leone as an exemplar of inter-religious toleration.  They 
noted the recent violence in neighboring N'zerekore and 
emphasized that such violence must be avoided in Sierra 
Leone.  They regretted the "rise of Christian evangelism in 
the past 10-15 years" as having caused "some problems," which 
however remained "not serious."  They noted that religious 
leaders, Muslim and Christian alike, had worked hard and 
worked together to resolve the war and avoid recriminations 
in its aftermath.  Secretary General al-Hajj Madani Kabba 
Kamara said that Sierra Leoneans were "very proud" of their 
Central Mosque, that Sierra Leone had no "Grand Imam" as such 
but that the President and Amir of the United Council of 
Imams together "essentially filled that role," and that 
Sierra Leone soon "expected to have a Grand Mufti" (not 
further defined). 
 
¶13.  Finally, poloff called on Shaykh Fomba Abu Bakr Swaray, 
director of the radio station Voice of Islam and imam of a 
multi-story Islamic center located east of the city center. 
Shaykh Fomba, as he is known, is a well-known figure in 
Sierra Leone, through the radio station (the major Islamic 
one in the country).  The station is heard as far away as Bo, 
Lunsar, and Kambia; most broadcasts are in the national 
language Krio, but it has some programs in Mende, Temne, 
Limba, Susu, Mandingo, Fula, Sherbro, and Loko. 
 
¶14.  When poloff mentioned that he had met some of Fomba's 
colleagues at the United Council of Imams, Fomba said that he 
was part of the Sierra Leone Muslim Missionary League and not 
the United Council of Imams.  He intimated no fondness for 
the other group, saying the Missionary League was more 
scholarly, with deeper grounding in Islam and connections to 
Saudi Arabia, Libya, Kuwait, Sudan, and Nigeria.  Fomba noted 
that Sierra Leone had been part of the Islamic world since 
the 1300's and he claimed that Islamic clerics in Sierra 
Leone had a long tradition of erudition.  He said that, as 
Muslims were the great majority in Sierra Leone, the 
country's record of religious tolerance must be viewed as a 
Muslim accomplishment.  However, the Christian minority 
needed, he said, to understand the limits of Muslim patience. 
 Muslims should be able to enjoy the privilege, as well as 
carry the burden, of being the majority, and Christians 
needed to be more careful to accommodate themselves to the 
 
FREETOWN 00000067  004 OF 006 
 
 
majority. 
 
¶15.  In regard to the "minor incidents" of the past several 
years, Fomba said that Muslims strongly objected to being 
characterized as the violent party.  In every case, Muslims 
had been sorely provoked.  Although the case of the veiled 
woman (A above) was some years old now, Fomba said, it still 
rankled deeply among Muslims.  According to Fomba, the Koran 
demanded that women wear a veil, and at least they must cover 
their hair.  This poor woman was carrying food home to her 
husband, was walking by the Anglican church and school when a 
teacher came out of the school and yanked off her veil, 
causing her to fall to the ground, and the teacher prompted 
the children to taunt her as the "devil."  (Note:  Embassy 
employee went to the scene soon after it occurred and 
interviewed many people, who affirmed that a schoolteacher, 
who was directing traffic outside the school so that children 
would not be hit by cars, inadvertently struck the veiled 
woman with her outstretched hand.) 
 
¶16.  The more recent cases, Fomba noted, involved 
insupportable incitement from charismatic churches.  The 
burning of the new Lord's Mission Church at a village in 
Kambia district (C above) was a result of the destruction of 
an existing mosque.  Some Christians claimed that the mosque 
that was destroyed was derelict, but this was false.  The 
mosque had continued to be actively used by inhabitants not 
only of that village but from surrounding villages.  The 
claim by the female missionary that she had raised an old man 
from the dead was a source of anger throughout the district. 
Fomba hoped that the report now being finalized for 
presentation to the Vice President would call upon donors to 
provide funds for building a new mosque, a new church, and a 
new community center at the site of the destroyed 
mosque/burned church.  (Note the very different Embassy 
on-the-ground account of this incident above.) 
 
¶17.  As for the most recent incident (D above), Fomba said 
that the new pentecostal church had been built very close to 
an existing mosque and it had insisted on very loud amplified 
services precisely at the time of evening Muslim prayers. 
The mosque had appealed to the church, to the community 
chief, and then to the police, and finally, in exasperation, 
the local police commander had himself gone into the church 
and yanked out the speaker cords.  When the police commander 
was then attacked by the church members, Muslims outside 
became enraged and retaliated.  (Note:  The Mission of Hope 
Church claims that the police commander instigated the attack 
on the church.) 
 
--------------- 
Christian Views 
--------------- 
 
¶18.  On the Christian side, poloff first called on Pastor Ola 
Macauley of the Flaming Bible Church in Ascension Town (west 
of central Freetown), one of the larger, older, more 
established pentecostal churches.  Macauley said that the 
Flaming Evangelical Mission had been founded 22 years ago by 
its leader, Bishop Abu Koroma, by origin a Temne Muslim from 
Magburaka, who had attended the same Christian boys' school 
as President Koroma.  Abu Koroma was converted by his elder 
brother (who had been "saved," "born again," earlier) while 
attending Fourah Bay College.  Macauley said that he himself 
was born a Methodist, his Krio father being Methodist; his 
mother had been a Krio Muslim.  Macauley noted that it was 
"very common" in Sierra Leone for Muslims to convert to 
Christianity.  Outdoor revivals were now an everyday 
happening in Freetown and throughout the country.  The 
Flaming Evangelical Mission had large congregations in 
Freetown, Bo, and Kenema, and it was, he said, focusing its 
present crusades up-country. 
 
¶19.  Macauley said that the Sierra Leonean Christian 
population (30 percent of the total population, he agreed) 
was now approximately one-third pentecostal.  The pentecostal 
movement was new; it had, he explained, started slowly in the 
1980's and picked up momentum through the 1990's and the 
2000's.  The war in the 1990's was a stimulus, as the people 
had sought solace from all the brutality.  Macauley estimated 
that 60 percent of the members of the Flaming Evangelical 
Mission had originally been "orthodox" Christian (Methodist, 
Wesleyan, Anglican, or Catholic for the most part); 30 
percent had been other pentecostal (i.e., moving into the 
Flaming church from other pentecostal churches); and 10 
percent of Muslim origin.  (The latter number, Macauley said, 
included practitioners of traditional African religion, who 
in Sierra Leone "invariably call themselves Muslims.") 
 
¶20.  Macauley said that his church saw no conflict with 
Islam.  Radical Islam would, of course, pose a terrible 
problem -- as indeed would radical Christianity, Macauley 
said -- but Sierra Leone was not at that point yet, and 
 
FREETOWN 00000067  005 OF 006 
 
 
hopefully not near it.  In his view, the recent minor 
altercations were a product of Christian insensitivity.  The 
December incident (D above) involved, he said, a radical 
pastor who openly condemned Islam, "and naturally the Muslims 
reacted."  By contrast, the Flaming Bible Church, he said, 
never used outside loudspeakers except during revivals and 
then only after discussing the timing with neighboring 
mosques.  He said his church did have prayer services on 
Friday as well as Wednesday (while some pentecostal churches 
now conducted prayer services every single day) but it 
scheduled those services around Muslim prayer times. 
Macauley noted that Muslims and Christians had always lived 
amicably together in Sierra Leone, the Muslim call to prayer 
being simply an accepted, natural part of the scene, and, in 
his view, there was no reason for conflict if people behaved 
with good sense and respect. 
 
¶21.  Poloff next called on Rev. Winston Ashcroft of the 
United Methodist Church, at a church located in central 
Freetown.  Ashcroft said that the "intermarriage" of 
Christianity and Islam had been a feature of Freetown since 
its creation as a refuge for freed slaves.  Freetown had 
originally had a Christian majority but Krio Muslims, from 
the first located especially in eastern Freetown, had been a 
significant presence from the beginning, with Muslims always 
coming into Freetown Peninsula from the east (the mainland). 
The phenomenon of conversion in both directions had also 
existed and been accepted from the beginning.  Even Fula 
(Fulani, Peuhl), the strictest Muslims of Sierra Leone, 
converted to Christianity occasionally, and Ashcroft cited 
several examples. 
 
¶22.  Ashcroft acknowledged that traditional churches had gone 
through a period of significant loss of members, especially 
among the young, to the new, "charismatic" churches.  (He 
preferred to avoid the term "evangelical" in referring to 
those churches, as he viewed his own church as being 
evangelical.)  However, he believed that his church had 
stopped the trend by taking up some of the methods of the 
charismatic churches, while remaining faithful to its 
liturgy.  The formerly "stiff-necked" church had now 
introduced two major "procedural" changes:  in the music 
(decreasing the use of the organ in favor of amplified drums 
on keyboard) and in the style of sermon (the pastor leaving 
the pulpit and going down to energize the congregation).  The 
church had also introduced a "praise time" of energetic 
singing and chanting and rhythm. 
 
¶23.  Ashcroft said that the United Methodist Church had not 
yet suffered any sort of violent incident involving Muslims. 
There had been threats to the church from Muslims, but, so 
far, these had been peacefully resolved.  According to 
Ashcroft, "Christians have the philosophy of turn the cheek, 
which is nonexistent in Islam.  In every case, the Christians 
have to compromise, while the Muslims are quick to threaten." 
 There was no doubt, he said, that Muslims were becoming more 
self-aware and intolerant, but he remained "optimistic that 
Sierra Leone will avoid the rise of Islamic fundamentalism." 
 
¶24.  Subsequently, poloff called on Rev. Father Vincent 
Davies of Sacred Heart Cathedral in central Freetown.  Davies 
said that Catholicism had come relatively late to Sierra 
Leone (in 1860) and the Catholic population amounted to only 
about 10 percent of Christians (or three percent of the 
general population).  However, he said, the mainly Irish 
missionaries had left a massive legacy behind:  over forty 
percent of schools in Sierra Leone today were Catholic or at 
least had a Catholic origin, he said.  Most of those schools 
had, and always had had, a majority of Muslim students. 
There had been no Catholic-Muslim incidents, and the Catholic 
Church had no cause for complaint in that quarter.  It had, 
however, seen a palpable recent loss of members to the 
charismatics.  Davies said that he was one of three priests 
whom the bishop had recently allowed to conduct "healing 
masses" with loud singing, shouting, dancing, and use of 
local instruments, as a way to stem the exodus. 
 
¶25.  Finally, poloff called on Rev. Usman Fornah, leader 
("National Superintendent") of the Wesleyan Church of Sierra 
Leone, who is at present also the general secretary of the 
Inter-Religious Council.  Fornah explained that, as his name 
suggests, he was born a Muslim (his parents are still 
Muslims), went to a Christian school, and was converted at 
the age of 19.  He said that the Wesleyan Church, an American 
offshoot of the Methodist Church (disavowing episcopal 
usages, such as bishops and robes), founded its Sierra Leone 
branch in 1889.  The Wesleyan Church was, he said, avowedly 
evangelical but not pentecostal or charismatic, the latter 
characterized especially by speaking tongues and claims of 
miracles, especially miraculous healing. 
 
¶26.  Fornah laid blame for the three most recent 
inter-religious incidents of violence on the charismatic 
 
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churches.  (He was not aware of the 2005 incident involving 
the veiled woman.)  He said that some of the charismatic 
churches exemplified a disturbing trend of arrogance and 
insensitivity.  This fringe took a particularly hostile 
attitude toward Muslims and was boosted by considerable 
external monetary support, especially from the United States. 
 For example, the Lord's Mission, which Fornah understood to 
have destroyed an existing if derelict mosque in Kambia 
district (C above) in order to erect a church, had received 
ample donations that had come pouring in from the United 
States when people there learned that the female missionary 
had, supposedly, raised an old man from the dead and had 
converted Muslims. 
 
¶27.  Fornah said that the Inter-Religious Council was doing 
the best it could to investigate these incidents but it had 
no resources, no staff, no vehicles -- he, for example, was 
serving as interim general secretary of the Inter-Religious 
Council while being head of the entire Wesleyan Church in 
Sierra Leone, two full jobs at least.  He said that the 
Council would soon be making its recommendations to the Vice 
President on the Kambia incident, which would include: 
 
-- Registration of all religious entities by the Ministry of 
Social Welfare (which has responsibility in the religious 
sector).  (Fornah explained that the Council had no desire to 
limit religious freedom, but some of the charismatic groups 
had no evident structure or person in charge to hold 
responsible.) 
 
-- Establishment of a basic code of conduct for all religious 
entities, to cover respect for prayer times and ending of 
religious slander on both Christian and Muslim radio 
stations.  (Fornah said that both the charismatics' BBN -- 
Believers' Broadcasting Network -- and the Voice of Islam 
carried outrageous broadcasts casting aspersions on the other 
faith.) 
 
-- Requiring a reasonable distance between new churches and 
existing mosques (and vice versa). 
 
-- Establishment of a National Council for Prevention and 
Management of Religious Conflicts with representation of all 
concerned parties, replicated at district level.  (Fornah 
said that the problem would be funding, but he hoped that 
there would be donor interest.  He also hoped that the key 
religious leaders, not politicians, would have the primary 
role). 
 
-- Holding of a National Religious Conference to discuss 
openly all causes of religious tension and to find solutions. 
 (Donor support would be needed.) 
 
¶28.  Fornah lamented that the Inter-Religious Council had at 
present no representative from the charismatic churches. 
There had been a charismatic participant when the Council was 
first established but not for some years.  The charismatics 
appeared to dislike working with the main-line churches, did 
not like to compromise, and, in the more radical cases, 
refused to sit down with Muslims as being heathens. 
 
¶29.  Fornah said that he remained hopeful that Sierra Leone's 
tradition of tolerance would prevail in the near future. 
Over the longer term, the future appeared to be less 
positive.  At present trends, the charismatics would become 
ever more radical, and the Muslims would be subject to ever 
greater external influence.  Formerly, Muslim parents who 
wanted a good education for their children sent them to 
Christian schools, and many Muslim parents continued to do 
so.  But Muslim education, like the use of the headscarf, was 
growing, and the web of interaction and points of contact 
between the two communities appeared slowly to be dwindling. 
CHESHES