‘Islam is not to blame’

SENEGALESE President, Macky Sall, has pleaded for the fair and sustainable development of Africa in an address to the UN General Assembly (UNGA), while also imploring the international community not to blame Islam and Muslims for the “crazed acts of a faithless and lawless minority”.

Sall made his plea from the UNGA podium this week as the body met in New York for its annual General Debate.

“For us, African countries, energy is a vital issue because there can be no industrialisation or development without access to electricity at competitive prices,” he said.

“Africa cannot continue to light up other continents thanks to its resources while itself remaining in darkness.

“Let us rather see Africa not as a land of humanitarian emergencies and a recipient of public aid for development, but as a continent on the build, a pole on the cusp of progress,” Sall stressed.

Turning to the current wave of terrorism, Sall stressed that no cause, much less a religious one, could justify violence.

“We reject facile and unjust conflations. Neither Islam nor Muslims are to blame. We will not allow the crazed acts of a minority without faith or law to serve as a pretext to stigmatise more than a billion Muslims and their religion,” he said.

“To dabble in Islamophobia is adding suffering to suffering, it is stoking the fires of antagonisms and exacerbating the clash of civilisations that extremists dream of.” – ANA