SINCE WAR BROKE out in the Central African Republic in March 2013, the international community has referred to it as a “religious conflict.” When the media cover the violence at all, they usually frame it as a story of Muslims against Christians. However, to call this conflict a war of religion is simplistic at best and a smokescreen for the real causes at worst.
That is the message that Central African Republic (CAR) faith leaders—Catholic, evangelical, and Muslim—have worked tirelessly to spread, at great personal cost. Imam Omar Kobine Layama, president of the Central African Islamic Community, Catholic Archbishop Dieudonné Nzapalainga of Bangui, and Rev. Nicolas Guérékoyame-Gbangou, president of the Evangelical Alliance of the Central African Republic, have been at the forefront of their country’s peace and reconciliation movement.
During a November 2014 interview in Washington, D.C., Archbishop Nzapalainga adamantly refuted the “religious war” narrative.
“Our role is to continually remind our religious believers ... that those people who want to kill people or rape people ... are in contradiction with their faith,” he told Sojourners. “We, for example, have never been telling our believers that they should go out and kill Muslims, and the imam has never been telling his followers that they should go out and kill Christians.”
In 2013, Seleka, a group of militants predominantly identified as Muslim, overturned the government, causing widespread chaos and violence. In retaliation, anti-Balaka, a group of militants predominantly identified as Christians and animists, waged its own unspeakable violence. These are distortions, said the religious leaders. “People have used religion as a pretext, a cover for their ambitions of power,” the leaders wrote in a Time commentary.
The larger causes of economic and political insecurity are ignored when the focus is put solely on religion. The Central African Republic ranks 185 out of 187 in the United Nation’s human development index, despite its wealth of natural resources. According to Guérékoyame-Gbangou, there are only 20 registered businesses in his country. This economic instability is underscored by the government’s lack of resources, limited capacity, and limited authority over many regions of the country. Lack of economic opportunity and the struggling government create an environment where joining a militia is an attractive option for young men who can’t find work. Additionally, schools are no longer in session, which further exacerbates instability.
“We’re actually losing—sacrificing—an entire generation of kids who are instead being prepared, being groomed if you will, to become rebels or bandits,” said Layama.
Some people are perpetrating violence “in God’s name.” Many more people of faith, however, bring peace and promote dialogue between the different groups. For example, in certain neighborhoods in the capital city of Bangui, Christians have sheltered and protected their Muslim neighbors. Some young Christians and Muslims have started to pray together. Layama said he sees “a lot of people who are coming together, who are eating together, working together, and playing together. This is how they are together going to dream a better future for our country.”
Faith must be a force for reconciliation. These three leaders hope that people of faith around the world will pray together with the people of the Central African Republic. When the peace leaders are people of faith, then the smokescreen begins to lift and the conflict’s real causes can be exposed to the light.
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