By Talleyrand
The first digitalized mosque in Sierra Leone to embrace modern information and technology has caught the first thieves in Allah’s house of worship. The Khaabatullah Masjid in Aberdeen opened a fortnight ago was the talk of the town when news broke out that it was the first digitalized mosque in Sierra Leone to have well equipped state of the art modern machinery and technological innovations like CCTV cameras, alarming systems and other forms of information, education and communication technology like Facebook page, Instagram and Twitter accounts, web cams etc., all in a bid to protect its members from bad people such as thieves.
On Tuesday during the evening hours of prayers while faithful worshippers usually converge for supplication of prayers to Allah and breaking the fast, thieves crept in the mosque and carted away other worshippers’ personal effects.
This is a common practice by some worshippers in many masjids across the country that would go to them and cart away with others’ personal effects. But the Khaabatulah mosque has proven that technology works and was not a boundary for Islam to embrace it in Sierra Leone as the digital cameras planted in the mosque could help to catch the thieves through footages.
The cameras installed in and around the mosque could identify their faces and also traced their routes they used to escape but were unlucky as they were caught by the worshippers who alarmed the incident and they were surrounded and apprehended and brought before the elders of the mosque.
The imam and other elders of the mosque presided over the matter by first condemning the culprits for stealing as it is forbidden in and by Islam according to the Quran. They told the culprits to know that the act goes with a heavy punishment in Islamic states where Islam is the official religion and also the sharia law being the official jurisdiction.
They also told them that it was forbidden by constitutional law and punishable by same for stealing if turned over to the police in Sierra Leone and they investigated and found evidence of the act and prosecute you in a court of law where a judge would preside over the matter and pass a judgment. As a result, the religious clerics stated that all these measures (both religion and constitutional law) were established in order to discourage members of the public from stealing as a bad act or behaviour in order not to face the consequences of the law.
Meanwhile they admonished the culprits to desist from stealing and follow what the Quran teaches Muslims about the act and about the purity of living in the way that Allah has commanded them. They said they won’t commit them to the police but warned them and everyone strictly against such behavior repeating in the house of Allah else they will resort to the law of the state. They said the house of Allah does not discriminate members as they received all sorts of people that come to worship Him.
Significantly, the development has brought a new thinking in Islamic infrastructure in Sierra Leone especially the masjids. The digitalization of Khaabatulah Masjid has attracted many Muslims sects and organizations that are now yearning to go digital with established masjids in order to protect their members’ personal effects being attracted to criminals. They applauded the Aberdeen mosque example and wished to replicate same in modernizing their own masjids with digitalization.
