Image Sourec: Camaramen
Africa – According to Sheikh Mussagy Abdul Rahman, board member of the Mozambique Islamic Council, an entire village in Cabo Delgado, northern Mozambique, was burned to the ground overnight, the latest in a persistent cycle of insurgent attacks that have left coastal Muslim communities displaced and dispossessed.
The attack, in the Ancuabe district, follows the burning of churches in the same area last month, a pattern the sheikh says is a deliberate attempt to reframe the conflict as religiously motivated.
Abdul Rahman said the situation on the ground is critical, with reports of killings and abductions emerging daily from multiple districts across the province. Just days before the latest attack, at least twelve people were killed and others forcibly recruited by insurgents in the same district, with the province seeing no respite from violence since 2017.
“Today we just woke up with the news that in one district in Cabo Delgado, the whole village has been wiped out. This village had first witnessed the burning of a church last month, and now the whole village has been burned,” he said.
Humanitarian Crisis Deepens
The violence has compounded an already serious humanitarian crisis. Communities along Cabo Delgado’s coastline have borne the heaviest toll, with tens of thousands of displaced persons streaming into neighbouring provinces. Abdul Rahman said the majority of those uprooted are Muslim, given the demographics of the coastal areas most affected by the insurgency.
“These areas also are most Muslim-populated areas, so the great majority of people who have been suffering are Muslims, and they have been suffering. These are the people who lost their lands, who had to move from their lands, most of them to the city centre.”
Violence Moves Inland
What was once a conflict concentrated along the coast has now crept deeper into the province, with attacks on churches in recent weeks eliciting international concern. Abdul Rahman rejected any framing of the insurgency as a religious war, arguing that such a narrative obscures who is truly paying the price.
“The most people who are the victims are the Muslims themselves, and who lose the lands, who lose the mosques, are the Muslims. These are the ones who suffer the most. Although last month we saw this issue of churches being burned, the population of Cabo Delgado is a very mixed population.”
