Peaceful Coexistence a facade? A case of Shafic Osman vs Wesley Girls High School.
Ideally, peaceful coexistence exists only when every person, irrespective of religion, culture, or belief, feels safe and sound as a member of society. But how then do we claim peaceful coexistence when the only time you remember how much you love your Muslim neighbors is when you get fried meat in abundance to commemorate Eid celebrations? Or how good you think your Christian friends are only when they remember to gift you that Christmas hamper full of groceries to last you months? Shouldn’t peaceful coexistence manifest in how we love each other every day, rather than just a concept that emerges during religious celebrations?
Ghana, over the years, has seen cases of religious discrimination that are often swept under the carpet, especially in Senior High schools. The case of Wesley Girls’ confronts a national habit where children are forcibly indoctrinated with religious principles that go contrary to their beliefs. If a school is mainly a place for learning, how then does this same school become a vessel for carrying out religious discrimination where school children are forced to eat while they proclaim they are fasting, or why their fellow students are recruited as spies to report them when they are seen praying? Some students are deterred from associating with their colleagues of similar faith in fear of being accused of holding religious meetings contrary to their school’s rules. This raises the question of whether religious tolerance is really a thing in public schools in Ghana, or merely a concept reserved for people who abuse the rights of students in secret and preach ‘religious tolerance’ to the public.
A country whose constitution clearly states that every person is entitled to enjoy, practice, profess, maintain, and promote any culture, language, tradition, or religion should champion the well-being of its citizens regardless of their cultural or religious background. Children are among the vulnerable people we have, and if school rules triumph over these rights and cannot protect them in schools where they should feel the safest, then the constitution has failed to live up to expectations. A state that claims secularity and equality to practice any religion and manifest such practices should protect the rights of its school-going children, who cannot protest. That Achimota student who was discriminated against because of his hair, or that girl who was made to live in perpetual fear and shame of being seen and that, her forehead prostrating on the floor made people uneasy, or that student who jumped to his death because he was scared of being caught and facing punishment for practicing his religion, or the traditionalist who hides his beads because his classmates will call him names?
Silence does not indicate consent. And school children are being silenced because they chose to attend schools funded by the government, pretending to belong to religions they do not believe in, because silence is made to feel safer than expression. Do we fold our arms and watch because it simply does not affect us, or take necessary actions before Ghana becomes like our neighboring countries crippled by violence stemmed from years of intolerance?
Until we learn to broach the difficult topics and have the uncomfortable conversations, our school children will continue to shrink and be crushed by the same institutions they walked in with high hopes and expectations. So when this issue comes up, it is not only directed to Wesley Girls, but to all public schools that practice such discrimination.
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