An erroneous news report regarding the banning of Islam and demolition of mosques in Angola, has taken over the news in the past few days.
The news reported by agencies such as Daily Mail, UK and India Today, stated that the African country had banned Islam and Muslims and that it had ordered the demolition of mosques in the country.
The International Business (IB) Times however has reported that these claims are false and that Angola’s ambassador in Washington, DC has dismissed any such claim.
“The Republic of Angola … it’s a country that does not interfere in religion,” an official at the Angola embassy, who did not want to be named, told the IB Times.
“We have a lot of religions there. It is freedom of religion. We have Catholic, Protestants, Baptists, Muslims and evangelical people.”
“At the moment we don’t have any information about that,” a second official told IB Times on Monday. “We’re reading about it just like you on the Internet. We don’t have any information that what you’re reading on the Internet is true.”
The Dhaka Tribune had earlier reported this ban, with reference to Angolan news agencies which quoted Angolan Minister of Culture Rosa Cruz e Silva as saying: “The process of the legalization of Islam has not been approved by the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, their mosques will be closed until further notice.”
An Angolan newspaper, The Osun Defender,had also reportedly quoted President José Eduardo dos Santos as saying: “This is the final end of Islamic influence in our country.”
However, the first Angolan Embassy official quoted above told the IB Times: “The president has been out of the country for a week,” adding the president would not have made such comments anyway.
The IB Times also referred to weekly French-language Moroccan newspaper La Nouvelle Tribune that published an article on Friday sourcing "several" Angolan officials, including the minister of Culture, Rosa Cruz, who reportedly offered the following remarks, which have been translated from French: "The process of the legalisation of Islam has not been approved by the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights. Their mosques will be closed until further notice."
The Moroccon newspaper also claimed that an Angolan mosque minaret was dismantled last October, and that the city of Zango "has gone further by destroying the only mosque in the city," a claim the first Angolan official quoted above could not confirm.
He also denied knowledge of the culture minister’s comments.
“I cannot confirm if the Minister of Culture said that. I cannot find that in our press,” the official told the IB Times.
According to the U.S. State Department, Angola is a majority Christian nation of about 16 million people of whom only an estimated 80,000 to 90,000 Angolans are Muslim.
