Ugandan Muslims say they live a settled and peaceful life in Uganda, enjoying freedom of worship and access to education and government
support

KAMPALA, UGANDA (FILE) REUTERS-

Although only around 12 percent of Uganda's population of about 31 million are Muslim, the influence of this small minority is very visible in the busy markets and commercial districts of Kampala, where many shops and stalls are Muslim owned and sell everything from Halal meats to copies of the holy Quran and magazines specifically tailored to Muslim readers.
   

Although Islam and Christianity are both proselytising religions that are inherently competitive, both faiths seem to co-exist peacefully in Uganda.
   

"Their situation is not bad. They concentrate on doing business, except that at times they divide themselves, but it is not so rare . So Muslim in Uganda, there are no problem. They are people who cooperate with everyone," says Zainab, a Muslim resident of Kampala.
   

Muslims in Uganda have their own schools and associations for which they receive funding for from the Ugandan government. Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi visited Uganda in March to inaugurate a new mosque in Kamapala,
brining the total number of moques in the country to six.    

"We go to seminars from different associations that assist us to develop spiritually and we have also associations for women that educate women," says Aisha, a resident of Kampala.
   

Sheikh Harun Sengooba of the Union of Muslim Councils for East, Central and Southern Africa believes that Islam is growing fast in Uganda and he puts this down to the freedoms given to Muslims in the country.
   

"We have in Uganda here Muslim schools, best schools, and we have an organisation which co-ordinates with the Minister of Education in Uganda, in order to have a standard education and you have government schools and also we have Muslim schools that are based and founded under the Islamic foundation," he says.
   

Islam is growing fast across Africa and its progress is prompting new interest in Islam's long, uneven spread elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa, where Christianity normally predominates but where indigenous faiths are in retreat.
   

Those who gauge political risk are on alert for any sign of strain in the usually equable relations between Christians and Muslims south of the Sahara, and for any evidence of the arrival of radical Islamic movements from the Middle East.
   

While anecdotal evidence suggests a growth in the proportion of sub-Saharan Africans embracing Islam, as well as "born again" forms of Protestant Christianity, data is scarce.
   

Money is also helping the spread of Islam in Africa. Islamic non-governmental groups in Africa, many backed by Gulf oil cash, grew from 138 in 1980 to 891 in 2000, more than twice the rate of increase in the total number of Africa's NGOs in the period, according to research carried out by the Leiden University in the Netherlands.
   

Tensions between Islam and Christianity have so far been mitigated by the influential legacy of tolerant African traditional religions, communal movements that have no ambitions to convert humankind.
   

But the contest between the two can be violent, feeding sectarianism into wider conflicts such as those in Sudan and Ivory Coast.
   

A report by the Roman Catholic church as far back as 1990 said Catholics and Muslims in Africa risked going on a dangerous collision course over efforts to convert new followers.
   

Relations seems to be at their worst in Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, where the two religions share roughly equally its population of 130 million people.
   

Religious violence there has killed at least 5,000 people since 2000, when 12 northern states predominantly inhabited by Muslims established Islamic Sharia law.

Source :  http://mpelembe.blogware.com/blog/Community/_archives/2008/4/22/3653620.html