Chief Imam's Office Demands Police Action Against Preacher Over Violent Remarks

Ghana's highest Islamic authority has taken a public stand against a preacher accused of calling for violence and it's put the country's tradition of interfaith tolerance squarely back in the spotlight.

According to a statement issued in Accra and signed by Osumanu Seidu, Executive Secretary of the Office of the National Chief Imam, the National Chief Imam, Sheikh Dr Osman Nuhu Sharubutu, has strongly condemned a Muslim preacher's calls for followers to respond with violence against people accused of denigrating the Prophet Muhammad. The statement said such remarks were inconsistent with the teachings of Islam and "no place in Ghana's peaceful, democratic and religiously diverse society."

Separately, the office's spokesperson has gone further, publicly demanding that police question the preacher and pursue prosecution over the remarks, which have been characterised in some reports as amounting to hate speech. The full identity and precise wording of the original remarks have not been independently and uniformly confirmed across all reporting, though the incident has generated widespread concern and discussion since surfacing online.

National Chief Imam

What stands out in the Chief Imam's statement is its emphasis on process. It explicitly said that religious disagreements, offensive expressions, or alleged insults "must not be addressed through violence or vigilantism, but through lawful and constitutionally recognised processes." That's a direct rebuke not just of the specific remarks in question, but of the broader idea that perceived religious insults justify taking matters into one's own hands.

The statement also noted that the preacher in question had since issued a public apology, which Sheikh Sharubutu acknowledged and appreciated even as the Chief Imam's office maintains its call for the matter to go through proper legal channels rather than being considered resolved by the apology alone.

This incident lands amid a wider public conversation in Ghana about religious tolerance, extremism, and the limits of free expression reportedly surfacing around the same time as debate over the government's plan to introduce Arabic as an optional subject in public schools. Ghana has long been held up as a rare example of religious coexistence in the region, and the Chief Imam's swift, public condemnation reflects an evident effort to keep it that way: drawing a clear line against incitement while still modeling restraint rather than escalation.