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Fourah Bay is a neighbourhood in Freetown, Sierra Leone. It is located in the East end of Freetown. [1]
| | This article needs additional citations for verification .(June 2017) |
Fourah Bay is a neighbourhood in Freetown, Sierra Leone. It is located in the East end of Freetown. [1]
Fourah Bay is an overwhelmingly Muslim majority neighborhood. The Oku people, an ethnic group predominantly of Yoruba descent, make up the majority of the population of Fourah Bay. [2] The Oku are virtually all Muslims based on the Sunni tradition of Islam. Fourah Bay is widely known for its conservative Muslim population. Fourah Bay is also home to a prominent minority of Salafi Muslims, a deeply conservative branch within Sunni Islam. The Jamiatul Atiq Masjid is the main mosque that serves the local Muslim community; it is one of the most prominent mosques in Sierra Leone.
The community at Fourah Bay has been a source of many expert Muslim scholars, including renowned Salafi Sunni Islamic scholar Sheikh Alhaji Sulaiman Alpha Carew. Many contemporary Muslim scholars from here were once students of Carew, including such men as Sheikh Mohamed Sanusi Tejan, Sheikh Muhammad Alpha Macauley, Sheikh Alpha Musa Nabie, Sheikh Muhammad Sanusi Savage, Sheikh Alpha Teslim Williams, and Sheikh Nasim Sahid. Fourah Bay Muslim scholars are widely known for maintaining neutrality in Sierra Leonean politics and its rare for Fourah Bay Muslim leadership to publicly criticize Sierra Leonean government.
There is a small Christian minority community here. They maintain a couple of churches. The Pentecostal Church of Fourah Bay serves part of the community. Muslims and Christians have had an amicable history here.
Fourah Bay College was founded here in the nineteenth century by the British and settlers, to serve the new communities of Freetown and others. It was started as a kind of seminary or boys' academy, and gradually developed with a full academic curriculum.
Since independence in 1961 to present, Fourah Bay has traditionally been a stronghold of the Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP), the current ruling party. The SLPP is popular in Fourah Bay, and maintains majority support among its residents.[ citation needed ]
Mohammed Sanusi Mustapha (widely known as M.S. Mustapha) is known as one of the founding fathers [ dubious ] who led Sierra Leone to Independence. He was also a prominent member of the Sierra Leone People's Party. He was a very close ally and personal friend of Sir Milton Margai, Sierra Leone's first prime minister after independence. Mustapha was highly popular here. Other notable politicians from Fourah Bay include Abdul Tejan Cole, Haja Afsatu Kabba and Madina Rahman.
The current president, Juda Bio is popular in Fourah Bay.
Some notable Oku families in Fourah Bay include the Alharazim, Ibrahim, Macauley, Alghali, Deen, Mahdi, Lewally, Cole, Rahman, Bakarr, Savage, Sahid, and Carew families.
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The Oku people or the Aku Marabout or Aku Mohammedans are an ethnic group in Sierra Leone and the Gambia, primarily the descendants of educated, liberated Muslim Yorubas from Southwest Nigeria, who were released from slave ships and resettled in Sierra Leone as Liberated Africans or came as settlers in the mid-19th century. Some Oku historically have intermarried since then with the ethnic Creole people. The Creole are primarily descendants of African-American former slaves, as well as some from Jamaica, and slaves liberated from illegal slave trading in the 19th century. The Oku people primarily reside in the communities of Fourah Bay, Fula Town, and Aberdeen and the official cemetery primarily used by the Oku people is the Aku Mohammedan Cemetery.
Jamiatul Atiq Mosque, also locally known as Fourah Bay Mosque, is a large mosque located in the neighborhood of Fourah Bay, in Freetown, Sierra Leone. The mosque regularly holds Islamic prayer services five times a day; and its also teaches Islamic education. The chief Imam of the Jamiatul Atiq Masjid is Chief Sheikh Alhaji Hassan Karim, and the deputy chief Imam is Sheikh Alhaji Nazir King.
Apha Saidu Bangura is a Sierra Leonean social media political commentator and political analyst who is currently a member of the communication unit at the Sierra Leone Ministry of Information and Communication. He regularly releases audio on WhatsApp and videos on YouTube about the latest major Sierra Leonean political news and other major incidents in Sierra Leone. Alpha Saidu is well known in the Sierra Leonean community in the United States and the Sierra Leonean community in Europe. Alpha Saidu is also well known across Sierra Leone.
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