Hessian Peace Prize 2013 awarded to Imam Dr Muhammad Ashafa and Pastor Dr James Wuye

The Hessian Peace Prize 2013 is awarded to two persons for the first time in its history: the founders of the Interfaith Mediation Centre, Imam Dr. Muhammad Ashafa and Pastor Dr. James Wuye from Nigeria

The laudatory speech for the award recipients will be held by Professor Dirk Messner, Director of the German Development Institute.


The award ceremony will take place on Wednesday, 30th October 2013, at 11 a.m. in the music hall of the Hessian State Parliament.


This was announced by the President of the Hessian State Parliament, Norbert Kartmann, the Chairman of the Committee of the Hessian Peace Prize, retired Minister of State Karl Starzacher, and the Executive Director of the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt, Professor Harald Müller, on 19th September 2013 in Wiesbaden.

Professor Müller explained the awarding to Muhammad Ashafa and James Wuye:


"Imam Muhammad Ashafa comes from a Muslim family, which ever since the colonization by Great Britain in the 19th century has put up resistance against the western-Christian influence in Nigeria. He distanced himself from the public education system, because according to his beliefs everything worth knowing can be found in the Koran.

 

James Wuye is a minister in a protestant church congregation in Nigeria. When he listened to a sermon in his youth, he instantly felt addressed by God and has since then been highly involved in a Christian youth league (YCMA of Nigeria). Its purpose was also to protect the Christian minority in Nigeria from Muslim influences.

 

The two awardees were still enemies in 1992. Muhammad Ashafa belonged to a radical Islamist organization, while James Wuye fought for a militant-fundamentalist Christian militia. The interethnic conflicts brought destruction, suffering and death to the region around the provincial capital of Kaduna in the north of Nigeria – for almost three years.

The Imam lost two cousins as well as his old theological teacher. James Wuye’s right hand had to be amputated.


Finally it was Muhammad Ashaffa, who took the initiative to break the cycle of violence and the suffering, In the course of many conversations with each other, the distrust gave way, enabling mutual visits in mosque and church. The awardees were subject to a lot of pressure from their religious communities at the time, since they could not relate to their change after years of combating. Out of the deep conviction that these interreligious conflicts could and had to be solved peacefully, Ashafa and Wuye started to mediate between the parties to the conflict.

In 2001 violent conflicts between the two religions broke out again in Kaduna. Subsequently, the two clergymen founded the "Interfaith Mediation Centre". Trained teams from this centre are frequently employed in conflict areas in order to mediate. Over the course of a long process with the aim of building trust between the two religions, they have managed to ease the conflict situation around Kaduna.  

 

Due to the joint initiative of the awardees, a declaration of peace was signed in 2002, which was supported by various Christian and Muslim representatives. This declaration of peace (Kaduna Peace Declaration of Religious Leaders) is today still seen as a model of religious peace in the north of Nigeria.

When in September 2005, due to the release of Mohammed caricatures in the Danish daily Jylland-Posten, a regional conflict was impending in the north of Nigeria, Ashafa and Wuye interceded in the conflict as early as a few hours after the publication, by persuading Christian leaders to publicly condemn the caricatures. Thus a potential escalation with many deaths was avoided.


Meanwhile Ashafa and Wuye have developed a school curriculum, which contributes to religious peace and is already applied in more than 30 schools in Northern Nigeria. Furthermore, they have established peace camps with the goal of deconstructing enemy images with radical youths. There women are trained as mediators and appointed for intervention in conflicts. This strategy is also applied in Northern Ghana, Burundi and Kenya."
 

German original text: Public Relations Department of the Hessian State Parliament

 

Photos: Stiftung die schwelle – Beiträge zum Frieden, Bremen
 

The previous laureates of the Hessian Peace Prize.