by Fatima Babih, EdD
In both Islam and Christianity, the very faiths Fatima Bio claims to be “bridging,” hypocrisy is one of the gravest moral failings for a human being. Both religions condemn those who say one thing and do another, using religion for self-interest rather than faith. This is exactly what Fatima Bio demonstrates in her recent FB post.
Once again she attempted to cast herself in a role that Sierra Leone never needed her to play, the self-proclaimed “bridge builder” between Muslims and Christians. In her recent Facebook post, she claims that as “a Muslim woman married to a Catholic Christian,” she has become an ally to both faiths and a unifier of religious communities in the country.
This claim, however, is not only misplaced but historically dishonest and misleading.
Sierra Leone Does Not Need Fatima Bio to Build Religious Bridges
Interfaith harmony is not a new concept in Sierra Leone. For generations, Sierra Leoneans have lived as one family, Muslims, Christians, and traditional beliefs, sharing DNA, homes, meals, and even places of worship. It is common for Muslim families to have Christian relatives, and vice versa. Religious coexistence is part of the very soul of Sierra Leone’s cultural and spiritual identity.
In fact, interreligious marriages have been the norm, not exceptions, in this country long before Fatima Jabbie Bio appeared on the political stage in 2018.
For instance, the late First Lady Patricia Kabbah, a devout Christian, was married to President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, a practicing Muslim. Yet, neither she nor her husband ever felt the need to parade their interfaith marriage as a “bridge” between religions. Their union spoke for itself, marked by humility, mutual respect, and national service, not self-promotion.
Marrying a Christian Does Not Make a Muslim Woman a Bridge
A Mende woman being married to a Temne man does not make her a unifier between the two tribes. Fatima Bio, a self-professed Muslim woman who also attends church services and partakes in Christian ceremonies, being married to a Christian, does not make her a religious unifier or a reformer.
Sierra Leone’s peace between faiths has never depended on one woman’s attendance at church ceremonies. To claim otherwise is not only hypocritical but an insult to the history and maturity of our nation’s religious communities.
Muslim and Christian leaders across Sierra Leone have long worked together in mutual respect, through inter religious councils, joint prayers, and community initiatives, without ever needing the approval or publicity of a First Lady. The peace between Sierra Leone’s religions is a national treasure built by ordinary citizens and generations of leaders who value quiet service over self-glorification.
Fatima Bio’s self-aggrandizing post is just another attempt to position herself at the center of every narrative in that country, even those that have existed long before she re-discovered Sierra Leone in 2018 when her husband became president. Her pattern of hijacking narratives, exaggeration and self-promotion continues to overshadow genuine acts of unity in the country.
Sierra Leone does not need a hypocrite “bridge builder” like Fatima Jabbie Bio who leaves Church service, and goes down the road to SLPP party office where she not only denies food to a poor hungry elderly citizen, but mocks her, makes her the butt of her joke and endangers her life in her community by acusing her of being a member of the opposition.
What our country needs are leaders who reflect humility, decency, and genuine service to country and citizens, not a grandstanding, attention-seeking failed Nollywood fame seeker disguised as a faith diplomat.
Fatima Bio is not the first Muslim woman married to a Christian man, and she certainly will not be the last. But marriage, interfaith or not, is a personal relationship, not a national credential. True bridge builders work quietly to heal the nation and uplift people, not to collect applause for existing in a marriage that countless Sierra Leoneans have lived long before her.
MAMA SALONE ~ Lioness of the West Coast 