Popular Islamic scholar, Sheikh Gumi, has declared that bandits are peaceful people, stating that most of them are victims of circumstances.
He made this known while speaking on Channels Television’s Politics Today.
The Islamic cleric, however, condemned the act of criminality by bandits.
He stressed that bandits were forced into criminality.
According Gumi: “When I listened to them, I found out that it is a simple case of criminality which turned into banditry, which turned into ethnic war, and some genocide too behind the scene; people don’t know.
There is no excuse for any crime; nothing can justify crime, and they are committing crime.
“I think it is a population that is pushed by circumstances into criminality.
“And this is what we should look at, let’s remove the pressure, let’s remove the things that made them into criminals because we have lived thousands of years without any problems with the nomadic herdsmen. They are peaceful people. But something happened that led them to this.”
