Leaders hide behind religion instead of solving country’s many problems

Islamic fundamentalism has been identified as a major reason for Kenya’s ongoing problems with terrorism.

Undoubtedly people proclaiming fundamentalist Islamic beliefs have been behind some of the attacks, and they should be investigated and charged.

But those using the name of Islam to kill, maim and destroy don’t operate within the dictates of this religion of peace and goodwill.

Like fundamentalist Christians, extreme Islamists use religion for political and earthly reasons, to gain power and influence for their own purposes. For religious extremism — Christian or Islamic — is about power and intolerance, and about forcing others to toe their line, masquerading it as “God’s way.”

It is no surprise that some would try to use Islam for their own political purposes, for in Kenya fundamentalist Christianity has been on the rise since the 1980s, brooking little tolerance, and trying to marginalise others as we saw in the referendum debates of 2010.

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Former President Moi institutionalised Christian worship in 1978, attending church services every Sunday, even preaching and giving sermons. And there were the mass prayer rallies at Uhuru Park with evangelists like Reinhard Bonnke and TD Jakes that Moi rarely missed.

But in the midst of all this public religiosity, Moi was overseeing a regime that did not hesitate to assassinate people like Robert Ouko; was perpetrating massacres like Wagalla; and was engaged in deadly ethnic cleansing in the Rift Valley, Coast and Western Kenya against perceived opposition supporters.

As he urged us to love our neighbours every Sunday, during the week his regime was cannibalising the State through massive corruption and land grabbing.

WRAP HIMSELF IN THE KORAN

Mwai Kibaki, previously not a noted church goer, decided to follow Moi’s nyayos when he took power and we started seeing a lot of him in churches on Sundays. And at the same time, Anglo Leasing unfolded; the Election Commission was bastardised, triggering the crisis in 2008; and Gikuyu domination in public offices and development returned.

We also had an explosion of extrajudicial executions as our church-going president gave the police a free hand to be the judge, jury and executioner for poor ordinary Kenyans.

Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto have followed suit seamlessly with one or both publicly attending church every Sunday. And we have seen them validate corruption by paying Anglo Leasing; preside over the 1970s-like poaching of our elephants and rhinos; tolerate the Westgate drinking and looting spree in the aftermath of the terror attack; fill public positions with either Gikuyu or Kalenjin loyalists; and do nothing when imams are assassinated willy-nilly.

They started this religiosity before they took power. Remember the “prayer rallies” they held across Kenya once indicted by the ICC? And how some clergy bent over backwards to bless them even as they had little to say for the victims of the violence?

Now, just for a moment imagine if Governor Issa Timamy of Lamu adopted a similar religious-political approach to the ICC-like charges he is facing. Imagine if he were to hold prayer rallies all over Lamu and the Coast, wrapping himself with the Koran and seeking blessings from Islamic clergy to lift this “yoke around his neck.”

And once the case starts, imagine he then sought to be excused from the proceedings, applied for video conferencing as he is too busy to attend trial, and witnesses recanted or disappeared.

And imagine he then lobbied the Coast Governor’s Forum to pass resolutions calling for the charges to be dropped as a “bara” (read neo-colonial) effort to subdue the coastal people, and for immunity for governors while in office as the African Union recently did for presidents.

Would it be different because he is a Muslim?

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