Attacks a sign of growing intolerance

Last week, two women were stripped naked in public by male “moral prefects” in Nairobi.

Raw footage of the attack found its way to various platforms on Kenya’s burgeoning online community.

The video quickly became a hot topic of discussion online before graduating to radio and other traditional mainstream media outlets.

One thing that emerges from the ensuing debate is the hardline position of some contributors.

Israel’s new President Reuven (Ruvi) Rivlin, in an interview published in the latest issue of The New Yorker, is quoted as saying this about Jewish extremists:

“It’s not just Jews against Arabs. It’s the Orthodox versus those who don’t think they can keep all six hundred and thirteen commandments of the Bible. It’s rich people versus poor people. At some point, something came over Israel so that everyone has his own ideas — and everyone else is an enemy. It’s a dialogue among deaf people and it is getting more and more serious.”

The dictionary defines an extremist as “a person who holds extreme or fanatical political or religious views, especially one who resorts to or advocates extreme action.”

Its synonyms include “fundamentalist”, “hardliner”, “fanatic”, “radical”, and “zealot”.

A man trashing an opposition leader and the subsequent exaltation of the action on social media may not look much like an act of extremism.

What about the eviction of a man from a political party’s parliamentary group meeting for voicing his views?

These lesser, isolated cases are mutating into unfortunate incidents, as is the undressing in public of a woman some men considered to be inappropriately dressed.

As I write this, the battle lines are drawn. Two camps — #Mydressmychoice and #Nudityisnotmychoice — are at each other’s throat on social media and on the streets.

WAR AGAINST HUMANITY

Look closer and you will see that this is more than just a gender issue; it is a war against humanity being fronted from different sides.

Both cases raise what they consider to be valid points, but aggression, conceit, and street protests will not resolve their differing opinions.

Airing your opinion and earning respect because of it is an art. Shoving it into someone else’s face or using force and violence to express it smacks of lack of civility.

With the memories of the violent aftermath of the 2007 General Election still fresh in the minds of Kenyans, it is incumbent upon each one of us to prevent such a recurrence.

Humanity is in a crisis. The battle lines are drawn — political, religious, tribal, economic, gender.

We seem to have forgotten how to be human and have become clusters, grouped according to convenience of birth.

We seem to have convinced ourselves that we are the only holders of the truth and that everyone else’s point of view does not matter.

Africa is rising. Well, good for it! But with this kind of intolerance, we may be nurturing prosperity only for someone else to enjoy it.

In the words of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, “We shall have to learn again to be one nation, or one day we shall be no nation”.

Mr Ndolo is a co-founder of Current Futures Bureau research and policy formulation centre. ([email protected]).

Readers are invited to send their opinion and commentary articles to [email protected].