Al Kags

On Friday this week, after the Jum’ah prayers, muslims in Nairobi held a demonstration seeking the protection of the rights of the Jamaican controversial cleric, Sheikh Abdullah al-Faisal, who has been reported (see article as far back as 2003) to promote racist and religious fundamentalist views and who has a result, has been deported several times and denied entry into many countries because of his inflamatory views. The Kenyan muslims took offence at his arrest and various attempts by the government to deport him – whereas many countries have refused him entry, even on a transitory basis and therefore made notice that they would be demonstrating on Friday. Friday came and the demonstrators had running battles with the police that left seven people shot dead and others injured.

My friend, veteran political activist Onyango Oloo was not far from the scene of the fracas when it was in progress and made a commentary of what he saw as well as some of the conclusions he made. Onyango’s post here is problematic from a factual perspective and makes minor though significant errors in inference – which can be excused by the time that he wrote the commentary (he did not have the time to make proper investigations.)

For example, he refers to the demonstration as a peaceful one.  It wasn’t. It is at best problematic to infer peaceful intent by the demonstrators if they carry guns and knives to the demonstrations. A policeman was stabbed in the commotion, a crime (as my friend Stephen D. Partington would say) that is unpleasant in the best of times. More to the point, that there were gunshots coming out of the mosque is an indication of preparedness for chaos as is this notice published in the Muslim website – “we promise to paralyze normal business within the Nairobi area CBD come this Friday inshaallah… we Muslims must show our might come this Friday. We will help Sheikh Abdullah Al-Faisal in every way possible…and this’s a promise we will not brake inshallah”

it is to be noted that the demonstrators used the sanctuary of the mosque as a base to conduct their illicit warfare. For instance, they stoned Alfred Mutua, which would normally induce chuckles in many sitting rooms but in this case, is an indicator of some recklessness on the part of the muslim demonstrators.

Onyango Oloo, can further be understood, when he immediately makes the assumption that the police were being vicious and the demonstrators innocent because has suffered severely in the hands of the Moi regime in the mid 1980s to the extent that he had to seek asylum in Canada for years.  The lack of objectivity in his commentary can be understood and even excused.

But this is not the issue. Indeed, the matter of what to do with the infamous cleric and his supporters is not even the most pertinent issue that we, Kenyans, need to concern our primary thoughts with.

The issue is this: It is generally agreed that extremism (of whatever nature) poses a real threat to world peace in general and extremist religious islamic terrorism poses the largest threat by far of any global extremist threat. This general agreement also goes so far as to expect any government worth its salt to protect its people from terrorism by taking all measures necessary.

There is also a general convention agreed the world over that every human being has certain inalienable rights that cannot be tampered with except where there is clear irrefutable proof that that person has intent or has caused harm to other people.

To wit, there is a line between the government responsibility to protection of the people from the threat of terrorism and the protection by the government and everyone else of the inalienable human rights. But where is that line? Which side of that line should Kenya lean?

As we have already seen in America and other places with the Homeland security conundrum, these two issues are sometimes mutually exclusive. Kenya has had to keep al-Faisal locked up until they can hire a plane to take him back to Jamaica (I agree with this by the way, spare no expense) therefore infringing on his rights to free movement, expression and interaction because it is globally agreed that he is a divisive and dangerous man – seven died because of him this past friday – to protect the greater good…

And yet it can be a slippery slope from there.

The other interesting question is the rise of fundamentalism even in the Christian world and what causes it and makes it accelerate (apart of course from Muslims stoning people in town) – and here you begin to wonder the direction that the mungiki are taking, the rising influence of the new churches (I heard of one today called Helicopter of Kenya Church) and so on.

The Kenyan discussion has to make decisions of where we want to be with regard to protection against fundamentalism vs. protection of human rights.

Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasrin said, “The fundamentalists are increasing. People, afraid to oppose those fundamentalists, shut their mouths. It is really very difficult to make people move against a sensitive issue like religion, which is the source of fundamentalism.” I hasten to add “some” the source of some fundamentalism.

It is a new world.