Posted on 01/07/2008 2:47:23 AM PST by sandbox
While I was away, reading about the appalling atrocities in Kenya in which churches were torched and dozens of Christians burned to death, I wondered whether any mainstream media would get the point. They didn’t. As far as I could see, the violence was universally ascribed to ‘tribal conflict’. But this isn’t the first time churches in Kenya have been torched, as you can read here (date unknown):
On 13 June, Muslims rioting over the arrest of one of their clerics torched five churches in Bura, Tana River district, not far from Mombasa in Kenya… As impunity equals permission, this is a serious issue of national significance at a time when Muslim tensions are rising to boiling point. or here from 2001: Anglican Archbishop David Gitari and an interfaith team confronted rioting Muslim youths armed with swords and clubs on December 1 in Nairobi, Kenya. In response to this attempt to quell Kenya's worst outbreak of violence between Christians and Muslims, the rioters pelted the archbishop and his team with rocks. Moderate Muslim leaders plucked Gitari from the mob and rushed him to a nearby hospital, where he was treated for head injuries. ‘I survived only because Muslim leaders formed a human shield around me and in the process got more injured than myself,’ Gitari later said in local media reports. Or here from 2003: Muslim leaders in Kenya are threatening armed conflict if the new Kenyan constitution does not enshrine Islamic courts (known in Kenya as Kadhi courts). For years, Kenya has been subjected to creeping Islamisation and jihadi violence by elements within the country’s ten per cent Muslims against the Christian majority. Yet unaccountably there was no mention of this key fact in the media coverage of the post-election violence. Well, fancy! In the Christian Post, this article, (which was picked up by Stephen Pollard) written before the disputed election which led to the violence, put events in a rather more accurate context. Raila Odinga, it said, who was then the current presidential frontrunner, had promised to implement strict Islamic Sharia law if he received the Muslim vote and was elected president. Odinga had signed a secret memorandum of understanding with Sheikh Abdullahi Abdi, chairman of the National Leaders Forum, in which Odinga had allegedly stated his intention, if elected, to
‘within six months, rewrite the Constitution of Kenya to recognize Sharia as the only true law sanctioned by the Holy Quran for Muslim declared regions’. The Evangelical Alliance of Kenya released a statement in which church leaders said Odinga ‘comes across as a presumptive Muslim president bent on forcing Islamic law, religion and culture down the throats of the Kenyan people in total disregard of the Constitutionally guaranteed rights of freedom of worship and equal protection of the law for all Kenyans.’ The Africa regional manager for International Christian Concern, Darara Gubo, said the agreement ‘undermines the secular nature of Kenya and opens a Pandora’s box of chaos and conflict similar to what happened in Nigeria and Sudan. This is not a stand-alone incident; rather, it is part of strategy to Islamize Eastern Africa and the Horn of Africa, through the introduction of Sharia law’. Subsequently Joshua Hammer wrote a piece in the New York Times which, without going so far as to join up all the dots (please, this is the NYT!), nevertheless provided a hint of the same, ahem, context. Writing about sitting Kenyan MP Joseph Lekuton, he described his challenger, Godana Harugura, as … a convert to fundamentalist Islam who had reportedly raised money from Muslims along Kenya’s volatile border with Somalia by promising to ‘reclaim’ the region for Islam — and by attacking Lekuton for inviting Christian development groups into the area…Indeed, in the view of some of Lekuton’s supporters the election was shaping up to be a proxy confrontation between the West and Islam — a clash of civilizations in the Kenyan bush… A sizable, largely poor Muslim population concentrated along the coast — and proximity to the volatile states in the Horn of Africa, including Somalia and Sudan — have made Kenya especially vulnerable, in the views of counterterrorism experts, to the call for jihad. Since the early 1990s, the mosques of Mombasa and other towns have resonated with militant Islamic rhetoric. Radical imams have preached violence against Westerners, attacked the Kenyan government as the lackey of the United States and Israel and called for the implementation of Shariah. Members of the Qaeda cells that blew up the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on Aug. 7, 1998, were recruited in mosques near the Indian Ocean beaches where hundreds of thousands of Western tourists flock each year.
Apart from that, I have found plenty of worthy hand-wringing in the mainstream media about tribal violence between equally bloodthirsty Kenyan sectarian groups, but diddly squat about the Kenyan jihad and the remorseless creation of Africastan.
And now look at this on Atlas Shrugs which, after railing at the media for failing to report what is actually going on in Kenya, makes the following claim: Raila Odinga has, in his own words, a 'close personal friendship' with Barrack Hussein Obama Junior.When Obama went to Kenya in August of 2006, he was hosted by Raila and spoke in praise of him at rallies in Nairobi: Obama's bias for his fellow Luo was so blatant that a Kenya government spokesman denounced Obama during his visit as Raila's ‘stooge.’ Oh dear. Maybe this is what Obama means by being the candidate of ‘change’.
Wow! By now the gist of this article shouldn’t surprise anyone—until you get to the last couple of paragraphs and read of Obama’s apparent political support and rallying for the candidate promising to impose Sharia law.
Yes, check out this link:
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2008/01/obamas-oginga-o.html#trackback
This is significant, thanks for posting it!
“This is significant....”
That’s exactly why the MSM won’t print it. Now, if it were Christians going on the rampage it would dominate the written press and TV like the dickens. The ROP gets a free pass from the MSM, which further encourages them to more and wider violence.
i don´t think islam or in general religion is a major issue in this conflict right now. i think it´s more about tribalism.
from cia world factbook:
Religions:
Protestant 45%, Roman Catholic 33%, Muslim 10%, indigenous beliefs 10%, other 2%
but if you look at the ethnic groups there is more diversity
Ethnic groups:
Kikuyu 22%, Luhya 14%, Luo 13%, Kalenjin 12%, Kamba 11%, Kisii 6%, Meru 6%, other African 15%, non-African (Asian, European, and Arab) 1%
anyway it´s africa so it will be as usuall they will wreck their own country and then they will cry for help to the western world that we pay to fix it. and after that it will start again. i guess they will never learn.
Yes, and this particular angle reminds me of someone’s comment on a Luntz thread, that we need to get Michelle Malkin on the case with her investigative journalism.
Because in our world with thousands of journalists it seems like just a handful do real investigative work and reporting on the important stories.
Yes tribalism may be domnating factor. I am surprised that Sen. Obama has not yet issued statement distancing himself from any connection to Odinga.
Our pastor talked about this in church yesterday. He had been contacted by a fellow pastor that he had worked with just months ago, when he and a delegation from our church were in Kenya. He said the ‘unrest’ was due to elections.
You know the Saudis are arming the Islamakazis. We should arm everybody else and then look away.
Thank you for posting this! I have been puzzled by the lack of context in reports on the Kenyan violence, and I suspected (just somehow...) that Islam was behind it. Talk about a news black-out!
As for Obama, if he gets elected, the US will see sharia given the same status as US law within no time at all, and probably imposed universally within the next few years. People see him as a harmless alternative to Hillary, but he’s not harmless at all.
The violence is confined to Muslim areas, along the coast and particularly up by the Somali border around Lamu. There are Muslim majority areas of Kenya. It is the old Bloody Borders routine.
The BIG ISSUE of the WORLDWIDE ISLAMISM should be highlighted in this electoral campaign.
But i understand that demonrats,and specially,OUSBAMA are not very confortable with that.
It sends back to another MAIN ISSUE which is the question of the core values of USA,the american culture.
The same essential question is asked to all the western so-called developped countries.
As the old western european countries seems to be unable to give an accurate and clear answer many are waiting for USA to take a STRONG LEADERSHIP today when islamism should awaken us...
i guess it would be wise for every politician to distance him/herself from any african so called “leader” in generall because in africa you will never know what´s happening next or just a year later.
http://www.geneveith.com/lutheran-church-burned-in-kenya/_212/
UPDATE: This conflict is NOT between Muslims and Christians. Both of the tribes tearing each other apart are predominately Christian from many different denominations. The Kikuyus have been the ruling tribe, with the Luos feeling oppressed and mistreated. The riots started when the Kikuyu president was re-elected amidst charges of stealing the election, whereupon the Luos rose up in protest.
According to my research, the Lutherans are primarily Luos. It was Luos–hopefully, not any of the relatively small number of Lutherans–who burned the Assemblies of God church and slaughtered between 30 and 50 Kikukyus who had gone there for sanctuary. Apparently, the Kikuyus are now burning Luo churches. Or perhaps this is not so much revenge as what happens in a state of anarchy when all social order breaks down.
If anyone has any more background information. please comment.
You know the Saudis are arming the Islamakazis. We should arm everybody else and then look away.
Will Hillary use this....or is it too Politically Incorrect???
We are arming the military. We should just be dropping rifles out of airplanes and arming everybody.
Here is a summary on the agreement which was signed:
* It pledges the support of Kenyan Moslems for Raila’s election. In return, as President of Kenya, Raila agrees to 14 actions, listed a) through n) on page two.
* Within 6 months re-write the Constitution of Kenya to recognize Shariah as the only true law sanctioned by the Holy Quran for Muslim declared regions.
* Within one year facilitate the establishment of a Shariah court in every Kenyan divisional headquarters. [Note: everywhere in Kenya, not just in “Muslim declared regions.”]
* “Popularize Islam, the only true religion… by ordering every primary school in Kenya in the regions to conduct daily Madrassa classes.”
* “Impose a total ban on open-air gospel crusades by worshippers of the cross…”
* “Outlaw gospel programs… on KBC, the National Broadcaster.”
* “Impose a total ban on the public consumption of alcoholic beverages…”
* “Impose an immediate ban on women’s public dressing styles that are considered immoral and offensive to the Muslim faith…” ------------
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