Another angle on Kenya

There's an interesting angle on what's happening in Kenya here - an angle I haven't seen reported properly so far:

Odinga has managed to present himself as standing against Kikuyu domination not only for the Luo but in some cases for other tribes as well, and he has also made appeals to the single-minded Muslim minority. Whether that Muslim minority has been especially ferocious in its attacks is unknown to me. What is known to me is that this aspect of Odinga's intent, and possibly of the mob violence against the Kikuyu that Odinga has done nothing to curb and everything to encourage, has not been mentioned in any of the Western accounts that I have seen.

Raila Odinga, the current frontrunner in the upcoming presidential election in Kenya, has promised to implement strict Islamic Sharia law if he receives the Muslim vote in the predominantly Christian country and is elected president.

A memorandum of understanding (MOU) – signed on Aug. 29 by Sheikh Abdullahi Abdi, chairman of the National Leaders Forum (Namlef), and Odinga, presidential candidate from the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) – was made public on Nov. 27.

According to International Christian Concern (ICC), however, there are in fact two versions of the MOU. The persecution watchdog group claims that Abdi and Odinga signed a private MOU which is very different from the one presented to the public.

In the secret version of the MOU, Odinga allegedly states his intention 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” if elected, according to ICC.

Odinga is currently seen as the favorite for the election which takes place on Dec. 27.

In response to the revelations, the Evangelical Alliance of Kenya released a statement in which church leaders said Raila, in both MOUs, “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.”

...[T]he ICC regional manager for Africa, Darara Gubo, said the agreement made with Muslim leaders “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,” Gubo stated.

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A mobile text for everyone (The Times)

I have a piece in today's Times on mobile phones in Kenya. Here's an extract, which explains why it's about far more than mobile phones in Kenya:

The single most fascinating thing I read last year was about the rise of mobile phones in Kenya. Not, you might think, the most thrilling of topics. In which case you'd be wrong, because it also helps to explain the murder of Benazir Bhutto, the reaction to Gordon Brown's refusal to call an election last autumn, the growth of the EU and the past few days' riots in Kenya.

The Cell Phone Revolution in Kenya, by June Arunga, tells a simple story: how, after the State had failed dismally to provide communications across Kenya, five years of private provision increased the number of mobile phones from one million to 6.5 million, so that more than a third of all Kenyan adults now own one.

...Granting property rights to the phone providers, coupled with what looked like political stability, enabled firms to invest and the Kenyan phone revolution to take hold.

But the past few days' events in Kenya demonstrate how tenuous is the basic foundation on which prosperity and freedom depends: the acceptance of the rule of law. We take for granted peaceful acquiescence in our own democratic processes. 

...As for Benazir Bhutto's murder: the key question is whether Pakistan's future will always be shaped by violence, or if it can copy India and transform its fortunes through democratic consent. And that raises an even bigger question: whether Islamic states are inherently unable to embrace the basis of prosperity. On that hangs the shape of the 21st century.

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