Following Jesus in the Kenyan Context: A Reflection on Christian-Muslim Relations in the Face of Terrorism

Following Jesus in the Kenyan Context: A Reflection on Christian-Muslim Relations in the Face of Terrorism
By Emily J. Choge Kerama

Africa has been the host of the three Abrahamic religions for centuries. When Abraham feared fam­ine, he took his family to Egypt for food (Genesis 12:10-20). Later, his descendants also sought food in Egypt during famine (Genesis 42-47). When Jesus was under the threat of Herod the Great, Jesus and His parents took refuge in Egypt until that time when the threat was over (Matthew 2:13­15). When the followers of Prophet Mohammed needed a shelter from the onslaught of the enemies of Islam, he sent his followers to seek shelter in Abyssinia, Ethiopia. In this paper, I will focus on Islam and Christianity and argue that because both have sought refuge in Africa, they should also find ways and means to coexist as neighbors.

Glen H. Stassen calls for peaceful relations among neighbors especially people of different faiths. Stassen notes, “We purposely fashioned the wording of the ten practices of just peacemaking so they could be adopt­ed by persons of many faiths or no official faith.”¹Religion scholar John Azumah says that in Africa, there is “celebration of plurality of belief sys­tems that cut across family, ethnic and national boundaries.”² He then makes a call to “Africans across religious boundaries. . . to affirm and celebrate what unites them i.e. our common historical, cultural and linguistic heritages and eschew all forms of externally anchored racial and cultural chauvinism be it Western or Middle Eastern.”³ With this in mind, if there is any place that Stassen’s practices of just peacemaking can be fulfilled, it should be in Africa.

The call for peace between the adherents of these two Abrahamic religions is urgent today because the continent faces the threat of terror­ism due to the breakdown of the traditional family structures, the col­lapse of nation states like Somalia, the general despair because of difficult economic times, and the spread of diseases like Ebola and HIV/AIDS. Noting this volatile context, the call by Stassen in his development of just peacemaking theory is pertinent: “A war against terrorism requires win­ning the battle of hearts and minds of potential terrorist recruits.”⁴

This paper works at developing the resources that will help gain the hearts and minds of potential terror­ists, and thereby reduce the terrorist onslaughts in Kenya. I will examine what in the history of these religions and their past relationships will work to prevent and to deescalate terror­ism. I will also look at three key just peacemaking practices that can help restore peace and diminish terrorist activities in Kenya. My primary audi­ence is the Christian church in Kenya whom I call upon to follow the teach­ings of Jesus and the traditions of our faith that help us to live in peaceful co-existence with our neighbors. I also call upon my Muslim brothers and sisters in Kenya to embrace just peace­making practices, so that together we can be united in the fight against ter­rorism.

This paper is mainly a personal reflection drawn from a concern that good relations are being strained by the criminal activity of some in the name of religion that threatens to tear communities apart. I grew up in Kaptumo, Nandi in Western Kenya where we interacted with Muslim neighbors. These were members of our community and shared in our festivals. They cooked very delicious and tasty food. I went to school with some Muslim students, and they are my friends to this day. In high school, the religious education curriculum was such that students could choose from Islamic Religious Education or Christian Religious Education. When I was in college, I was taught Islamic by a practicing Muslim, Badru Katerrega, who co-authored a book with David Shenk, a Mennonite mis­sionary. During seminary, I took a course offered by the late Tokunboh Adeyemo, a Christian convert from Islam. When I started teaching at Moi University, I was asked to teach Islam courses because we did not have an Islamic professor at that time. I did that for two years until an Islamic teacher was hired. Then we co-taught a course, “The life and teachings of Jesus and Mohammed.” All of this shows that it is possible to have good relations between Christians and Muslims.

I believe this type of good relation­ship between adherents of both faiths can help stop terrorism. Ron Mock presents a definition of terrorism that shows its criminal nature:

“Civilians are the intended target… They operate through fear. The vic­tims are a means to an end. Deaths have to be spectacular so that they can grab the headlines and reduce to a minimum the number of places where people can feel safe. Terrorists buy worldwide influence spreading world­wide suffering and maximum impact by striking the most unpredictable places possible…[It] is a lawless vio­lence directed at non-combatants to spread fear as a means to a political end.”⁵

Christians, Muslims, people of other faiths, and people of no faith have to come together to reduce the threat of terrorism, because no one knows where terrorists will strike. It is not a threat against Christians alone, but the whole of the human race. Many terrorists want to cover their real motives by appealing to a religious affiliation, but Muslims

 and Christians of good will have to unmask terrorist activities even when such activities are in the name of reli­gion. One writer shows that though much terrorist activity in the most recent past has been carried out in the name of Islam, it has hurt more Muslims than Christians: “Muslims are the main victims of jihadist vio-lence.”⁶

The coming of Islam into East Africa

Muslims came to Africa to seek asylum. That Islam came into East Africa without armies or conquest is clearly attested in history. There were good trade relations between East Africa and Arabia from the incep­tion of Islam. Much trade activity can be noted by the time of the travels of Ibn Batuta in the 13th century.⁷ This resulted in the establishment of coastal towns like Kilwa, Mombasa, and Malindi. It was an African Muslim that guided Vasco da Gama in his travels in search of a sea route to India in 1498.⁸ The presence of Islam and the good interpersonal relations between Islam and the traditional African peoples resulted in the estab­lishment of a unique culture in the coast know as the Swahili culture with Kiswahili language as the lingua franca for the East African peoples. However, the coming of the Portuguese broke that peaceful co-existence on the coast of Kenya, and neither Islam nor Christianity spread much to the interior of Kenya during this period. Much of the activity of Islam in the interior of Kenya came with the establishment of colonial rule by the British from 1895 onward. Trade and improved means of communication helped to spread Islam in the interior. However, when the language of colo­nial instruction changed to English from Arabic, this affected the Kenyan coast. As one author explains: “The Muslims were suspicious of the European schools and stayed away from them. This had the impact of excluding the Muslims from govern­ment jobs because the state machinery now worked through English… On the other hand, those who attended

 European schools rose to occupy the new strata of the bureaucratic elite, the government functionaries, judges and teachers. The Arabic schools, lacking state support, fell back on local community support. As poverty spread, the support of these schools also decreased, catching the Muslims of the Swahel in a downward socio­economic spiral.”⁹

Therefore, when Kenya acquired independence in 1964, the Muslims found themselves disadvantaged against the better educated Christians.¹⁰

The establishment of Christianity in Kenya

The Portuguese presence in the 14th Century was the beginning of Christian contact on the Kenyan coast although the influence was minimal. The full-scale activity of Western missionaries started at the Kenyan coast in the mid-19th century. The early missionaries translated the Bible into Kiswahili. But there were not many converts on the Kenyan coast. However, with the establish­ment of British colonialism and good infrastructure, more Africans were able to accept the Christian Gospel. Therefore, at independence the Kenyan landscape was pluralistic, and even within the Kenyan constitution the jurisdiction of Islamic law was recognized in family and inheritance matters and today are presided over by the Kadhi courts.

However, because Western educa­tion established under colonial rule gave an advantage to Christians, Christians made up the majority in the government. These were the ini­tial indicators of inequity within the system, but otherwise Christians and Muslims lived in close proximity and shared each other’s holidays. The cen­tralized system of government concen­trated all the resources at the centre of the nation. The coast and the eastern parts of Kenya, which have a predom­inantly Muslim population, have been mainly on the fringes of society. This provided a recipe for recruitment into terrorism, with events in the 1990s accelerating the sense of alienation and vulnerability within the Islamic population.

The collapse of the Siad Barre regime in Somalia in 1991 caused a substantial refugee population to move to Kenya. The arbitrariness of the colonial boundaries resulted in the Somali peoples being divided into four countries: Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti. Thus, it is dif­ficult to trace who is a Kenyan Somali and who is from Somalia.

Then, the bombing of the American embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-salaam in 1998 brought about tension between Muslims and Christians in the East and South areas of Nairobi. Coupled with this came agitation for a new constitution in Kenya. The rela­tions between Muslims and Christians were strained because of the demand by Muslims for the expansion of the Kadi courts’ jurisdiction in the new Kenyan constitution.

The terrorist activity in the waters of the Indian Ocean prompted the Kenya government to send forces to keep the peace in Somalia in coopera­tion with the African Union. This was to support the fledgling Somali government and to bring stability in the region. However, this has caused much bad blood and, with the forces in Somalia, terrorist activity has been unleashed on the Kenyan population. In Garissa, various attacks were direct­ed at a church, a market, and a pub. A church in Nairobi was also attacked. The Westgate Mall in September 2013 was the biggest of the targets. There also have been many other attacks in Mombasa. The terrorists have been Kenyan Muslims, but they have not been from the communities that are predominantly Muslim. They carry out such activities without even being suspected of being Muslim. However, reprisals against the Muslim community in Nairobi and Mombasa followed the attacks with political representatives crying foul that the Muslims were being targeted unfairly.

In December 2013, there was an attack on a church in Mombasa, and there was talk of the use of the mosques as the recruitment ground for terrorist activity. One prominent, controversial, outspoken Muslim was gunned down in April 2014, and this has worsened the relations between Muslims and Christians and the ter­rorism problem. In June, a moderate Muslim leader, who was working to bridge the gap between Muslims and Christians was killed.

Stassen’s just peacemaking initia­tives could help us to chart the way forward, reduce the tensions, and seal off the grounds for recruiting more terrorists.

What are the just peacemaking principles? Which ones will work in Kenya?

Just peacemaking theory was developed through the work of Glen Stassen and several other scholars who felt it necessary to go beyond the traditional stances of just war theory and pacifism in the ethics of war. Stassen rooted just peacemaking theory very firmly in the teachings of Jesus in Matthew 5-7. He devel­oped the theory in Just Peacemaking: Transforming Initiatives for Peace and Justice and, more recently, Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in the Contemporary Context, co-written with David Gushee.¹¹He also edited three editions of another book called Just Peacemaking, which featured articles by various just peacemaking scholars.¹²

This theory argues that it is inad­equate to argue whether wars are just when all wars fought since World War II have brought about untold damage. The theory also says it is not enough to adopt a pacifist policy, because pacifism does not prevent war. So just peacemaking theory notes:

… in the debate another question is frequently overlooked; what essential steps should be taken to make peace? Have they been taken, or should they yet be taken? The just peacemaking paradigm fills out the original inten­tion of the other two paradigms. It encourages pacifists to fulfill their name (derived from Latin pacim facere) which means “peacemakers.” It calls just war theorists to fill in their undeveloped principles of last resort and just intention- to spell out what resorts should be tried before try­ing the last resort of war, and what intention there is to restore a just and enduring peace. It asks both to act on their intended intentions.¹³

Just peacemaking was endorsed by over 30 Christian scholars who worked to summarize the theory as 10 practices. More recently, scholars noted that it was not enough to work simply within the Christian tradition, because the practices “can be adopted by persons of many faiths and or no official faith,”¹⁴ so they incor­porated the other Abrahamic faiths namely, Islam and Judaism. This group has been working since 2003, and they have endorsed the 10 prac­tices and written the book, Interfaith Just Peacemaking: Jewish, Christian and Muslim Perspectives on the New Paradigm of Peace and War.¹⁵ They answered the call from the original Just Peacemaking group which said: “We appeal to all people of good will to adopt these practices and work for them . . . Each person can base these practices on his or her own faith. A Muslim or Buddhist or simply a social scientist or human being whose expe­rience has led her or him to care about making peace, not war, can say, ‘Yes, this is happening in ways that I had not fully realized, and it is a making a huge difference for good, and I want to support it.’ We hope many, from diverse perspectives, will make these peacemaking practices their own.”¹⁶

The result was a statement of affir­mation from scholars of the three faiths saying: “we believe that just peacemaking is the best option to resolve conflicts and actively work towards the elimination of the con­ditions that lead to violence. . . We all agree to mine our own religious traditions to further develop the just peacemaking practices.”¹⁷

This initial statement bore fruit and developed into Interfaith Just Peacemaking, edited by Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite. The book is ground breaking in its affirmation:

“We had been so used to reading the scriptures to ask whether some of them supported war making and some opposed war making that we had not paid enough attention to the main theme: the love of God and neighbor. We had not attended to the importance of practicing peacemak­ing. Once we focused on the specific teachings of practices of peacemak­ing in our scriptures, we discovered remarkable similarity.”¹⁸

The book is also remarkable in the process the authors adopted in addressing the issues:

“So we began by acknowledging our own responsibility for some of the hostilities and killings that have happened. This made us each more honest. But more, it made us each less defensive and more open. Muslims and Jews did not have to say, ‘You Christians have used the New Testament to justify killing us.’ The Christians had already said that. Christians did not have to accuse the others of justifying persecutions or attacks based on their holiest texts­-Muslims and Jews had already said that. So we experienced a remarkably non-defensive spirit as we worked together.”¹⁹

Since it is impossible to focus on all 10 of the practices in such a short paper, I would like to explore three of the practices in a Kenyan context. I chose namely the practices of coopera­tive conflict resolution, fostering just and sustainable economic develop­ment, and grassroots and peacemak­ing groups. All of these practices build on one another, but focusing on them individually will show that they are workable in Kenya.

Use Cooperative Conflict Resolution

First, Kenyans have successfully used the just peacemaking practice of cooperative conflict resolution in working out differences. For example, the work toward the 2010 constitu­tion in Kenya was a joint effort by all the religious groups in Kenya: Muslims, Hindus, Christians, and African traditional religion.

These efforts were known as the Ufungamano initiative. Though demands for the extension of the Kadhi courts in the constitution created some tension, it was a good effort showing that Christians and Muslims—indeed, all the religious organizations—spearheaded the work of the new Constitution. Eventually, the contentious issue of the Kadhi courts was left as it had been in the earlier 1963 constitution.