Which kenyan politicians are illuminati

The Kenyan government and mass media need to treat Kenyans equally and to apply the law equally to citizens accused of any crimes.

When communities in northern Kenya are accorded the same treatment as others across the country, then perhaps people like Adan will not be forced to use Western-owned digital media tools to highlight the challenges faced by Kenyans like him. The Constitution requires that not more than two-thirds of the members of elective or appointive bodies shall be of the same gender. Article , which provides for the appointment of Kadhis, does not specify their gender. Yet the constitution is absent in the intra-Muslim discussions on the appointment of female Kadhis.

Kadhi courts are arguably the oldest judicial institution in Kenya, being the judicial system prevailing in the Sultanate of Zanzibar that controlled a substantial portion of the East African coast.

In the agreement between Prime Minister Muhammad Shamte of Zanzibar and President Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, the coastal strip was brought within the territorial jurisdiction of Kenya. In exchange, the Kenyan government would guarantee the preservation the Muslim religion and its institutions, courts, officers, schools, lands and the Arabic language within the new state. Kadhi courts have thus been an integral part of the judiciary since pre-colonial times and were the focus of fierce contestations during the constitutional review process in Kenya.

After independence, Kadhis were also appointed from other non-coastal communities, notably the Somali. Following the promulgation of the constitution, Kadhi courts now reflect the face of Kenya. Yet the gender composition of the courts remains unresolved, and it has become a topic of debate in the last few months.

It is not clear what has sparked the recent debates, but the impending retirement of the current Chief Kadhi, Hon. Ahmed Muhdhar, must have animated discussions among the various interest groups over the possibility of appointing a Chief Kadhi of non-Arab descent and the appointment of female Kadhis, both of which are unprecedented in Kenyan legal history. The women Kadhis discussion only came to the fore after The Standard published an article asking whether the time was ripe for a female Kadhi.

Another piece followed in The Nation. Aden Duale, weighed in on the question while addressing a gathering. He came out strongly in opposition to the appointment of women Kadhis. Duale wields immense authority among the Muslims of northern Kenya and his comments generated debate within the Muslim social spaces. I followed the debates closely and actively participated in some of the discussions, especially on Facebook.

I documented some of the comments, followed almost every discussion on social media , on television and in the Friday Khutba sermons such as those by Sheikh Feisal Al—Amoody of Malindi and Ibrahim Lethome of Jamia Mosque Nairobi. Various sheikhs also commented on the debate in their darsas mosque lessons , notably Al-Sayyid Ahmad Ahmad Badaway, aka Mwenye Baba, who is regarded by the Muslim faithful as one of the foremost religious authorities. The Chief Justice, a known crusader for equality and human rights, openly backed the appointment of women to serve as Kadhis.

Both strongly objected to such appointments. They occasionally used the Friday sermons to teach and remind Muslims of the position of Islamic jurisprudence on the appointment of female Kadhis. Sheikh Bahero of Bakarani Mosque, Mombasa, for example, dedicated khutba after khutba to this issue. The latest debates have seen the two organizations take a measured approach while KEMNAC has taken centre stage in shaping the discourse.

Perhaps the most eloquent opposition to the appointment of female Kadhis is from Hon. We will not listen to what the NGOs will tell us. We will not listen to what government will tell us. We will not listen to what Western countries and powers will tell us. Hii ingine ya Kenya inakuja second This other one of Kenya comes second.

We will not accept a woman to be a Kadhi. Wakati wa nikaah, umeona mwanamke huko? During marriage solemnization, do you see a woman there? Islam has given the roles women can perform and the roles they cannot achieve. Msijaribu kuweka mkono yenu katika do not try to interfere in how Islam is run in this country, the same way we will not allow you to run the Christian faith.

We must leave it to the bishops. We must respect religious leaders kama nyinyi mnataka hii Kenya ikuwe nchi nzuri If you want Kenya to be a nice country. Such a speech conjures up images of past contestations over the inclusion of Kadhi courts in the constitution and raises questions as to whether the debate was concluded.

Even though the Christian clergy who vehemently opposed the inclusion of the Kadhi courts in the constitution have moved on, some of the fears they raised at the time now seem to have caught up with Muslims.

Furthermore, in the fourteen centuries of Islamic history no woman has been appointed to the position of judge Kadhi. Then there is the Hadith that says a woman is deficient in intellect and religiosity, which is taken to warrant her disqualification from holding such an important office. A majority of Muslim exegetes and jurists in the pre-modern era took to these arguments as a restatement of the law on this particular question: Women should obey their husbands, stay at home, and have no authority over men.

Another class of jurists has provided interpretations that seem more gender-egalitarian and have used historical, logical, textual and contextual nuances in the explanation of the texts relied upon by the first strand of jurists. All the verses and Hadith relevant to the question of female Kadhis are analysed in their two works using exegetical, hermeneutical and comparative perspectives.

Fadel uses tools within the philosophy of Islamic jurisprudence to argue that appointing women as judges in Kadhi courts is possible even without resorting to extraneous sources of law for justification. On the other hand, Hashim uses both historical and comparative law approaches to answer this question while situating it within the immediate Kenyan context. This work documents the practice of appointing Muslim women in Muslim majority countries to be judges, and even more specifically, Sharia court judges who are the equivalent of Kadhis.

These countries include Malaysia, Pakistan, Palestine and Indonesia. Most of these countries are, like Kenya, commonwealth-common law jurisdictions with a rich Islamic heritage and a robust jurisprudence.

Islamic law forms part of its basic structure and can provide parameters for consideration in Kenya. Twice, a petition was filed to bar women from being appointed as judges using arguments from within the Islamic legal tradition.

The FSC threw out both petitions. The female Kadhis debates have generated a few thoughts. First, most Muslims are not aware of the historical developments in the court across the years, the laws that regulate the functionality of the court, the recruitment procedures for Kadhis, and the status and place of Kadhis and Kadhi courts in the judicial structure in Kenya.

One discerns from the discussions that they are speaking of an idealized Islamic court, in a historicised Islamic state far removed from modernity, globalization and the realities of the nation-state that is Kenya. Second, secular-religious dialectics pop out in these discussions. Some other Muslims are asking whether Kadhis are judicial officers performing religious duties or religious leaders performing secular judicial functions, or even both.

Third is the crisis of Islamic scholarship and religious authority in Kenya, something that has been alluded to in the past. Unlike the Catholic Church, for example, Muslims do not have a papal figurehead. Muslim states, and some Muslim minority states such as Uganda, have an official Mufti who is the ultimate authority on issues at the intersection of religion and governance.

On the particular question of female Kadhis, there was a whole mix of people attempting to issue a fatwa on a question that no one, not even the JSC, raised. The rules of fatwa in the Islamic legal tradition are that there must be someone or an entity that asks a question seeking legal interpretation.

A juristic authority must exist to answer the question authoritatively. Neither has the JSC asked anyone to provide a ruling on the appointment of female Kadhis, and nor do we have such a fatwa -issuing authority in Kenya currently. I have previously asked for the constitution of such authority. Women in the pre-modern era in the Roman, Persian and Islamic civilizations essentially did not have authority over men and did not hold public office except in monarchical structures.

The absence of women in public office was not limited to the judgeship only. It is true that women, even in other religious groups, do not solemnize marriages. But Kadhis today rarely solemnize marriages as Muslim marriage officers appointed under the Marriage Act are spread across the country. Imams even solemnize the bulk of marriages, and parties only come to court to make applications before the Kadhi for marriage recognition and registration.

What prevents a female Kadhi for example, from making judicial orders that a potential couple have met the requirements of marriage in Islamic law and can therefore proceed to a recognized marriage officer of their choice for solemnization of their marriage?

There is also the apprehension that as Kadhis, Muslim women will have the authority to dissolve marriages, an authority popularly exercised by men within the domestic sphere. As Kadhis, Muslim women would be exercising public authority in dissolving marriages by judicial decree, the same way women magistrates do.

They would only be observing the regulations for the judicial dissolution of such marriages as provided for under Islamic law. So, it smacks of cognitive dissonance to deny Muslim women an opportunity to serve in the Kadhi courts on the basis that women did not have that jurisdiction in the past.

Yet, the same jurisdiction is exercised at appeal by women, and Muslim women judges in particular. Unlike the Independence Constitution, the Constitution provides in Article 27 for the two-thirds gender rule, which requires that not more than two-thirds of the members of elective or appointive bodies shall be of the same gender. Article of the constitution that provides for the appointment of Kadhis does not specify the gender of the Kadhis, and that has been a fundamental aspect for those agitating for the appointment of female Kadhis.

It smacks of cognitive dissonance to deny Muslim women an opportunity to serve in the Kadhi courts on the basis that women did not have that jurisdiction in the past. A notable aspect is that the constitution is absent in the intra-Muslim discussions on female Kadhis, either because Muslims do not believe in the supremacy of the constitution as suggested in Hon.

I expected someone like Sheikh Ibrahim Lethome, an advocate, a former CKRC Commissioner Constitution of Kenya Review Commission and someone trained in Islamic law to have a broader approach to this question that situates the constitution within the discourse. He has been on many platforms speaking about this issue, but he has chosen to gloss over the place of the constitution in the question. They are embedded in a context, and contexts change, and such changes require the expenditure of juristic energy in finding solutions to old questions posed in a different environment.

That energy is what Muslim scholars in Kenya worth the name must expend. Although the sub-groups of the larger Oromo are distinct both socially and economically, and in terms of religious belief, they are united by a shared language, Afaan Oromoo or Oromiffa, which is widely spoken in the Oromia region of Ethiopia, in northern Kenya and in parts of Somalia.

The Oromo are a Cushitic ethnic group and nation indigenous to Ethiopia and Kenya who trace their origins to a common ancestor. They call themselves ilmaan Orma, children of Orma. Historical explorations suggest that before they split into different regional groups in the 16th Century, the Oromo had a joint government and institutional framework. The standard system of governance functioned well in small-scale polities, but population growth and territorial expansion led to the fission of Oromo groups, which lived in federations and confederations in various independent but contiguous regions, sharing similar traditions, beliefs, and value systems from one founding father.

The Oromo are one of the most prominent ethnolinguistic groups in Ethiopia, accounting for They tend to arrive flush with cash donations - carried by their handlers in shoulder bags - which can be used for the construction of mega churches and the purchase of loud music systems. In exchange for this largesse, midway through the service, the politician takes to the pulpit, where the congregation becomes a captive audience for their message, which often has little to do with the bible.

These "sermons" often make it to TV bulletins to satisfy an insatiable appetite for news about those manoeuvring ahead of the next election, still nine months away.

Some tour around in search of new congregations, leading to some clashes inside churches with politicians accusing each other of invading one another's turf. Priests have also been known to be invited to politicians' homes to discuss "development affairs" - as part of negotiations to ease these turf wars.

There are allegations - denied of course - that some of the donations are the proceeds of ill-gotten gains. Now leaders of the established churches have had enough. They have banned politicians from the pulpit, accusing them of making "divisive and unedifying" remarks that "desecrate the church".

In order to reduce media attention, the churches will also no longer disclose the amounts donated by politicians towards church projects. The head of the Anglican Church in Kenya, Archbishop Jackson Ole Sapit, concurred that it was a "mistake" to give leeway to politicians in churches in the first place. But we can't remain in the same mistake for long. A moment of repentance - a turnaround - is needed," he said when the ban was announced last month.

The move has been welcomed by some - especially these churchgoers I spoke to in the capital, Nairobi. I have been waiting for church leaders to deal with it," said Eunice Waweru. Janet Nzilani agreed: "I'm glad the decision was made because politicians are selfish people. They are not there to inspire people or to call for unity. They don't value people at all.

Pastors should just recognise their presence [in church] and nothing else. Published On 9 Apr Social media Despite these allegations, he won praise for his Economic Stimulus Programme as minister of finance, investing in food security and boosting entrepreneurship and innovation.

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