A brief look at Muslim courts in Kenya

How did Islam come to Kenya? As far as my history lesson went and have come to learn over time, Islam was brought mainly by Muslim traders from Asia who came by sea in the 1700s. These Arab-Muslims on interacting with the local dominant language group along the coastal Kenya, The Bantus resulted to a new Language, Swahili. Most of the communities around the coast slowly adopted Islam and the traders that moved inland also to some extent spread the religion as well. They however remained a segregated minority to some extent since they were seen by the locals as exploitative business men simply because they had means of keeping their business running, having good supply of stock through the port of Mombasa and other coastal towns from their mother countries.

What about Christianity? Christianity was brought into the country by English missionaries as you would probably have guessed in around the 1800s the same time as the colonialism set in. I would guess that people had their ways of worship, they call that indigenous. This is just my view but I think Christianity was imposed on people since they were thought to have unorganized ways of worshiping their God. The idea of God was there, it just wasn't formal.

How separate is the Church and the state in Kenya? Church and state in Kenya are separate formally but unfortunately the Church has a lot of control of what the government does. For instance the proposed constitution sought to legalise abortion, of course under some conditions but the Church strongly stands against such an idea. Reasons? They are not that clear.

Kadhi courts have been operating in Kenya and have not affected any non-Muslims as far as I know. I am pretty sure nothing has changed with the the demographic figure of 6% of Muslim population in Kenya to make it such a contentious issue in a country where the majority of the people are Christians. There are obviously bigger fish to fry in the proposed constitution but this particular one seems to warrant political airtime that should be worth so much to the taxpayers so to speak. Where do we get the time?