The government is not succeeding in imposing the Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims as the unique public spokesman for the Muslim community.
There has been a growing amount of discord between the three main Muslim organisations in Kenya of late, as they are taking up very different stances on sensitive public issues, such as the project to reform the constitution. The Minister for Defence, Yusuf Haji, the Deputy Speaker of the Assembly, Farah Maalim and the Muslim lawyer Ibrahim Lithome have therefore organised four successive meetings with the representatives of these organisations at the Jamia Mosque in Nairobi, during the first half of April, to ask them to reach an agreement. But so far to no avail!
Their idea was to impose the Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims (Supkem) as the sole organisation entitled to speak on behalf of the Muslim community. During these meetings, Supkem's general secretary, Abdulghafur el Busaidy, accused its rivals from the Council for Imams and Preachers of Kenya (CIPK) and the Kenya Muslim National Advisory Council (KMNAC) of publishing communiqués on delicate matters in the name of Kenyan Muslims without consulting with Supkem. Clearly his rivals, Sheikh Mohammed Dor of the CIPK and Sheikh Juma Ngao of the KMNAC, didn't take the same view of things. Particularly Mohammed Dor, moreover an ODM (the party of Prime Minister Raila Odinga) Member of Parliament, who categorically stated that the CIPK would continue to defend in its way the interests of Kenyan Muslims on political as well as religious matters. Sheikh Ngao, who for his part is aligned with the PNU (President Mwai Kibaki's party), reacted in precisely the same way. In spite of government mediation, the representatives of the three Muslim organisations came away from these meetings just as disunited as before.
Source: Indian Ocean Newsletter
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