Is muhadhara the best way for Christian-Muslim harmony in the world?

Kenyan US Embassy in rubbles during the 1998 terrorist attack.

Can the truculent debate on the Kenyan constitution concerning kadhi courts and the violence of Boko Haram in Nigeria be quelled by having muhadharas, a crusade involving both Christians and Christians?

Often arranged by Seventh Day Adventists and Muslims, the muhadhara have been gaining ground up country and especially in the capital. For the past two week one has been going on at Mother Teresa Road in Eastlands.

For readers new to this crusade here is a scene: in an open strategic space a Muslim cleric and a pastor seat in two opposing tables filled with religious books and a reader. Their debates aired by PAS are controlled by an agreed regulator by both sides.

Teachings from both religions are shared, questioned, argued and discussed with emotions checked by a blessing from the police, organizers and the regulator. Most common involves trinity, if Christ is the son of God or a prophet, is Mohammed god sent and the place of jihad amongst others.

An example is 1^st Samwel 13:1-2 in bibles major English versions, Kiswahili and Mother tongue which gives different years with omissions on the year at which King Saul reigned in ancient Israel.

Winning converts from across the fold is paramount without bloodshed but controlled arguments like the violence in Egypt recently between orthodox Christians and Muslims when a Christian girl was ‘held’  in a mosque against her wishes.

Though debates are heated, after a muhadhara the organizers mingle easily and even share a meal.

While still an undergrad in Maseno University Muslim and Adventists students organized a successful one week muhadhara to streamline and share on both religions.

Though it can aid to check extremism a look at it causes like poor government services, unemployment , unfair distribution of resources, tribalism and wide spread corruption can still be potent.

Considering that the high hand control of autocratic government on public life of its citizens by detention couldn’t touch religion.  Citizens looking for psychological satisfaction turned to mosques and ready hands of radical clerics.

Additionally the 1967 six day Arab-Israeli war killed the pan-Arab spirit and nationhood to terrorism, the same can be said of the 2007/08 PEV that killed nationhood and replaced it with tribalism.

This link may seem remote but a look at the 400 meters Mother Teresa Road with 3 muhadharas in past 2 months and joining four Eastlands ghetto is a replica of the country. There are 18 churches, 4 mosques and 123 witchdoctors as residents turn to religion amid raw sewages, muddy streets without title deed to their lands, clinic, council services and even a police post.

Scene on bombing scare at Kampala bus on December 2010

Tribal imaginary lines drawn by 2007/08 PEV are still evident coming to fore on tribal names on shops and music from stores. The police are yet to prosecute a single suspect to the death that claimed about 1,500 people with others still displaced.

Still not connecting the dots? Then roger this: Kenya, most failed state in East Africa with widest divide between poor and rich has produced and sheltered jihads to Somalia and its citizens arrested for the world cup Uganda bombings!

Book Review; The River Between by Ngugi wa Thiong’o

Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Title: The River Between (School Edition)

Author: Ngugi wa Thiong’o

Publisher: East African Educational Publishers Ltd, 2009 (first 1965)

Genre: Fictional (Literature)

Pages: 148

Reviewer: Manuel Odeny

Waiyaki, the story’s protagonist while standing on God’s hill overlooking Mount Kirinyaga next to Kikuyu’s holy tree, the Mugumo, sees the expense ridges and valleys lying like dormant lions waiting re-awakening.

This tranquility is shattered with British colonials who bring change that places the society in a cultural dilemma of enlightenment or going back to ancestral roots, this theme of change is core in this Ngugi’s first book.

The author Ngugi wa Thiong’o skillfully narrates the effect of change through two opposing ridges which face each other like angry fighters before a clash. The first and greater is Kameno which is home to the great seer Mugo wa Kibiro who prophesized the coming of white men. Waiyaki and his father Chege are direct descendants of Mugo from this ridge.

Its rival, Makuyu embraces Christianity and white man’s way of life as lead by an overzealous preacher Joshua.

In this life and death struggle for leadership and supremacy there is a river between the two ridges defying the season of time and change. Representing the continuity of life the river between is Hanoi which Ngugi gives the book its title.

In the story, Waiyaki becomes an African elite after acquiring the white man’s education in the missionary schools which he tries to impart to the society to counter the encroachment of the white man. Makuyu’s ridge overzealous Christianity and Kameno’s conservative tribal purity of folk tradition threatens to destroy the society unity.

The author gives hope in this quagmire as the rift between the two ridges widen as the book ends in a love story. Waiyaki bound by an oath to safeguard conservative way in Kameno marries Nyambura, an impure uncircumcised girl from Makuyu whose father Joshua leads the Christians.

Meditating quietly in God’s hill after making a choice to marry Nyambura, Waiyaki observes change in the society;

“Circumcision of women was not important as a physical operation; it was what it did inside a person. It could not be stopped overnight. Patience and, above all, education, were needed. If the white man’s religion made you abandon a custom and then did not give you something else of equal value, you become lost. An attempt at resolution of the conflict would only kill you.”

This attempt makes Waiyaki to be betrayed by his two childhood friends Kinuthia and Kamau, and the all society.

The River Between is Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s first novel written in 1961 while he was a second year student in Makerere University College, Kampala Uganda, at the age of 23 years. Although published four years later after Weep Not Child (1964, Heinemann) it established Ngugi as a prolific writer.

The clarity of prose, the simple and powerful words he uses gives him magnetism as a narrator giving the reader a mirror to check the society through the novel’s characters.

This school edition which the author has changed some lines and phrases is a high school set book in Kenya. Writing the preface of the book from Irvine California where he is a don the author hopes the book will inspire young readers to write like the same way he felt challenged before independence when there were no African writers.

Ngugi is an author of several plays, essays and novels like Petals of Blood (1977) which caused his detention by the Kenyatta government, Matigari (1987) and wizard of The Crow (2006). His novels A Grain of Wheat (1967) and Devil on The Cross (1982) were voted among AFRICA’S 100 BEST BOOKS of 20^th Century.