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Media Equates Islam With Violence, Muslims Say
By Philip Ngunjiri, IPS, 21 August 1998
NAIROBI, Aug 21 (IPS) - Kenya's Muslim community has become the target of a hostile media campaign following the Aug. 7 bombings in which at least 257 people were killed and more than 5,000 injured in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, according to the Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims (SUPKEM).
Sheikh Ahmad Khalif, SUPKEM's Secretary-General, said in a statement Thursday that Muslims are being harassed in Nairobi and in the Indian Ocean port city of Mombasa, about 500 kilometres southeast of the Kenyan capital. He did not elaborate.
Khalif warned, in the statement made available to IPS on Friday, that Muslims would defend themselves against the aggressors.
"Islam, like any other religion in the world, does not condone or support the killing of innocent people for whatever reason," he said.
Muslims make up about six percent of Kenya's 30 million people.
In the statement, SUPKEM said Muslims have been enraged by President Daniel arap Moi's televised remark that "the perpetrators of the bomb would not have done the deed if they were Christians".
SUPKEM also accused the government of ignoring Muslim leaders and of inviting only Christian clergymen to the burial of the bomb blast victims at Nairobi's Uhuru Park.
The media is harping on the religious angle apparently to highlight the perceived Islamic links to the bomb attacks on the U.S. embassies in the two East African countries. This is because the leading suspect, Mohamed Saddiq Howaida, whom Kenya is holding, is a Muslim. So is his alleged benefactor, the dissident Saudi millionaire, Osama bin Laden, who lives in Afghanistan.
Two other suspects -- a Saudi and a Sudanese -- with 'fake' Yemeni passports, who have been apprehended while trying to cross into Afghanistan from Pakistan, are also Muslims.
Howaida, a Palestinian from Jordan, said the "terrorist" network he works for comprises 4,000 to 5,000 heavily armed Islamists who operate full-time in Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Egypt, Yemen, Ethiopia and Somalia, as well as in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The twin bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam occurred a few weeks after bin Laden renewed his threat to wage a Holy War against the United States and Israel in a bid to liberate Islam's three holy places - Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem. Media reports here Friday said that bin Laden's operatives were behind the 1993 attacks on U.S. forces in Somalia, which the Saudi dissident reportedly dubbed the "biggest victory" for Islam.
SUPKEM said the "negative" portrayal by the media, was a deliberate move by the enemies of Islam to demonise and vilify the faith.
It added that "terrorism" is a worldwide bane that no religion could be associated with. "Islam has always preached peace and understanding, among people of different colour, creed, race and religion. There is nothing in the teaching of Islam which condones or supports senseless violence," said the statement.
According to SUPKEM, acts of terror in different parts of the world have been committed by people claiming adherence to different religions. "It's grossly unfair for anyone to attempt to connect this unfortunate modern phenomenon with a single religious faith".
In a separate press conference on Thursday, a group of Islamic Imams in Mombasa demanded that both the local and international media -- there are more than 200 foreign journalists accredited to Kenya -- stop associating Islam with violence.
"The media have already tried and found Islam as the cause of the car bomb blast through their stories all over the world, without taking into consideration the implications of such insinuations," said the spokesman of the clergy, Sheikh Ali Shee.
Last week, a Kiswahili language daily newspaper "Taifa Leo" carried a cartoon showing a terrorist kneeling on a prayer mat besides his camel, thanking God for killing 247 Kenyans and 10 Tanzanians.
The same week, the "East African Standard", an English daily also carried a similar cartoon portraying Islam as religion of violence.
Another weekly, also on its cartoon page, showed those killed buried in tombs with crosses. The Imams said the cartoon suggested that only Christians were killed in the blast. "Contrary to this belief, Muslims also lost their loved ones," said Shee.
"Even before the identities of the terrorists and their motives have been determined by local and international investigators now working on this case, there have been concerted efforts by some sections of the mass media to make it look as if Islam was to blame for the unfortunate event," SUPKEM said.