Nairobi, January 07: Kenya Muslim leaders and civil society groups are infuriated by the detention of renowned Jamaican Imam Sheikh Abdullah Al-Faisal who was arrested at a mosque in the port city of Mombassa on the eve of the New Year by anti-terror agencies.
“It appears that harassment, deportation and illegal arrests of Muslims have become a norm and a routine policy for Kenyan authorities,” Sheikh Abdullahi Abdi, Chairman of the Kenya Muslim Leaders Forum, told.
Over the past few days, vocal Muslim civil society groups have been protesting against what they called the illegal arrest of the renowned Jamaican preacher.
Police arrested Sheikh Al-Faisal about a fortnight ago moments after he attended Maghrib prayers at a mosque in Mombasa’s lavish Nyali neighborhood.
Since the arrest, authorities have issued orders that he should not be seen by anybody.
Authorities are yet to give formal statement about why they had him in custody, but sources told that the anti-terror police have questioned him over suspected terrorist activity.
On Tuesday sketchy details of his whereabouts amid reports that both Tanzania and South Africa have refused to receive him.
The government has dismissed Muslim accusations of discrimination.
“The information we have is that he was arrested in Britain and jailed five years ago on terrorism-related charges,” Immigration Minister Otieno Kajwang has said.
“We are not deporting him because he is a Muslim.”
Sheikh al-Faisal, who moved to Britain 26 years ago, was jailed in 2003 on accusations of preaching hatred against Jews, Hindus and Westerners.
Western media had since branded him a race-hate preacher.
In 2007, Britain deported him to his native Jamaica.
Jamaica-born Al-Faisal was raised as a Christian by his parents, who were Salvation Army officers.
But when he turned 16 he went to Saudi Arabia – where he embraced Islam and spent eight years studying Islam at Madina University.
Discrimination
Sheikh Mohamed Khalifa, the Council of Imams and Preachers National Organising Secretary, described the government’s actions an assault on Muslims.
The detention has been described as a continuation of a covert government policy of scaring away foreign Muslim scholars through visa revocation and harassment.
“As Kenyans, we are very much ashamed that a religious dignitary, a brother of us, and a special guest for the Kenya Muslim community invited to meet with his brothers can be treated like a common criminal,” said an enraged Sheikh Abdi.
There are nearly ten million Muslims in Kenya, which has a population of 36 million.
Muslim leaders accused Kenya of making favor with Washington by cracking down on clean Muslims on suspicion of sympathy with or links to Al-Qaeda.
“This is curtailing the Sheikh’s freedoms of expression and association in a very discriminative manner which is totally unacceptable,” the Muslim Human Rights Forum (MHRF) said in a statement.
“It follows a pattern we saw throughout last year where Muslim scholars and aid workers were arbitrarily arrested and deported from the country on very flimsy grounds.”
-Agencies