Constitutional disquiet

While politicians are trying to agree on a new constitution for Kenya, Christians, or at least their leaders, seem to have united against two proposals. A Christian myself, I have some feelings of disquiet about this unity (I hope I'm not promoting disunity here, but a lack of debate often covers up weak arguments) and about some of its direction.

The biggest issue seems to be the place of 'Kadhi' (ie Muslim) courts in the constitution. Now, of course, if they are to exist, mentioning them in a constitution is a good thing. I'm not a specialist on these things, but they exist at the moment, and govern matters of civil law within the Muslim community, but don't have power of enforcement. And they've been around in Kenya for a very long time - it must be over 1,000 years. The NCCK, quite a respectable institution, is very much against them being mentioned in the constitution, and a leaflet I was handed used some nice-sounding (as opposed to rabble-rousing) arguments against them - the constitution and the laws of Kenya should apply to all people, regardless of creed. Fair enough. But one can (or will be able to) also register one's marriage as monogamous, or polygamous (under traditional practices), and no-one seems to be getting very agitated about that. So what's the difference between Muslim family law courts, and family arrangements made under traditional (ie neither Christian nor Muslim) practice?

To be honest, this smacks of intolerance and/or antagonism towards Muslims, hardly being a case of 'loving one's enemies' (the argument here is not that Muslims are an enemy, but that even if they were, Christians should love them). This whole hullabaloo doesn't make Christians look very loving in Muslim (or liberal) eyes. Why not respect the right of other communities to do as they see fit, where it doesn't impinge on others' liberty (or on the liberty of members of their own communities who don't want to be part of it)? I don't know of any case (and I'm open to correction) where a Kadhi court could trump Kenyan law. Thankfully, the NCCK, and other bodies, have not expressed their concern in terms of Christian theocracy, which would not disquiet, but terrify, me. But I've heard individuals talk that way once or twice.

The other issue is abortion, which is illegal here. The churches want to go further and have a clause in the constitution saying that life begins at conception. I guess there's a perception that if it's not in the constitution, it's not a very important law, which seems to me to be a misunderstanding of what a constitution is. But now the die has been cast, and if this clause doesn't get into the constitution (don't count on it), it will look like a defeat for the anti-abortion cause. So it's hard to stand down on that. Woops. It could be an example of the churches shooting themselves in the foot, and looking like they're trying to impose certain views on the whole nation - focusing more on judgement than love. Does the church want to be an enforcer, or a liberator?

To end I'll paraphrase a Kenyan Christian friend's Facebook update, which said that he wished that Kenyan Christians would spend as much time and effort battling corruption as they did battling the Kadhi courts. Amen to that!