أثر السياسات الكنسية على المجتمع المسلم في كينيا

Abstract

The research discussed about a critical subject pertaining the collision between Islam and Christianity in Kenya and availing the church’s evangelism policies which were implemented with the target of evangelizing the Kenyan society at large and the Muslim community in particular. The church also used different methodologies and variety of systems, which were implemented according to situation, place and period. The church succeeded in the implementation of its plan by a big percentage, whereby we get a weakness to the muslims due to poor planning with no proper methodologies and systems in Islamic da’awa (Islamic Propagation). The research is composed of four chapters and they are as follow:- Chapter one contains the introduction as section one and literature review as section two. Chapter two portrays the environment of Kenya which is composed of the geographical setup of Kenya, population, religions, history, and her political system. Chapter three discusses the methodologies and systems which were implemented by the church to evangelize the Kenyan society. Chapter four displays through elaboration the economic, social, cultural, and political influences of the church policies to the Islamic society in Kenya whereby in chapter five we get the role of Islamic personalities and institutions in spreading and defending Islam. It can be notified that the role of an Islamic personality be it socially, culturally, economically, or politically, could turn to a team work or an institution. Thereafter the research ascends to its conclusion which contains results and recommendations. The most important results are: 1) The church possesses research centres as one of the methodologies bringing it to the reality on how to evangelize the Kenyan society and particularly the Muslim community. 2) Through evangelical methodologies such as building hospitals, schools, orphanage organizations, Non-governmental organizations, under the management of church improved living standard of the Kenyan society. 3) Islam arrived in Kenya a long time before the arrival of Christianity. 4) Social visiting’s by the Christian evangelists to the Muslim households influenced some of the weak-faith Muslims to sympathize with the Christian religion. 5) Through hardcore Christianity government leaders, the church had powers to strengthen and expand its evangelism limits, hence evangelized a big number of pagan Kenyans as it takes itself possessing the only religion in the country, thus also influencing the Muslim society in Kenya. 6) Personality Islamic figures and institutes played a role in spreading and defending Islam through forming Non-Governmental Organizations such as World Assembly of Muslim Youth, building integrated schools such as Sheikh Khalifah Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan Secondary School, building hospitals such as Muslim Education Welfare Association hospital.

The most important recommendations are: 1) Building of research centres which will concentrate in solving the challenges of the Islamic society in Kenya. 2) Creating financial wealth to fund researches especially relating evangelism so as to realize the reality of the church policies influencing Muslims and their solution. 3) Forming local financial Non-Governmental Organizations catering for issues of the Kenyan Muslims, socially, economically, culturally, and politically so as to solve their life challenges. 4) Muslims should unite in Kenya regardless of the fact that there exist differences in their various schools of thought. 5) Muslims should regard others as part and parcel of their life so long as all belong to the Kenyan society but should also be aware of the religious boundaries between them. 6) The Kenyan government should not side with one religion so long as Kenya is not a religious state though all religions have their rights preserved in the Kenyan constitution. The research ends with references related to the topic of the study