We are all to blame for Shakahola horror; let's act now to avoid a repeat

Kenya Red Cross staff offload some of the bodies that were exhumed from shallow graves in Shakahola forest on April 30, 2023. [Victor Ogalle, Standard]

What has happened in Shakahola raises questions of responsibility and culpability. It is not only about the Church, but also about our own behaviour and responsibility as educated people, political leaders and the government.

Arab Christian writer and philosopher Khalil Gibran wrote that the leaf does not fall from the tree without the full knowledge of the tree.

Similarly, the sinner does not wrong the community without the knowledge of the community. I do not condone the evils that have been blamed on the Pastor Paul Mackenzie and I do not know enough to start condemning either.

I am a product of the Church and the Mosque. I am a practicing Muslim and adhere to the Muslim faith. I was educated in Christian schools and learnt Christian values and I am a student of the Bible.

Over the years, I have read hundreds of books on both Christianity and Islam and came to the conclusion that our faiths have more in common, and our differences are razor thin.

When I go to church, I look for our commonalities and I find comfort and faith in various Bible verses. These verses have exact replicas of many in the Quran. As a leader, I often go to church to promote inter-faith unity and to show people that God is God whether you are a Muslim or a Christian.

As Muslims, we failed when we allowed extremists preachers to lead our youth into radicalisation and extremism. We kept quiet when they spoke in Qhutbas propagating a version of Islam we did not agree with.

I have often left the mosque annoyed with the sermon and wondering "where did he get those ideas from? I did not recognise his interpretation of my religion there but I did nothing about it. Neither did many of our responsible citizens and leaders.

It is only when our youth started dying that we started to act. Now we quietly work to remove such preachers and moderate such people. It is time for Christians to also ask themselves what they have done about the abuses going on in church.

Many small churches have become businesses. When I see some massive multi-million shilling religious complexes, I see the sweat of thousands of poor people who can barely feed their families who have been extorted during prayer sessions into parting with their hard-earned money. I have a bishop friend who complained bitterly that "collections were really low during Covid".

That sounded exactly like a businessman complaining that sales were low at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. I have seen the fake miracles that were pure acting that gullible poor people were shown every week.

I too have attended many harambees to raise money to buy luxury gas guzzler cars for the servants of God who forgot that Jesus Christ rode on a donkey. Yet we all contribute, and we all know that it is wrong. We are all guilty.

What happened in Shakahola was outright madness. The sad thing is that these cults happen in plain sight. It is only when people start dying that we suddenly wake up and ask how could this have happened? We knew it was going to happen and we kept quiet. Let us not turn this into a political blame game.

Every political leader knows that some churches are abusing and exploiting the poor but we have all kept quiet. It is time to act, monitor, regulate churches and protect our people from charlatans acting in the name of God.

Let's follow the example of Jesus Christ who picked the whip and chased money lenders from the temple. Some churchmen are simply money collectors. Act now before we have more Shakaholas.