American Presidential candidate Barack Obama is friends with Kenyan Presidential candidate Raila Odinga. Odinga recently lost the Kenyan elections, and, ever since, his followers have been rioting and murdering people who support Kenyan President Kibaki.
The Islamic connection here is that Raila Odinga signed an agreement with the National Muslim Leaders Forum of Kenya.
Read about Odinga and the Muslims document here.
Here are previous posts I've done on the subject.
The Islamic Element to the Killing In Kenya
Obama's Man In Kenya
And now, today, from Time Magazine, we have evidence of just how closely Mr. Obama is working with Raila Odinga:
One of the more extraordinary stories of the Obama campaign has been playing out behind the scenes over the past week as the candidate has been working on a daily basis to try to calm things down in his father's homeland and his grandmother's home, Kenya, where a contested election has led to riots.
On January 1, two days before the Iowa caucuses, Obama left a message for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. According to Robert Gibbs, Obama's Communications Director, Rice called back "as we were driving from Sioux City to Council Bluffs on January 1. They talked about the situation and Rice asked Obama to tape a Voice of America message calling for calm." Obama taped the message on January 2, after a rally in Davenport, Iowa. He said, in part:
"Despite irregularities in the vote tabulation, now is not the time to
throw that strong democracy away. Now is a time for President Kibaki, opposition
leader Odinga, and all of Kenya’s leaders to call for calm, to come together,
and to start a political process to address peacefully the controversies that
divide them. Now is the time for this terrible violence to end.
Kenya’s long democratic journey has at times been difficult. But at
critical moments, Kenyans have chosen unity and progress over division and
disaster. The way forward is not through violence – it is through democracy, and
the rule of law. To all of Kenya’s people, I ask you to renew Kenya’s democratic
tradition, and to seek your dreams in peace."
On January 3, the day of the caucuses, he had a conversation with Bishop Desmond Tutu, who had flown to Nairobi to see if he could begin negotiations with the factions. In the days since his Iowa victory, Obama has had near-daily conversations with the U.S. Ambassador in Kenya or with opposition leader Raila Odinga. As of late this afternoon, before his rally in Rochester, N.H., Obama was trying to reach Kenyan President Kibaki.
Notice Obama isn't talking to President Kibaki, but he is talking to Raila Odinga everyday. It could be that Kibaki is not returning his phone calls. And, if so, he has good reason to not want to speak to Obama, seeing as how Obama is facilitating the Muslims alliance which, it seems, is the engine behind the killing.
Pamela at Atlas Shrugs has great coverage here, including these important notes:
Odinga now claims he and Obama are cousins (BBC here.)A Jacksonian has a devastating article outing Odinga's Arab connections with ties to al qaeda.Kenya, Islam and Obama Hussein 1/04/08 Jihad in Kenya. Obama, your move 1/5/08UPDATE 10:52 pm: Melanie Phillips over at The Spectator has more on the jihad in Kenya here;
But this isn’t the first time churches in Kenya have been torched, as you can read here (date unknown): On 13 June, Muslims rioting over the arrest of one of their clerics torched five churches in Bura, Tana River district, not far from Mombasa in Kenya… As impunity equals permission, this is a serious issue of national significance at a time when Muslim tensions are rising to boiling point.
or here from 2001: Anglican Archbishop David Gitari and an interfaith team confronted rioting Muslim youths armed with swords and clubs on December 1 in Nairobi, Kenya. In response to this attempt to quell Kenya's worst outbreak of violence between Christians and Muslims, the rioters pelted the archbishop and his team with rocks. Moderate Muslim leaders plucked Gitari from the mob and rushed him to a nearby hospital, where he was treated for head injuries. ‘I survived only because Muslim leaders formed a human shield around me and in the process got more injured than myself,’ Gitari later said in local media reports. Or here from 2003: Muslim leaders in Kenya are threatening armed conflict if the new Kenyan constitution does not enshrine Islamic courts (known in Kenya as Kadhi courts). For years, Kenya has been subjected to creeping Islamisation and jihadi violence by elements within the country’s ten per cent Muslims against the Christian majority. Yet unaccountably there was no mention of this key fact in the media coverage of the post-election violence.Kenya - Muslim Tensions Rise And Churches Burn
Kenya: Muslims push for Sharia