Why radicals find fertile ground in moderate Kenya

Last week's hotel bombing in Mombasa, like the Al Qaeda attack against the US Embassy in Nairobi four years ago, caught the government here off guard. Kenya has been known known for a moderate brand of Islam, and its small Muslim population lives peacefully in the community.

But now it seems that some of the same outside influences that have spread radical Islam to other parts of the world - the Internet, a rallying to the Palestinian cause, and outsiders fomenting anti-Western sentiment - have shown how easily a moderate Muslim community can be swept up in radical acts.

"Kenyans do not have the wherewithal, nor the character, to start up their own homegrown international terror organization," says Moustapha Hassouna, a professor of security studies at the University of Nairobi. "But Muslims here are becoming more 'radical' or political in their outlook - and I can see their sympathies being used by outside terror interests."

President George W. Bush says he believes that Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network was involved in the Israeli hotel bombing that killed 13 people, and the simultaneous missile attacks that nearly downed an Israeli charter jet carrying 261 passengers. An Al Qaeda claim of responsibility posted on the Internet is seen as credible.

Thursday, Mr. Bush met with Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi at the White House. They discussed security in the region even as US and Kenyan troops were conducting joint military exercises, named "Operation Edged Mallett," off Kenya's coast.

These days, Kenyan imams in the mosques preach about injustices done to their brothers in Afghanistan. Most every Muslim teenager on the street is able to recite a litany of Israeli wrongs against Palestinians, and can "prove" that the international media is run by Jews. "CNN is owned by Ted Turner, a Jew," states one misinformed lanky Islamic student in a long white robe. "You might deny. But we know." They argue against the Bush administration's stance on Iraq, easily quoting UN resolutions, past US statements, and oil statistics.

"We, as Muslims, have to support each other's agendas," says Haji Kimani, leaning on a biscuit kiosk outside a mosque in the predominantly Muslim Nairobi neighborhood of Eastleigh. He is waiting for nightfall, when those fasting for Ramadan are allowed to eat again. "We eat together, fast together, and fight together." There is no such thing as a Muslim terrorist, he says. "We are just fighting for our rights against those who would harm us."

These sorts of sentiments are relatively new. Arab merchants and slave traders brought Islam to the coasts of East Africa over 1,000 years ago, setting up schools and mosques, and converting about 10 percent of the total Kenyan population. But for centuries, the Muslims were a quiet community here, keeping to themselves, getting along with their neighbors, staying away from politics.

The main turning point, according to Mr. Hassouna, came - as it did elsewhere - at the end of the cold war.

"That is when the divide in the world changed, and turned into a confrontation between the liberal democracies of the West and political Islam," he says. Today, with the help of Internet and satellite TV, along with the arrival of imams from the Gulf and the increase of Kenyan migrant workers traveling around the globe, Muslims here better know, and often empathize with, the needs, hardships, and philosophies of their coreligionists worldwide.

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