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Religion in Kenya

Kenya has a Christian majority, with Islam being the second largest faith representing 11% of the Kenyan population, or approximately 5.2 million people as of 2019 census. The Kenyan coast is mostly populated by Muslims. Nairobi has several mosques and a notable Muslim population. The faith was introduced by merchants visiting the Swahili coast, which led to local conversions and foreign Muslims becoming assimilated. This would later result in the emergence of several officially Muslim political entities in the region. The majority of Muslims in Kenya are Sunni Muslims forming 81% of the Muslim Population, 7% identify as Shia. There are also sizeable populations of Ibadism and Quranist adherents. In large part, Shias are Ismailis descended from or influenced by oceanic traders from the Middle East and India. These Shia Muslims include the Dawoodi Bohra, who number some 6,000–8,000 in the country. As for the orthodox Twelver Shia presence in Kenya, twentieth century Pakistani scholar Khwaja Muhammad Latif Ansari played an important role in proselytisation for the resident Khoja community. The Moroccan Muslim traveller, Ibn Battuta, visiting the Swahili Coast in 1331 AD, reported a strong Muslim presence. Ibn Battuta said: The inhabitants are pious, honourable, and upright, and they have well built wooden mosques. On arrival, the Muslims settled along the coast, engaging in trade. The Shirazi intermarried with the local Bantu people resulting in the Swahili people, most of who converted to Islam. Swahili, structurally a Bantu Language with heavy borrowings from Arabic, was born. Primarily, Islam spread through the interactions of individuals, with the Arab Muslims who had settled in small groups maintaining their culture, and religious practices. Despite encountering local communities, Islam was not ‘indigenised’ along the patterns of the local Bantu communities. Nevertheless, Islam grew through absorption of individuals into the newly established Afro Arabic Muslim communities. This resulted in more ‘Swahilization’ than Islamization. There was strong resistance toward Islam by the majority of communities living in the interior. The resistance was because conversion was an individual act, leading to detribalisation and integration into the Muslim community going against the socially acceptable communal life.

Islam remained an urban and coastal phenomenon. The Spread of Islam was low keyed with no impact amongst the local non Swahili African Community. There were no intermediary Africans to demonstrate that, adoption of a few Islamic institutions would not disrupt society. The spread of Islam to the interior was hampered by several factors: for instance, the nature of the Bantu society's varied beliefs, and scattered settlements affected interior advancement. Other factors included, harsh climatic conditions, the fierce tribes like the Maasai, tribal laws restricting passage through their land, health factors, and the lack of an easy mode of transportation. For Trimingham, the brand of Islam introduced to the region was equally to blame. Muslim traders were not welcome in the social structures thereby impeding any meaningful progress until the beginning of European occupation. Other factors affecting Islamic movement into the interior included atrocities committed during slave trading, as these unfavourably affected the spread of Islam. In addition, the embracing of Islam by large portions of coastal tribes in the nineteenth century aided in its spread. Besides, local Muslim preachers and teachers played major roles in teaching religion (Ar. dīn) and the Qur’ān at the Qur’ān Schools (Swa. vyuo) and madrasa attached to the mosques. The coming of the second wave of Europeans, in the nineteenth century, brought mixed fortunes to the coastal Muslims, their strong sense of pride and belonging was greatly diminished, with efforts being redirected to self adjustments. Nonetheless, Muslim agents deployed by Europeans as subordinate labourers to assist in the establishment of colonial administration centres, were advantageously placed throughout the country, bringing the Islamic influence to the interior. Each place where a European installed himself, military camp, government centre, or plantation, was a centre for Muslim influence. Subjectively, most of the surrounding Bantu communities had a close knit religious heritage, requiring strong force to penetrate. The pacification and consolidation by European powers provided the much needed force to open up the communities for new structures of power and religious expression (Trimingham: 1983:58). Basically, progress in the spread of Islam in Kenya came between 1880 and 1930. This was when most social structures and the African worldviews were shattered, leaving them requiring a new, wider worldview encompassing or addressing the changes experienced. Consequently, Islam introduced new religious values through external ceremonial and ritualistic expressions, some of which could be followed with no difficulty. Socio culturally, Muslims presented themselves with a sense of pride and a feeling of superiority. Islamic civilisation was identified with the Arab way of life (Ustaarabu), as opposed to ‘barbarianism’ (Ushenzi) hence the domination of a form of Arabism over the local variety of Islam. The ease, with which Islam could be adopted, meant adding to the indigenous practices, new religious rites and ceremonies to the African ways, with new ways of defining one's identity by new forms of expression. Mingling with Muslims led to conversion meaning returning home as Muslims and not aliens. One example of Shia missionary efforts in Kenya is the work of twentieth century Pakistani scholar Khwaja Muhammad Latif Ansari. Ansari left South Asia for Kenya in the 1950s, fulfilling his dream of preaching to distant, foreign Shi'i communities. He was already a reputed cleric by that time, but nevertheless joined a number of scholars coming from South Asia into the relatively unheard of Shia community of Kenya. After becoming a resident alim there, Ansari helped the community to become large and prosperous as it is today. He is remembered to this day in the country for an address he delivered at the Arusha Conference in December 1958, in which he emphasised the need for tabligh. A large amount of his efforts were focused on the Khoja community.

Shi'a Islam in Kenya is represented primarily by a number of sects, who are largely the descendants of or influenced by Muslim traders from the Middle East and India who came to the East African coast for the either as indentured labourers or for the purposes of trade. The mainstream Shia IthnaAsheri sect is composed of Khojas who are of Indian descent and indigenous Kenyans. The Shia Ismaili sect is represented by Dawoodi Bohra, Mustaali Ismaili denomination and Khoja Ismailis, a Nizari Ismaili denomination both of Indian descent. Most of the Shia of Indian origin arrived in East Africa in the nineteenth century, primarily to landing in Zanzibar and Lamu. initially as traders, later branching into hardware and glass, and then into real estate and construction businesses. Today they are a vibrant part of the Kenyan economy in telecoms, information technology, manufacturing industry, logistics, import and export. Khoja Shia IthnaAsheris number some two thousand (Mombasa & Nairobi) and the indigenous Shia are thirty thousand (Nairobi, Mombasa, Nakuru & Lamu) most prominent amongst them is Shaykh Abdillahi Nassir, a Kenyan convert from Sunni to Shia Islam based in Mombasa and Seyyid Aidarus Alwy of Lamu. The Khoja Ismailia Community has a very small number and Dawoodi Bohra number some 6,500–8,000 in Kenya overall, with some 2,500 in Nairobi and under 3,000 in Mombasa. There are also some 200 members of a breakaway faction, the Progressive Dawoodi Bohra, in Nairobi.