Achieng Maureen Akena writing in the Secular Society:
Political religion, particularly that exported from the US, is impeding the struggle for universal human rights in Africa and the two must be kept separate
Earlier on open Global Rights, Indian journalist Parsa Rao argued that Asian and African societies must "frame the human rights debate through their own intellectual and cultural traditions." I agree; for too long, our societies have seen human rights as an external and foreign concept.
Unlike Rao and others writing for open Global Rights, however, I do not think this requires us to fully entangle human rights with religion. This is true even in Africa.
Like Pakistani sociologist Nida Kirmani, I believe that religion is often a real impediment to the realization of human rights, and that the two must be kept separate. This is true in Kirmani's South Asian context, and is also true in my continent of Africa.
In Africa, religion - like democracy – is an externally imposed instrument of poverty and power. Decades ago, religion was a mechanism for the foreign colonization and conquest of Africa. Today, religion remains a powerful tool for perpetuating the poverty and oppression that rights movements seek to abolish.
This link between religion and oppression is particularly visible today in Kenya, where the public's religious adherence is increasing with rising poverty and insecurity. My country's television and radio stations cover religion more frequently than before, even as Kenyans decry their radically increasing cost of living, ongoing unemployment, and rising physical insecurity. Kenya's official 50th anniversary celebrations, moreover – Kenya@50 - included more religious content than any of our previous Independence Day festivities...[continue reading]