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Lamu women hold an interfaith meeting to advocate for unity.


Date: 27-10-2022


Lamu Women Alliance (LAWA) members attended a training meeting that was held by the Muslim for Human Rights (MUHURI) organization which was aimed to educate about Interfaith.

Lamu Women Alliance is a community-based organization that aims to empower women and girls. The organization champions for the eradication of period poverty by providing school going girls with sanitary towels. It also empowers young women by initiating technical course training such as tailoring, henna painting among other courses for them to become financially stable. The organization also conducts environmental conservation exercises such as cleaning pollutants from the beach and planting mangrove.

In attendance were community members of different faiths with Christianity and Islam being the most practiced religions in Lamu. The training was purposely done to join initiatives for strategic religious action. The invited guests were Ustadh Mau a community leader from Lamu and Topista Juma the head of gender department for MUHURI and Skanda Mohamed, coordinator MUHURI.

The women were taught on understanding the constitution of Kenya, mapping drives of religious conflicts, gender inclusion and women rights. Ustadh Mau taught on respecting diversity and said that everyone has a freedom of worshipping according to Kenyan Constitution and therefore there is a need of unity between the two religions. He also touched on some of the myths and misconception creating friction between the two religions in a bid to shed educate the community on what is factual and what is not.

Some of the reasons that bring conflict between the two religions mentioned in the training were culture, political affiliations, lack of diversity respect and difference in faith and beliefs among others.

Topista Juma taught that women are said to be the Allah/God’s Co creators and are mostly expected to teach their children on the way to respect other people religions. She added that children should also be given chance to interact with other religions if interested and allow them to make choices in religious matters. Restricting them might not be the way to go as they might rebel in the end.

“I was married to a Muslim family, yet I was Christian. I started teaching my son Christianity at an early age but he was not interested. I once went to get him from the mosque where he was going for Madrasa, but he resisted and said that if I was going to keep him away from attending the teachings he was going to live in the mosque and stop coming home. I decided to let him choose his religion. He practiced Islam until recently. I just let him make his decision in choosing his religion,” said Topista .

It was however noted that women are more often than not left out in matters religion. Even as adults, women’s opinion on which religion they would prefer to practice is rarely sought even after marriage.

At the tail end of the meeting, there was a consensus to have conflict resolution strategies to restore unity amongst the community where religious practices differ. They came to an agreement to start by teaching the community on the need to respect diversity and make them understand that there is no religion that is lesser. Women volunteered to attend Radio talk shows that will be hosted in Radio Lamu to educate the community and after the community understands and unites, they will therefore create activities that will be involving both religions