FALSE

OLD - Anchored in an act of parliament
NEW - Anchored in the constitution. More difficult to repeal.

OLD - Restricted to the Protectorate even though it moved inwards by default
NEW - Enforceable nationwide

... Cherubin.....i once said and will continue repeating myself.......its better to die standing than to live on your knees.
....two wrongs dont make a right....religion should not have been in the current constitution neither the future one.simple

according to my pastor, I should never use contraceptives, My husband should never use a condom ( even though...), my daughter will burn in hell for wearing mini skirts....I am sure we all know of more crazy religious decrees.

So lets get back on topic. Hyperventilating and having emotional orgasms over things that happen every day is really unreasonable.

The cleric is as wrong as the No campaigners.

Declarations within the place of worship on what to do or not to do is one thing but it's a different kettle of fish when one purports to enforce their dogma over a significant geographical jurisdiction within Kenya, where we could all find ourselves operating from.

When they travel to other places, nobody is likely to ask them to take the holy communion as a decree in that region.

You have little or no idea of how Islam/religious systems works. Today you think it does not affect you because you will vote yes and the new katiba will come in anyway - the numbers are there BUT the truth is there is a wider plan beyond just having the Courts in the constitution. The answer is separate religion and state. HERE is the next step...

By Njoki Ndung’u

The violent and ruthless ban of the brassier in Somalia by the Al Shabab is not a laughing matter. I have read the shocking narratives of how the edict allegedly made in the name of Islam is unleashing unimaginable terror among the women in Mogadishu.

Elements of the puritanical-pretending militia are reportedly stopping women and girls in the street to physically confirm that they are not violating its latest ban of a garment with a rich history allegedly because it is un-Islamic. The apparent manner of ascertaining this is humiliating, insulting and disgusting. It is unimaginable that something so diabolical could be happening.

I have gathered that "soldiers" of the sect stop women and girls with evidence of firm bust in the streets and ask them to jump up and down. From the resultant chest motion, the militants are reportedly able to isolate those wearing bra.

The spot checks are indiscriminate in their execution. Mothers in the company of their children – including teenagers – are stopped in the middle of the road for the ordeal. Husbands are forced to witness their wives going through the embarrassment. Brothers stand by as their sisters are ordered at gunpoint to bounce their breasts up and down to the sharp eye of these fanatics. And the penalty for flouting this law is severe.

The immediate thing is to strip them of the offending bra. These are then burnt in public as an example-setting warning to like-minded bra lovers.

Yet with or without religion, Somalia, like any other African country, is traditionally moderate to conservative, where decorum and dignity between the sexes is cherished. You can imagine the agony and humiliation of a son watching his mother forced to remove her innerwear by the roadside. Forcing womenfolk to part – and thereby expose – their intimate wear publicly offends common decency.

Forced removal

The forced removal of the bra is not enough punishment in the minds of the zealots. It must be followed by flogging. Masked men reportedly lead the violators to a whipping zone where the cane is applied mercilessly. Male relatives who have attempted to summon their honour to protest this indignity are said to have fared worse than those they sought to protect in the same hands of self-appointed Islamist disciplinarians. Besides suffering the same thrashing, some are said to have been jailed for resisting the dictates of Allah and man.

The radicals’ beef with the bra is that it is an impure, un-Islamic and immoral foreign culture garment that distorts the natural order of humanity. They classify it with things like dancing, false teeth and a shaved beard that either give fake allure or arrest aging. Breasts, they argue, should be allowed to stand or fall depending on ones age and body structure. Wearing bra apparently interferes with this divine order of things. Turning to an unholy appendage to give them an accentuated shape is sinful and immoral deception, especially if it provokes sensual feelings.

I read reactions to the bra ban and its strict enforcement. The common thread among bloggers, human rights activists and Muslim scholars is a general repugnance at the militant’s actions. The latter are viewed as atavistic, barbaric, perverted and wayward puritanists. It is blindly ignorant of the history and the pragmatic utility of the brassier. It negates overwhelming evidence of the costume intimate and universal relationship with women.

The bra’s intrinsic value in a woman’s life is immeasurable. Women wear it for myriad reasons. Primarily, it comes in handy in supporting bosoms and for preserving modesty, especially in public places.

You can imagine the scenes in offices and other meeting places if women did not wear this accessory. It is also useful in containing movement in, say, during physical exercises and sports, and in facilitating breast feeding for nursing mothers.

Typically, bras are designed to lift the breasts off the chest and manage the sagging that is a normal consequence of aging. But unlike the Al Shaban doctrine, the need to contain the latter is not necessarily a natural wish to look sexier.

A good reason is practical and therapeutic. Bras can be essential in managing pain associated with big busts among many women by affording them controlled support.

Biology of breasts

To appreciate this, it is important to consider the biology of breasts. An average pair weighs around a kilogramme. Each breast contributes about four to five per cent of entire body fat. It means they represent nearly a per cent of an average woman’s total body weight.

This could be significantly more in some, particularly well endowed women. Carrying around such weight unsupported could easily provoke health problems like bad posture, back and neck pains. Surely as it is, there are plenty of woes for your average woman without the bra.

If we are to live in a society where good governance, democracy and respect for human rights apply, we must be vigilant and condemn acts of violence and humiliation against women and children. Just this last week, widows suspec

ted to be witches were stripped naked and beaten in India.

Only this year, women in Nepal were stripped and dragged naked in the streets for wearing clothes considered to be indecent. No one came out to protect and defend them. These incidents have happened several times in Kenya. Yet the silence so far is deafening. Or is it deliberately and cruelly accommodating?

There is a message in all this and it has nothing to do with Katiba.

Whether we have a new constitution or not, stricter versions of sharia law are popping up in the area near were al shabab operates.

This is an issue of national security. Not religious orgasms of "I told you so".

It is worrying to me since it seems that our north eastern brothers are becoming marginalized enough to think fundamental.

I have lived there for 6 months and for the christian fundamentalists who wish to convert every human to their church, the fruit is ripe there.

What is funny is their opposite fundamentalists in the christian faith who have forgotten their own declarations. You can argue its inside or outside the church till you grow blue. You know you have a fools argument.

I hope the government takes this declaration seriously and starts addressing the al shabab question.

In the meantime, lets not go branding my neighbour Hussein as an evil man who hates DSTV. We watch it in his house and he's just as flabbergasted as everyone on this forum.

by the way mimisasa. I don't get my information from wazua. Trust me when I tell you. I have seen all types of fundamentalism in extremely close quarters.

There is no better fundamentalism. Christian and muslim. That is why I will continue to advocate that you stop judging all our muslim brothers in the same vein as a silly cleric.

Lest I start judging all christians in the same vein as pheodophillic catholic priests and homosexual evangelicals.

Or should we now assume that the catholic church is about to lead all humans to become sexual predators?

And this just reinforces my earlier VOTE. By the year 2030 these events will have mutated to your hood!!!

Masukuma, you are either extremely young or belong to one of these fundamentalists churches.

Trust me when i tell you, I see no difference between fundamentalists. Yote ni mbaya and that is what this constitution is trying to get rid of.

When you live in a christian town in the South of USA, you come here and preach to me about christian fundamentalists being different.

Or ask the Iraqi millions who were killed coz someone who was "saved", lied, totured, maimed in the name of the greater Good and God.

So lets condemn this cleric but lets not try get a moral high ground coz you have none.

Before this goes where I think it is going I wish to surrender.

It is extremely wrong in my view to condemn all muslims because of one cleric who is obviously in the JIAM class.

Just in the same way, I will not say that all kalenjins just want the land question because they want to take all the land in the Rift Valley.

Saying that all muslims are for the Kadhis court because they want to change "your hood" is rather pretentious.

Saying you will vote no because the cleric told people not to watch DSTV is the same as you will vote yes because catholics will burn in hell for using condoms.

it is a silly argument only meant to bring up the wrong emotions.

That is the reason I am getting very very scared of these clerics and their agenda. I believe in my priest being honest, truthful and level headed and not try to fan the seeds of christian muslim hatred.

Where are the church leaders who care for all human beings even if they don't tithe in their church?

This game that masukuma and his ilk are trying to play here is extremely dangerous and should be condemned in the highest of the heavens.

I am ashamed of these people. I only thank God I don't go to their churches lest I be judged one day for leading Kenya to a religious war that was propagated by outright lies and fear mongering.


And with that, I humbly beg to resign from wazua.