Obama campaigned in Kenya in August 2006 for the presidential candidate Raila Odinga, who is now Prime Minister of Kenya. Odinga has troubling ties to Islamic hardliners: he reportedly made a fortune in the oil industry by making a deal with the Al-Bakri Group of Saudi Arabia. Abdulkader al-Bakri, the CEO of the Al Bakri Group, has been identified as a sponsor of Al-Qaeda. Odinga also cultivated ties with Muammar Gaddafi.
And now this: the U.S. government is promoting a pro-Sharia Constitution in Kenya. This should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed Obama’s consistent pro-Islamic supremacist, pro-Sharia policies; get the full story of Obama’s dealings with Odinga and his Islamic supremacist ties in general in The Post-American Presidency.
Is there any problem with the President of the United States pushing and financing in another country the establishment of a system that would deny basic freedoms? Does anyone care?
“Trouble in Kenya,” by Kathryn Lopez, July 9 (thanks to Neil):
[…] Biden was in Kenya leading what sounded a lot like a rally for that nation’s new constitution, one that’s going to be voted on in August. It’s a fatally flawed document, inimical to the values of many Kenyans. The government lost a constitutional vote once before, and it’s called out the big guns for this propaganda campaign, including claimed promises of an Obama visit if the populace knuckles under.
Many foreign observers have enthusiastically joined the government and the Kenyan mainstream media in insisting that a “yes” vote is essential. But it’s far from an open-and-shut case. […]
U.S. financial and rhetorical support for the Kenyan constitution has some members of Congress calling for an investigation. In a letter to Department of State officials and others, Reps. Chris Smith of New Jersey, Darrell Issa of California and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida raised questions about U.S. lobbying in Kenya — specifically, the possibility that the Obama administration may have violated federal law in doing so.
Administration officials have denied any impropriety. But, as the letter points out, our ambassador to Kenya has been quoted as saying that the U.S. has given Kenya $2 million for “civic education” on the constitution, and that we’re committed to more.
“The U.S. shouldn’t be interfering with this process, and we have serious questions about why the Obama administration is promoting a constitution which allows abortion on demand and waters down protections for religious freedom,” Rebecca Marchinda of the New York-based World Youth Alliance, which has an office in Nairobi, says. […]
…the proposed constitution would also create a legal system within a legal system — codifying the strengthening of sharia by making it apply to every Muslim Kenyan. As Eric Rassbach of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty points out: “People are subjected to these tribunals merely by virtue of what religious community they were born into, and they have no way of opting out.”
Ray Walser of the Heritage Foundation gives the Obama administration the benefit of the doubt: “I would suspect the administration is pushing the constitution package as a whole with the promise to reduce presidential power and to place constitutional safeguards against corruption.” That would take Vice President Biden at his word. But the Achilles heel of this administration is that it is not, in the subtle words of Walser, “adverse to measures that permit space for sharia-like legal customs — for Muslim outreach/public-diplomacy purposes“…
Nina Shea, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, has a more direct and alarming warning: “The U.S. is drifting unconsciously, haltingly, inconsistently toward a foreign policy that actively promotes the state coercion of Islamic strictures. It adopted such a policy in its financial and legal drafting support of the constitutions of Iraq and Afghanistan. … It did so at the U.N. Human Rights Council in October 2009, when the U.S. joined with Egypt, representing the Organization of the Islamic Conference, to introduce a resolution calling for states to enforce their hate-speech laws. It explained its initiative, which shocked many NGOs, as seeking to ‘reach out to Muslim countries.'” […]