When the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al Thani skipped the December 2018 meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) held in Saudi Arabia and instead dispatched his Foreign minister, voices of reason, especially in the Muslim world, felt that more diplomatic efforts should be made to mediate the political crisis pitting Qatar and her GCC counterparts.
In June 2017, Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) cut diplomatic ties with Qatar and launched an economic boycott that included stopping Qatar Airways flights from using their airspace, closing the country's sole land border with Saudi Arabia and blocking its ships from using their ports.
The Muslim community in Kenya is concerned and urges the feuding parties to enter into dialogue and solve this crisis, not just for their own sake, but for the good of the Muslim world and the international community at large.
Political and security analysts in the sub-region have been following closely the crisis and asking—should the Muslim community in Kenya be worried about the escalation of this crisis? The answer is certainly in the affirmative.
Many people, especially in the Muslim world, remember with nostalgia that day in May 1981 when the Charter of the GCC was signed to usher in an era of brotherly love and cooperation among the people of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and the UAE.
As much as the GCC was and remains a regional intergovernmental political and economic union of the said Arab states of the Persian Gulf, the rest of the Muslim world has benefited immensely from the resources distributed by the GCC countries to support Muslims in various parts of the world, especially Africa.
The Muslim community in Kenya has benefited in many ways, but now that its benefactors are quarrelling, the community is at a crossroads, unsure of which side to take.
For example, there are local Muslim organisations that have been receiving various kinds of support from Qatar and Saudi Arabia. But with these two not on speaking terms, the organisations don’t know which side to back given that there is no middle ground in this feud. If the organisations choose to back the Qataris, then they must be prepared to forgo support from the Saudis, if they choose to throw their lot with the Saudis, then they must be prepared to forgo the support from the Qataris.
It is because of this dilemma that the Muslim community in Kenya can no longer ignore the feud. In his speech to the recent GCC meeting in Riyadh, Kuwaiti leader Sheikh Sabah al Ahmad al Sabah indeed acknowledged that the crisis threatens the future of the entire GCC and urged the feuding parties to seek an amicable solution.
"The most serious challenge we are facing is the Gulf dispute and its continuation, which is now causing a serious threat to our unity and affecting our citizens' interests. This has also caused the rest of the world to look at us as an entity with cracks forming in its unity, and that we can no longer guarantee the interests of other nations as we could when our unity was stronger," Sheikh Sabah said.
But our local concerns are much more. The feud poses a serious danger to the soft power approaches so far made in the fight against violent extremism and terrorism. Institutions that have been partnering with other stakeholders in countering violent extremism are worried that the feud emboldens extremist elements by giving them grounds to justify their anti-social agenda.
It is encouraging that King Salman of Saudi Arabia also acknowledged during the recent GCC meeting in Riyadh that violent extremism and terrorism are likely to take advantage of the feud to escalate their agenda.
"Extremist and terrorist groups continue to threaten our security in the Gulf and in the Arab world," the king said.
In view of the foregoing, I call upon leaders of the GCC to rethink the positions they have taken with regard to the Qatar crisis and forge a new agenda of brotherhood in order to avoid plunging the region into further turmoil. Kenyan Muslims appreciate and support the mediation efforts by the Kuwaiti leader to end this crisis by calling upon the feuding parties to allow the voice of reason to prevail.
Meanwhile, the conflicts in Yemen and Syria have already taken an unacceptable toll on the personal security and socioeconomic lives of the people in this region—majority of whom are Muslim. The region should be spared another conflict.
Deputy chairman, Supkem