When a good idea is applied rigidly it can land people into trouble

By Anyang’ Nyong’o

In the The Standard issue of June 10, it was reported the Catholic University of East Africa has sacked one of its lecturers, Joseph Omole, for teaching and publishing contrary to the faith and beliefs of the university.

It is alleged that Dr Omole’s views on abortion and reproductive health are contrary to those of the Catholic Church and the university.

The authorities in the Catholic Church have opposed the Proposed Constitution because, in their view, it allows abortion contrary to the doctrines of the Church. Omole, on the other hand, argues that all the Church’s medical ethics documents adopted and signed by the bishops are in agreement with the Proposed Constitution.

He has further held that the Christian groups’ arguments lack sound logic and firm principle in castigating the inclusion of Kadhi Courts in the Proposed Constitution.

We do not want to enter into the merits or demerits of Omole’s arguments or those of Church leaders. Our concern here is with the action that the university has taken to sack Omole because his arguments and writings are contrary to the beliefs of the Church. This is what is called taking drastic action on the basis of dogma.

In the history of religion, dogma has always led to some very unfortunate occurrences and abuse of what we now know as human rights.

At one point, for example, a man called Galileo was put to death because he dared to say the earth was round, contrary to the religious dogma of those days, which held that the earth was flat.

Galileo’s writings later became useful to navigators, geographers and astronomers who developed maps and compass enabling sailors to visit various parts of the world without fearing to fall off from the face of the earth.

Much later, Martin Luther led millions of people to leave the Catholic Church and to form Protestant Churches because he argued the individual does not need any intercession by another individual to have communion with God.

Priests are there to guide and minister unto people about God; but salvation should come through faith and not through the ritual practice and following of dogma. Martin Luther protested against dogma, and that is why he was excommunicated from the Catholic Church.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels shook up intellectual thinking of 19th century Europe by writing extensively about capitalism and delving into thorough analyses of the nature of capitalism, how it comes about and how it reproduces itself over time. They went further to show the social and political ramifications of this new world order and how it would, in the final analysis, produce its own grave diggers from among those it exploited and oppressed most.

In the Manifesto of the Communist Party written in 1848, Marx and Engels showed how radical changes would occur in the whole world with the onset of capitalism. The two seemed to have seen the future disappearance of backward societies as being the result of capitalist expansion the world over. But they argued that this process would not take place peacefully; many would have to perish by losing their land, working for long and inhuman hours and even being taken into slavery for capitalism to thrive. All this happened in history. But the essence of writing the manifesto was to call upon those who suffered under capitalism to rise up and save themselves through revolutions that would usher in yet another new world order called socialism. Those who were inspired by Marxism to bring about social change in Europe were ruthlessly dealt with by fascist governments.

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n idea can be good, but when applied rigidly and dogmatically it can land people into lots of problems. But the fact that an idea has been wrongly interpreted or applied elsewhere should not lead to its dogmatic exclusion from intellectual discourse. That again is illiberal and counterproductive to human development.

In the late 1970s when I was teaching Basic Concepts of Political Science at the University of Nairobi, I was picked up several times by the then Special Branch to be questioned on why I was teaching Marxism at the University. My answer was simple: it was part of the syllabus of political philosophy. The next question: why do you want to overthrow the Government? Answer: I don’t want to overthrow it; I want a change that will establish democratic governance on the basis of popular participation and consent.

Reaction by the police: such ideas are dangerous and you deserve to be detained. And that was the reason the Nyayo torture chambers were built and many of us locked up in there for weeks and months.

The Special Branch had a very dogmatic understanding of Marxism, and for that matter they caused miseries and even death to many. They should have simply obeyed one liberal principle, which says that even if there is only one person out of a thousand who is of the contrary opinion, he should be allowed to express that opinion provided it does not injure the freedom of the others to express theirs.

Had they done this perhaps Kenya would not have had an intolerant one-party State that caused so much pain to our people and retarded our development.

One can safely argue that the Nordic countries have developed successfully because their leaders, particularly the Swedish Social Democrats of the 1930s, started to apply socialism creatively to stimulate development and to solve social problems.

The Nordics are examples of societies where dogma is treated with decent suspicion and kept at an arm’s length where public discourse and public policy is concerned.

—The writer is Minister for Medical Services