State must protect children from religious zealotry

You may have heard of the Branch Davidian cult led by one David Koresh who believed himself to be its final prophet. Then again there was recently octogenarian Harold Camping, who broadcast on his Family radio that the world would end in March 2012 and reaped quite a tidy sum from gullible “fool-owners”.

There have been as many Doomsday purveyors as there are trick card players on a sunny market day. We grin and bear their shame and retractions when the sun comes right out the very next day, just as it has done for eons.

However, when a worshipper’s beliefs border not just on the absurd, but also start having ramifications that negatively impact on other citizens of God’s wide world, it becomes criminal and actionable.

How else can one describe the intransigence of Kavonokya sect adherents in Mwingi District? They wouldn’t take their children to hospital neither for life-saving free vaccination nor for treatment once illness sets in. They claim their god is merely testing the strength of the fibres weaving their faith.

Even worse they have denied their children the right to an education and would rather the young ones mill around and await divine intervention for succour, penance and creature comforts. Good grief.

This is not just an affliction of the Kavonokya sect. Others in Laikipia, Homa Bay, Nakuru and Kibera have in various parts of the media been reported to practice similar, extreme and hard-to-comprehend interpretation of scripture.

How many times have adults of seeming sound mind even opt to go to court and serve jail time rather than take their children to school or for modern medication? Who will protect these children who have not reached the age of majority and do not have the capacity to prophesy their being religious zealots?

World cup banned

Did many of us not chuckle when Al Shabaab militia banned Somalis from watching the World Cup last year, claiming the Koran was against this? And what of the “interesting” definition of Western-style education as being evil that has Nigeria’s Boko Haram sect leaders burning the midnight oil, wondering what other pretext they can use to keep followers blind, pumped up full of hatred and introverted?

The law grants freedom of worship to all adults, alongside other fundamental rights and freedoms. No law, however, allows adults to subject children to a system of adherence that leaves them vulnerable, sickly or even, dead. We must as right-thinking adults draw the line somewhere. Barbarity is no longer cool. Period.