Sheikh Juma: Kenya’s sharia law champion

By NGUMBAO KITHI

One of the surviving Kenyan delegates to the Lancaster House conference in London that ushered in independence has spoken.

Sheikh Abdulahi Nassir Juma, 81, was among the delegates that attended the Lancaster House conference to discuss the setting up of the old constitution.

He was a member of a delegation called the Kenya Protectorate representing the aspirations of the 10-mile coastal strip, which was incorporated into the Kenyan colony by the British at the beginning of the last century.

While some groups in the former Northern Frontier District openly sought to secede from Kenya, the Kenya Protectorate went to the Lancaster talks to seek guarantees about the future of the residents of the 10 mile strip with a specific aim to secure religious rights in any future dispensation.

Its agitation secured the Muslim Kadhi courts based on a unification agreement that merged the Kenya colony and 10 mile strip into one country at independence.

Sheikh Juma, now lying frail, became the symbol and exponent of this historic agreement between the British Government, the sultan of Zanzibar, the governments of Kenya and Zanzibar dated October 8, 1963.

Mr Juma has the agreements bound together and due to old age, he has given the authority to his first-born son Stanmbuli Abdullahi to explain what he went through.

The agreement was entered on October 8, 1963 by Duncan Sandys, one of her majesty’s principal secretary of state on behalf of Queen Elizabeth II, Bin Abdulla bin Khalifa, then Sultan of Zanzibar, Jomo Kenyatta on behalf of the Government of Kenya and Mohamed Shamte, Prime Minister of Zanzibar on behalf of the Government of Zanzibar.

The agreements secured the office and jurisdiction of the Chief Kadhi and other kadhis to arbitrate on Muslim’s personal law where all concerned parties practice Islam.

“That is the reason why the Chief Kadhi’s main business is handling marriage, divorce and inheritance,” Sheikh Juma says.