There has been a trend in Kenyan politics and this most prevalent among the media and political classes to speak of the Muslim vote, a collective that needs to be courted and won over by the parties and their candidates.

As a secular Muslim, even an agnostic one living in these times, I cannot think of any stunt more dangerous for the well-being of the Kenyan Muslim than this. No other scheme could be less likely to deter efforts to foster a sense of joint community and common values. Whereas it is true that organized religion can be a useful means by which politicians can reach the voting public, it is most offensive to view Kenyan Muslims as a monolithic group that pays homage to the ideas of some fuzzy unelected council some dark place in Mombasa. With the international climate already so virulently poisoned against Islam and its adherents, it is necessary that all such talk is kept as far away from the public domain as possible.

While it is true that the very conservative and discordant nature of our ethnic constitution is unhelpful to efforts at integration and communion, both of religions and ethnic groups, it is most important that Kenyan Muslims are not set apart as having peculiar demands of their government, or imposing special and separate burdens on their fellow citizens. In these times when our politics is led by the media, such sentiments are transmitted across the country in a manner that could very easily backfire on even the best-intentioned causes.

Nairobi Mosque

It would be foolish, it is true, to ignore the fact that traditional Kenyan rights groups will be unlikely to campaign for the rights and freedoms of Muslims. Neither for that matter will non-Muslim members of parliament. The Guantanamo cases, or the imam exiled to Saudi Arabia, or the endless deportations, or the invasion of Somalia and the oppressive demands for identification as a Kenyan are all the kind of tragedy that is suffered almost exclusively by Muslims in Kenya. But these are civil rights issues and should be treated as such. In the United Kingdom for example, groups like Liberty (a secular charity) lead the campaign for the freeing of the Britons in Guantanamo Bay. The efforts for the rights and freedoms of Palestinians are led by British people from all communities including most prominently British Jews and the Unions of Journalists and University Lecturers. The invasion of Iraq was similarly protested by people from across the board, including a large number of atheists and Christian groups. The Archbishop of York- a black Ugandan- was a prominent opponent of Israel's excesses against Lebanon, as is Archbishop Desmond Tutu. In our country on the other hand, all these events were protested exclusively by Muslim groups.

The danger inherent in this approach is that the public does not feel a part of the Islamic suffering. By protesting on their own, and by lending their voice only to Islamic issues, the Islamic clerics are giving the country the perception that they are a state apart. In addition, Muslims begin to take on the sack-cloth of the eternal victim, and from the pictures of flag-burning aggressive protesters, the stereotype of the Muslim and belligerent and a danger to society is further enforced.

I am not apologizing for the abdication of duty by human rights groups. Far from it, but it is necessary that Kenyan Muslims lobby these groups, engage with them on other matters and build coalitions that will agitate for common freedoms for all Kenyans regardless of religion or race. If there are Kenyans who suffer arbitrary arrest or who have been expelled from within our borders, then these are matters that violate our Bill of Rights and are therefore injurious to all of us as Kenyans.

And finally we must return to the votes and campaigning. First off, in the separation of religion from the state as contrived in our laws, there should be no scope for political bargaining on the basis of faith. Faith must remain in the domain of the personal, bringing that out simply violates the rights and freedoms of other Kenyans as it imposes on them burdens others have voluntarily chosen to take up. But even if this was the case, there is a need to be rational.

I have traveled in Western Kenya, and visited a mosque in places as diverse as Mumias and Kapsabet. The family of US Senator Obama are Muslims in Siaya. Najib Balala is a Muslim of one Coastal extraction and experience, Suleiman Shakombo is one from another experience. There is no any politician or cleric can claim to speak for Kenyan Muslims. The sugarcane farming Muslim in Matungu and the maize farming one in Aldai have exactly the same worries and concerns as their fellow constituents.

These are already poisoned times, and given the views of many Kenyans I have spoken to, they will get even more poisoned. There is no reason to aid in the construction of a fifth column out of Muslims. There is every need that all Kenyans come together in the defence of truth and justice, not just those issues that affect their society peculiarly. More than anything however, Kenyans must accept the rights of others to a public sphere disinfected of all religion. Keep your faith private.