There have long been tensions between the Christian majority and the Muslim minority through the 50 years of independence but especially since the rise of political Islam in the 1990′s.
Much responsibility for the dominance of the Christian faith lies with British missionaries however the land’s association with Islam goes back a lot further.
Explorers recorded a prosperous Islamic civilization centred around Lamu island on the north coast from the 7th Century AD which traded with the Saudi peninsula, India and China. The photograph is of the ancient mosque before it was renovated and whitewashed, which now looks as good as new.
There remains to this day a thriving Muslim community in this region, which borders on Somalia to the north, although the past three decades have seen an influx of Somalians to Kenya fleeing their war-worn country. Muslims have complained that Kenyan security forces harass them.
The involvement of US and Israeli forces in the operation to kill the attackers at the Westgate mall – owned by Israelis – is no surprise. Kenyan politicians, fearful of breakaway movements and nervous of the continually-unstable Somalia, have been cooperating with both Washington and Tel Aviv, certainly since the 1980 explosion at the Norfolk Hotel in Nairobi, owned by Jewish people, and according to some accounts a decade before that.
Kenya has a military agreement for the US to use airports for refuelling purposes and the three nations have cooperated to drive back al-Shabaab militants in neighbouring Somalia.
The 1998 attack on a US embassy in Nairobi killed 213 people and injured 5,000 for which Osama bin Laden and his operatives in Sudan were blamed, heightened awareness of extremism in the region, which was reinforced four years later suicide bombs in Mobassa which killed 13, and a lucky escape for passengers to Tel Aviv who saw rockets wiz past their plane.
Kenya was identified in the 9/11 Commission as a state where terrorists must be caught, and they submitted a list of names of suspected terrorists to the US and was allegedly complicit in extraordinary renditions to Guantanamo and elsewhere at the time of George W Bush.
The long involvement of Kenya in the fight against terrorism was bound to lead to another attack and a site like the Westgate mall, with its’ ostentatious wealth and Jewish ownership, was an obvious target.
A key question for Kenyans is whether their politicians have got the right balance between protecting security within their borders and external adventures, or whether they have gone too far in their cooperation with the US and Israel in a wider regional battle against extremism thereby leaving their own citizens exposed to the sort of attack we have now witnessed in Nairobi?
It may be impossible to turn the clock back several centuries when peaceful and prosperous Islamic kingdoms existed before European invaders showed up, but it is surely right that Kenyans strive for a political settlement in the region instead of engaging in a never-ending battle with al-Shabaab.
By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway