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FIFA World Cup trophy - Source: Getty Images
A group of Islamic clerics in north eastern Kenya said it was
cracking down on public broadcasts of football and films because it
feared young Kenyan Muslims were shunning Islamic traditions.
The group based in the town of Mandera on the border with Somalia
said it had also put pressure on local administrators to back their
television bans in a football-mad nation eagerly awaiting the World
Cup in South Africa.
"If we come to a place where movies or watching football goes on we
simply take everything and destroy the disc and repay the owners.
We have now succeeded in 10 places," Sheikh Daud Sheikh Mahmud,
head of the group, said.
"We will not stop until we have destroyed totally all the cinemas
showing movies and football in this area," he said by phone from
Mandera.
Kenya said such bans could never be enforced legally.
"This is a secular country so our people have the freedom to do
whatever they want within the law, which includes watching
football," government spokesman Alfred Mutua said.
"On our side of the border is a nation of law and order where there
is no legal restriction on showing football."
The region of Somalia that borders Kenya is largely controlled by
the al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab group, a rebel militia which
enforces a harsh version of Sharia law that includes banning school
bells and music on radios.
The Kenyan group denied any link to al Shabaab.
Misleading places
Sheikh Daud Sheikh Mahmud said they were worried youths in the
predominantly Muslim region were being distracted by television
broadcasts in bars and cafes.
"We realised that our children were spending the whole night in
those misleading places ... this is something against our Islamic
religion and we are the leaders of the people," he said.
Many Kenyan Muslim leaders support a more moderate interpretation
of Islam, although one said restrictions on television were
possible if young Muslims were indeed spending too much time
transfixed by light entertainment.
"Our religion isn't against football as it is also healthy
exercise," Sheikh Nor Barud Gurhan, a Nairobi-based Muslim scholar,
said.
"We could ban it if the people are busy only watching and playing
football without doing the obligatory actions of Islam like
praying," he said.
The northern Kenyan group pledged to step up its anti-football
drive in Kenya as Africa waits to hosts its first World Cup in
June, a point of great pride for many Kenyans.
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