“Kenya’s constitutional vote on sharia courts pits Muslims against Christians”

What an unfortunate mess. This is one, inevitably emotional issue, on which reasonable people can disagree–and those same reasonable people could still vote for (or against) the proposed new constitution regardless of their position on this one issue. Clearly tensions are being exploited.

From the U.S. side, I want to believe that people who wade in to this mean well, irrespective of the issue about the road to hell being paved by good intentions. At the same time, I have to wonder and worry about whether people who have a record of doing ignorant and irresponsible things like generating e-mails that end up discussed on the front pages on newspapers in Kenya (the day I left the country during the U.S. presidential campaign) asserting that Muslim-Christian tension and an alleged Obama-Odinga “secret Muslim” pact to impose sharia were involved in Kenya’s election and post-election violence.