No sooner had President Uhuru Kenyatta gave orders of introspection all title deeds in Lamu, where half a million sections of land have been seized by tycoons, there has been verbal exchange and hurling of accusation at one another among politicians. It is normal when the issue of land, which until now has not taken any significant political dimension in the politics of Kenya so far, we in the Islamic political party of Hizb ut Tahrir East Africa wish to expound on this issues as follows:

This shameful habit of land grabbing, is just part and parcel of many land grabbing in the Island as reported by Daily Nation Newspaper which quoted reports from social organizations claiming that there are 869,000 hectares that were grabbed. This was deliberately orchestrated by tycoons who avidly wanted to selfishly benefit from the $24 billion LAPPSET project. Indeed, tycoons have grabbed people's lands for the purpose of either selling them to or seeking compensation from the government. This is a clear indication that the Lamu indigenous residents who are Muslims are still and continue to be oppressed by selfish tycoons.

The trend of land grabbing in Lamu exposes a growth and a stiff continuation at an appalling pace of this heinous deportment, despite many reports from various commissions formulated to tackle the trend. It is clear that the current and the previous leaders who served in the government and the opposition, they have all not succeeded to basically tackle this problem. The only area they excel, is to turn this issue as a propitious political mileage game and later hurl accusations at one another; yet they all have a big hand in the scunge. This problem has made Kenya witnessfrequent skirmishes and violence considering that 85% of the locals are hugely dependent on farming, nevertheless only a portion of 84.4% own land, among them don't even own 3 actres!

We would like to blankly put it black and white, that this problem is currently facing the whole world including Kenya, the reason behind it, being the failure of the capitalist ideology with its wicked means of owning land. The basis of this ideology revolves around benefit and avidity for amassing wealth as the criterion, thus corruption, emblezzlement, and many other social evils are normal to reign the capitalist society.

Moreover, under the yoke of this wicked ideology, the possetion of land is not meant for food production, rather for monopoly then sell them at exorbitant prices.

This is contrary to the sublime Islamic ideology that discourses on various means of owning properties including how to posses land and formulated laws of land whether public, private or government land. Islam strongly condemns any sort of grabbing be it of land, houses or any other properties. The Prophet [saw] says, «مَنْ أَخَذَ شِبْرًا مِنَ الْأَرْضِ ظُلْمًا، طُوِّقَهُ إِلَى سَبْعِ أَرَضِينَ» "Whoever grabs a piece of land an arm's length will be made to sink to the seventh earth" (Reported by Muslim). Consequently, until the re-establishment of a state that shall implement Islam fully, that is when this heinous trend shall come to a halt.

Shabani Mwalimu

Media Representative of Hizb ut Tahrir

in East Africa