SOLE FEMALE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE IN THE DISPUTED AND RIGGED GENERAL ELECTIONS 2007, KENYA: her roles in the opposition force also culminated in Nazlin Umar making history on April 1st 2006 when she declared her Presidential candidacy for 2007 in Kenya – the first female candidate to declare her interest for 2007 elections on the ODM ticket and the first Muslim to vie for the presidency of the republic of Kenya; as the topmost Islamic clerics and leadership beseeched upon Nazlin to do so and the first such rally where she declared her bid was held in Nyanza province in Kisumu city at the Jomo Kenyatta sports grounds which was held by her network of supporters in Nyanza province in her honor. Nazlin was the sole female candidate to declare and made history once again to be the first Muslim woman to run for Presidency in Africa and the first Muslim to run for the presidency in Kenya when she applied for and was cleared by the Electoral commission of Kenya in the year 2007.
This was later followed by about forty rallies and meet-the-people tours throughout the far-reaches of the Nation, starting with Lamu to seek leave from the topmost Islamic clerics who publicly rallied behind her and issued an Islamic decree (fatwa) that Nazlin must run for the presidency and that the Muslim’s would vote for her as a block vote. This Islamic decree (fatwa) resounded throughout the Nations Islamic clerics who supported the fatwa and publicly declared their support and that of the Muslim block vote to her, from the far ends of the region and who were representative of all communities in Kenya.
Nazlin’s presidential candidature as a Muslim woman was the first time for a Muslim woman in Africa and was profiled by the media throughout Africa and other parts of the world which highlighted her development achievements in the nation and outside.
Nazlin’s declaration for the Presidency in Kenya has been spurned out of Public demand and a feeling of hopelessness of a glaring lack of true, selfless, committed and visionary leadership, excessive abuse of the Law, absence of social justice in Kenya to deliver development, social Justice and true democracy to the Nation. Nazlin’s popularity in the grassroots in Kenya is immense and meets demands for constant ‘meet and talk to the people tours’ out of public demand throughout Kenya.
Nazlin’s strength to mobilize her grassroots support into votes is profound in that she is the only presidential candidate or national leader with a mammoth grassroots network spreading throughout Kenya, the only leader with a national network and working strategy of poverty reduction effected through the hundreds of local income generating activities she has initiated and assisted to realize, the only candidate to form, mobilize, strengthen and run grassroots networks encapsulated into a formidable national force to address local concerns and priority issues throughout Kenya and the leadership, democracy, HIV/AIDS, Gender & youth trainings she has conducted throughout Kenya for grassroots and national leadership from all walks of life. Nazlin’s declaration prompted coverage and profiles once more in leading print and electronic media in Kenya, including regional and national Live Radio and television interviews on leading chat shows, through which the public declared their support to her Presidential declaration and shown impressive public support and enthusiasm in Nazlin’s declaration for the presidency of Kenya and her Vision of the country she loves and to which she has committed her life to, making her bid, a national community based project, literally calling her “president wa mtaa” meaning, president of the grassroots.
Nazlin was considered for nomination as a member of parliament after the December 2002 General elections by the government; the nomination was presented to the government by the Kenya Human rights Commission and the late minister Hon Ahmed Khalif who was also the secretary general of the supreme council of Kenya Muslims.
Nazlin had also been interviewed by parliament, approved and short listed into a list of thirty selected names from over 900 applications for appointment for the position of a Commissioner in the National commission of Human rights of Kenya in June 2003 but did not make it as she did not fit into a political tribal affiliation being favored at the time.
NAZLIN WAS PROFILED IN THE ‘UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA HUMAN RIGHTS SERIES’ PUBLISHED IN 2011 AND LAUNCHED ONLINE IN OCTOBER 2012 FOR USE IN ALL THE UNIVERSITIES IN AMERICA AND ACROSS THE WORLD FOR LAW STUDENTS ON HUMAN RIGHTS STUDIES; NAZLIN HAS ONCE MORE MADE HISTORY AND HER HARD WORK HAS BEEN NOTED AND UNKNOWN TO HER, BEEN PROFILED AS A CASE STUDY ON AN ENTIRE CHAPTER BY THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, USA, IN THE ‘PENNSYLVANNIA STUDIES IN HUMAN RIGHTS SERIES’ PUBLISHED BY UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANNIA PRESS, IN THE VOLUME TITLED ‘GENDER AND CULTURE AT THE LIMIT OF RIGHTS’ EDITED BY DOROTY L. HOGDEKINSON PROFESSOR AND CHAIR OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY AT RUTGERS UNIVERSITY USA IN CHAPTER NINE TITLED ‘MUSLIM WOMEN, RIGHTS DISCOURSE AND THE MEDIA IN KENYA’ AUTHORED BY PROFESSOR OUSSEINA D. ALIDOU. IN A NUTSHELL ON NAZLIN, IN THIS UNIVFERSITY OF PENSYLVANIA SERIES ON HUMAN RIGHTS PROFESSOR OUSSEINA D. ALIDOU, STATES THAT, QUOTE,
“Born in 1967, Nazlin is a woman of modest educational accomplishments. She only completed high school because of her family’s decision to marry her off at an early age. Inspite of this background, she is clearly a brilliant person who has continued to read widely in both the western and Islamic traditions. In the process, she has acquired a degree of consciousness and skills that are rare for Muslim women of her level of formal education. With a sophisticated mastery of both Kiswahili and English, she came to see herself as a translator and mediator, with the ability to read critically the implications of both secular laws and Muslim doctrines. As a result Nazlin was able to delineate the areas of the proposed sexual offenses Bill that were technically problematic. The excerpt of her live radio talk show on the Bill in 2006, Radio Rahma, Mombasa, Kenya, demonstrates her sharp awareness of questions of legal definition, evidentiary procedure and the consequences of Law on public resources.
At the time of this radio talk show in 2006 Nazlin was already a very prominent activist in the Orange democratic movement (ODM), a political party that had emerged in the heat of an acrimonious political contestation over the constitutional referendum in 2005. Partly because of leaders Like Nazlin, the ODM accomplished its objective when the majority of Kenyans voted NO in the referendum. The results of the referendum, in turn, gave Nazlin and the other ODM leaders a new political clout in the Nation. In the aftermath of the referendum, Nazlin declared her intrest to run for the presidency of Kenya then scheduled in 2007. Though she probably knew her chances were slim, she saw the elections as window of opportunity to inscribe the voice of the minority, Kenyan Muslims, even as she articulated politico-economic agendas that were both National and transethnic.
Nazlin has brought to the public domain what has been traditionally considered to be in the private domain. It shows Nazlin’s commitment and dedication as an Islamic activist of limited education, to acquire skills in critical literacy to read and deconstruct not only religious texts but secular materials like legal documents of scientific literature on diseases that have a bearing on their lives. Nazlin has also galvanized media technology towards challenging the hegemony of the non-Muslim majority.
Nazlin shows how secular learning and social skills have been mobilized by Muslim women for religious ends on behalf of Muslim women in particular and the Kenyan Muslim community in large, in the political context of the nation in transition. This Islamist Muslim woman’s voice challenges prevailing deeply entrenched orthodoxies that have defined relations not only between men and women in the Muslim communities and between Muslim women and non- Muslims including their non-Muslim ‘sisters’, the dominant non-Muslim majority misrepresented and misunderstood Muslim women’s reality…that when references are made about Kenyan women, the nuanced experience of minority Muslim women are not taken into account, or perceived as “non-indigenous. For Nazlin, reclaiming their citizenship in a Nation-state that discriminates against them as a religious minority becomes a critical mission. Secondly she feels it is urgent to confront their own community about patriarchal interpretation of Islam and its (misconceived) link to Muslim women’s oppression.
Her activism is shaped by an Islamic framework rather than secular reasoning, which they reject as a constituent of western secularism. Nazlin has galvanized the media and enabled Muslim women to reclaim their citizenship within their own communities and the nation at large.
This dynamic is precisely what makes Nazlin both a Muslim leader and a Kenyan leader. In this process of re-claiming Islam and redefining citizenship, Nazlin is not only galvanizing Muslim women to not only ‘multi-culturalize’’ the human rights regime in their country, but also putting to rest the long held view of Muslim women as passive onlookers. Nazlin has left no doubt that Muslim women are bold agents of change within their own communities and well beyond.” End of quote.
IN A NUTSHELL, ON NAZLIN AND NAZLIN’S FOUNDED MAMOTH ORGANIZATION THE NATIONAL MUSLIM COUNCIL OF KENYA (NMCK –NUR) THE UNIVFERSITY OF PENSYLVANIA STUDIES ON HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE PROFESSOR STATES THAT, QUOTE,
“(In the past) institutionally, virtually all Muslim organizational structures in Kenya such as SUPKEM had been entirely male dominated and male centered. The founding of the NMCK, pioneered and chaired by Nazlin Omar Rajput – a Muslim organization with an overwhelming women’s grassroot membership, marked a clear departure from this patriarchal tradition. NMCK sent a clear signal of the determination of Muslim women activists to transform this gendered structures of Kenyan Muslim organizational leadership. The primary mission of the NMCK is to fill the gap of Muslim women’s under- representation created by male-dominated organizations. More important, its goal is to provide an effective mechanism for addressing major societal issues affecting Muslim women and children, including HIV/AIDS, gender disparities, the role of religion in addressing women’s rights, and social justice in their own communities and at large.
NMCK is also active in providing a Muslim women’s perspective on governance. As Nazlin Omar Rajput points out,
“The situation of Muslim women is made all the more invisible due to the lack of accessible information on their status, their priority needs and the factors that contribute to their marginalization. Without reliable gender sensitive information, awareness raising on persistent gender inequalities is undermined and the development for the effective “action for change” programme constrained. Also while a number of Muslim women groups exist, they are geographically scattered, not well organized and are not linked through formal networking arrangements. Instead the interests of Muslim women tend to be represented by male dominated and gender blind organizations acting as umbrella bodies for Muslims, which have no interest nor programmes targeted specifically for Muslim women nor any representation of women throughout the Nation.”
Clearly then, Kenyan Muslim women are beginning to refuse to be part of the patriarchal vision of the unconditional unity of Muslim polity. To them, Muslim unity must arise not only from confronting the non-Muslim ‘other’ on questions of distributive justice, but also from the promotion of a more just relation across gender within the Muslim Ummah itself.” End of Quote.
NAZLIN HAS ONCE MORE MADE HISTORY AND HER HARD WORK HAS BEEN NOTED AND UNKNOWN TO HER, BEEN PROFILED AS A CASE STUDY ON AN ENTIRE CHAPTER BY THE UNIVERSITY OF WISONSIN, USA, IN THE BOOK TITLED, “MUSLIM WOMEN IN POST COLONIAL LEADERSHIP IN KENYA- LEADERSHIP, REPRESENTATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE” AUTHORED BY PROFESSOR OUSSEINA D. ALIDOU. CHAPTER 5 ON NAZLIN IS TITILED, MUSLIM WOMENANDTHE USE OF NEW MEDIA – INSCRIBING THEIR VOICES IN RIGHTS DISCOURSE” DESCRIBES THE ROLES OF SIX MUSLIM WOMEN FROM THE JUDICIARY, PARLIAMENT, MEDIA AND THE PUBLIC DOMAIN AND IS DESCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR AND REVIEWS AS FOLLOWS,
Alidou introduces readers to extraordinary Kenyan Muslim women who deftly weave together secular, religious and activist perspectives to transform their communities. Their stories, and Alidous astute analysis, portray the challenge facing the twenty-first-century agents of change” Susan Hirsch, author of pronouncing and perservering Gender and the discourse of disputing in an African Islamic court.
Nazlin emerges as a leader in local, national and international contexts, advancing reforms through activism. “Muslim women in postcolonial Kenya” reveals how her religious and moral beliefs shape reform movements that bridge ethnic divides and fosters alliances in service for creating a just, multicultural, multiethnic ad mulireligious democratic citizenship.
Examining the interplay of gender, agency and autonomy, Ouseina Alidou shows how Nazlin has effected change in the home, school, mosque, and more. She illuminates her determination to challenge the oppressive influences of male-dominated power structures. In looking at differences as opportunities rather than obstacles, Nazlin reflects a new sensibility among Muslim women, redefining the meaning of women’s citizenship within her own community and the Nation.
NAZLIN IN A PUBLICATION OF THE INTER PRESS SERVICE (IPS, A GLOBAL MEDIA HOUSE) TITILED, “THE WORLD OF INTER PRESS SERVICE 2003. IPS COVERAGE OF THE IRAQ WAR”, NAZLIN HAS ONCE MORE MADE HISTORY AND HER HARD WORK HAS BEEN NOTED AND UNKNOWN TO HER, BEEN LISTED AMONG THE WORLDS 25 LEADING MOST MENTIONED WOMEN IN THE WAR IN IRAQ AND THE ONLY WOMAN IN AFRICA. AUTHORED BY C, ANTHONY GIFFARD, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, SEATTLE, USA.
NAZLIN’S NOVELLE GROUND-BREAKING HISTORIC PROJECTS HAVE MADE RENOWED HISTORICAL GAINS OUT OF HER PASSIONATE PUBLIC-SPIRITED DRIVE AND ENDEAVORS DUE TO A GLARING LAXITY AND DENIAL, TO FOUND AND SPEARHEAD IN KENYA GROUND-BREAKING INITIATIVES AND INTERVENTIONS, CREATE AND IMPLEMENT POLICY AND POLICY CHANGE, ADVOCATE AND FORMULATE PROGRAMMES AND INTERVENTION TO EFFECTIVELY ADDRESS HIV/AIDS, GENDER ISSUES AND BALANCE, WOMEN’S RIGHTS AND ITS VIOLATIONS, HUMAN RIGHTS AND ITS VIOLATIONS, INTERFAITH AND FUSION, GOOD GOVERNANCE, WOMEN IN GOVERNANCE AND PEACE MOVEMENTS IN KENYA FROM THE NATIONAL TO GRASSROOTS LEVELS AND INDEED WORLD-WIDE AS A ROLE MODEL AND IDEAL MODELS OF HER PROGRAMMES AND DIALOGUES.
NAZLIN HAS RECEIVED RECORDED ACCOLADES, ENDORSEMENTS AND ACCREDITATION FROM TOP BRASS, OF LEADERS wiuthin Muslim community leadership, the grassroots women and regional/grassroots community based organizations , churches, the FORUM – which in a body of 36 registered political parties, for being corruption free, for her well established popular poverty reduction projects, HIV/AIDS projects, women’s rights, defense of Islam, defense of human rights and social justice, policy implementation strategies, inter-faith harmony and dialogue between faith leaders and communities nationwide. Literally boxes of endorsements had been collected within key leaders to endorse Nazlin’s candidature for the presidency of the Republic of Kenya.
Read Nazlin’s Complete Profile Here: http://nazlinumar.com/project/index.php/about/nazlin-profile
Read more about Nazlin involvement in Good Governance / Politics, Democracy, Sole Female Presidential Candidate 2007 through the following external links:
