From our friend Chrissie Hinde, reporting David Zarembka, Coordinator of the African Great Lakes Initiative (AGLI) of the Friends Peace Teams in East and Central Africa, who has visited our Meeting:

“Infrequently, average people in a simple action do something that changes the course of history. For example, on December 1, 1955 Rosa Parks refused to move from the white section of the bus in Montgomery, AL; on August 14, 1980 what grew to become the Solidarity movement in Poland began when workers went on strike at the Gdanst Shipyard; and on December 17, 2010 when Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation in Tunisia began the Arab Spring. There are many others. On Monday, December 21, one such incident occurred in Kenya which has changed the zeitgeist in Kenya and has the potential to change the Islamophobia so prevalent in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere.”

Read David’s full story of how Muslim passengers on a bus attacked by terrorists from neighbouring Somalia refused to identify their Christian fellow passengers. (In 2014 in a similar attack, the Christians were separated and massacred):
http://aglifpt.org/rfk/?p=735

Reported in The Guardian here
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/22/kenya-al-shabaab-attack-mus…

“If this Kenyan incident is reported widely in the United States, Europe and elsewhere, it could have the same effect in negating the Islamophobia that has been rampant in Western culture since the Crusades. Can this incident become a symbolic incident such as Rosa Parks’ refusal to move to the back of the bus? Sub-Saharan Africa gets short shrift from the western media with emphasis on negatives such as the conflicts in the continent and the AIDS crisis. In this case though, this incident seems to have received a considerable amount of western media coverage – did you read about it or see it on the news? This is where I ask you help. Broadcast this story as widely as you can. I have purposely included all the details so that the story makes good sense. ….. We want to make this incident a precipitating factor to counter the Islamophobia that has been around since the First Crusade. Can this become a “game changer” in the vicious, worldwide war on terror?”