Why East Africa’s Muslims will ‘out-rich’ Christians

An average week in Kenya is pretty much your average week in most of Africa. There will be a new story – or a recap - of yet another property developer who fleeced the folks who invested in his scheme.

There will be a story of a Sacco somewhere where the leaders have robbed savers. There will be the prophet who preyed on his followers’ wives or relieved them of their land with the promise of heavenly gifts that didn’t arrive. And there is, of course, the other type of prophet who uses weird and extreme methods to guide the flock to heaven’s gate – making them urinate on stage and drink the pee; swallow Jik bleach; remove their underwear so the spirit can enter them without hindrance; and then offer their breasts so the man of God can squeeze them and chase out the demons that are hiding there.

And in recent times, there has been an explosion in betting. There are tales of spectacular wins, but these tend to be few and far between. Mostly, we learn of devastating losses; school fees lost on the tables; homes sold and lost to fund betting habits; and once prosperous families ruined by the patriarch’s losing streak at the gambling tables.

There was a time when the main predator in Africa was corrupt governments. These days, at the retail level, governments have serious competition in plundering the people. The fellows robbing the wananchi as much, or more, are the army of fraudsters and the religious people promising them miracles and instant prosperity on earth and a VIP seat in heaven after they die.

This means that the average African today will return home lighter in their pocket than when they left in the morning; they will have less dignity, having lost quite a bit of self-esteem drinking urine in church or being urinated upon by the pastor to save their souls.

If one shifts the gaze from the dramatic headlines beneath them, one finds very gendered forms of exploitation and signs that point to a potentially disastrous future for African Christian societies – and a triumph of its Islamic communities.

First, there are far more male miracle-promising pastors than female ones. And the majority of the victims of charlatan prophets are mostly women.

You will read 15 stories of a woman who gave up her apartment to her pastor, who promised he would help her bear twins, before you read one of a man who was conned off his car or goats.

If you search social media and the internet over the last 15 years, you will find hundreds of videos of African pastors telling women during prayer to cast away their underwear or to remove their bras so they can rub holy oil on their breasts, but not one of a charismatic female bishop asking the men in her church to drop their trousers so she can let in the holy spirit through their nether bits.

In the militant versions of Islam, the male martyrs who die as suicide bombers against some infidels are supposedly rewarded 72 young virgins in heaven. The female martyrs don’t get an equal supply of unspoilt young men. Whichever way you cut it, the women are short-changed.

For Christian women, they suffer the deleterious economic effect of patriarchy, male con artists, and the predation of a male-dominated religiocracy.

But there is an upside if you are a Muslim. Islam’s diktats against usury, idolatry, extravagance, and waste have somewhat insulated many Muslims against these excesses. There are no 24-hour mosque prayers, unlike in some independent Christian churches. The Imams don’t walk around the mosques five times in a single prayer session, basket in hand, shaking down the Muslim faithful for all their week’s earnings.

There are no Imams holding weekly miracle crusaders, selling access to God for $500 a pop, or taking widows’ homes in exchange for finding them, husbands. And Muslims gamble less. In bed early and undistracted by 24-hour prayers, they wake more rested and alert than the “saved” Christians.

Because the sheikhs and Imams don’t fleece them of all their pennies, they have more money left to spend and invest in productive things. The business success of the Somalis in East Africa, the Horn, and the Diaspora of recent years could partly be because the overwhelming majority of them are Muslim. It is the benefit of the combination of Islamic abstemiousness and highly networked Somali societies.

All this presents very new policy challenges for those working to grow economies and create prosperity. How do you deal with extreme independent religion as economic sabotage? How do you create regulations against property conmen when they emerge only later, not before people invest with their companies? You can’t deny a business licence to people because they “look like thieves”.

The good news in all this is that being conned by scammers says something admirable about the victims. It shows they had the ambition to get a better life and to make a profit.

Even the flock, which the crooked pastor robs, is seeking salvation and trying to avoid hell after death.