Coastal Islam, al-Shabaab and Religious Tension in Kenya

Kenya's Muslim-majority coastal region has periodically expressed grievance over perceived economic and political marginalization relative to the Christian-majority interior and capital Nairobi, tensions that predate and have been sharpened by the rise of militant violence linked to al-Shabaab, the Somalia-based jihadist group that has carried out major attacks on Kenyan soil since Kenya's 2011 military intervention in Somalia, including the 2013 Westgate shopping mall siege in Nairobi and the 2015 Garissa University attack that killed nearly 150 people, most targeted specifically for being Christian. These attacks have strained relations between Kenya's Christian majority and Muslim minority, with reports of heavy-handed security force responses in coastal Muslim communities drawing criticism from human rights organizations even as the government frames its counterterrorism measures as necessary against a genuine cross-border militant threat.

Kenya's constitution guarantees religious freedom and maintains a secular state without an established religion, though Muslim communities have periodically sought greater recognition of Islamic personal law through the country's Kadhi courts, a colonial-era institution handling Muslim family law matters whose scope has been repeatedly contested in Kenyan courts and constitutional negotiations.