How the Raila-NAMLEF pact was used against Obama's presidential campaigns

In the heat of the 2008 elections in the United States, Raila Odinga’s name was dragged into the campaigns in the attempts to derail the campaign of Barack Obama, who was running against John McCain.

The thorny issue was the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) reached between Raila Odinga and the National Muslim Leaders Forum (NAMLEF) chairman Abdullahi Abdi.

An influential US conservative author and political commentator, Jerome Corsi, claimed that the agreement would expand Shariah law in the United States if Obama, who was then serving as the Senator for Illinois, won the US presidential elections.

Corsi is the author of The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality, a book that portrayed what would become the first black American president as a raving ultra-leftist whose patriotism was dubious and had links to “radical Islam and black militant politics.”

He dedicated a chapter in the book to "Kenya, Odinga, Communism and Islam" which claimed that the former US president was raised as a Muslim and smeared Raila’s political credentials.

“Obama made a pact with this radical leftist politician Odinga who is perfectly happy to expand Islamic Sharia law in Kenya and have tribal violence to get power,” he said.

“I can prove that Odinga signed this agreement to expand Sharia law, that the Muslims voted for him, and I can prove that Obama knew about that agreement,” he said.

“Based on the alleged connection between Odinga and Obama, is Obama going to expand Sharia law in the United States when he gets into power?" He asked during a talk show programme, the Bill Cunningham's radio show in October 2008.

The authors' claims were a concern to the Obama campaign team as Corsi in his earlier bestselling book, "Unfit for Command", maligned the Democratic Party's 2004 candidate John Kerry, which contributed to his defeat by President George W. Bush.

Obama supporters argued that The Obama Nation, belonged in the fiction rather than non-fiction category and challenged several of its accusations, which they said were misleading and taken out of context.

Barack Hussein Obama went on to win the elections, earning his name in the history books as the first black American to win the US presidential contest.

Corsi based his allegations on a fake MoU promoted by the Evangelical Alliance of Kenya which had claimed that the agreement was a backdoor attempt by Raila and the Muslim leadership to entrench Shariah law in the constitution.

In the lead-up to the 2007 elections, a forged version of the MoU was circulated by evangelical churches alleging a number of preposterous claims about Odinga and the NAMLEF chairman Abdullahi Abdi. The fake agreement alleged that Raila had agreed to allow the implementation of Shariah law within six months of winning the elections, create an autonomous Jimbo La Pwani region, and outlaw gospel programmes on national TV, among other outrageous claims.

The authentic MoU between Raila Odinga and NAMLEF was signed in August 2007 by Raila Odinga and Sheikh Abdullahi Abdi. Mohamed Farouk Adam and Said Athman were witnesses on behalf of NAMLEF while Najib Balala appended his signature as a witness for Raila, who was at that time the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) party presidential candidate.

The main feature in the agreement was the recognition of the rights of Muslims and ending the injustices perpetrated by the administration of the then-President Mwai Kibaki.

In his attacks on Obama, Corsi alleged that the former US president helped Raila Odinga raised money in the United States to fund his presidential campaign in Kenya. He accused the Kenyan statesman who passed away on Wednesday, October 15, as behind the post-election violence that gripped the country in the aftermath of the 2007 elections.

“Senator Obama remained in active phone contact with Odinga through the New Hampshire Democratic Party primary in January, continuing to support Odinga, turning a blind eye to the memorandum of understanding signed with Muslims and the post-election violence instigated as part of the ODM campaign strategy,” he said.

Whistleblower website, Wikileaks dismissed the MoU presented by Corsi as “fake” saying it was a ploy by Christian evangelicals to tarnish Raila Odinga’s political credentials. “The idea behind the smear is to turn a fairly large and committed evangelical Christian block against poor (sic) Raila, who is often accused of ambivalent religious allegiance,” the website wrote.

“Most of the pledges [in the fake] couldn’t be met by any presidential candidate, as they are inherently unconstitutional and would mightily annoy the non-Muslim majority in Kenya,” Wikileaks wrote.

Jerome Corsi visited Kenya during the US campaign period in October 2008 to promote his book, but he was detained soon after arrival and swiftly deported out of the country by immigration officials.