ATTACKS ON ELDERS DUE TO WITCH-HUNTING IN KENYA'S SORCERY BELT

As usual bullies go after the poor and elderly. Al Jazeera's Mohammed Adow Reports from Kenya:



The exerpt below is from a wonderful essay about witch-hunting in Africa called, The Witch-hunts on African Sorcerers by Rune Blix Hagen from the Department of History, University of Tromsø.

Gerrie ter Haar, the Dutch professor of religion, human rights and social change, has shown that an increasing affiliation with Islamic and Christian charismatic movements is adding fuel in Africa to the belief in an invisible but real spirit world. She shows, too, that numerous witch doctors – experts at exposing witches – are precisely recruited from these charismatic movements. Together with Stephen Ellis, she has recently published the book Worlds of Power, which focuses on religious philosophy and politics in contemporary Africa. Researchers have found that part of the reason behind the growth of African witch-hunts in recent decades is due to the gradual demonization of the spirit world. This is a consequence of long exposure to Western missionaries. The African concept of magic has lost what was originally neutral and morally unbiased in character. A veil of Christian and Western diabolism, in other words, has descended upon the traditional beliefs of African witchcraft and made these beliefs much more dangerous than earlier.