Irreligion in Kenya

Atheism belief in Kenya

Religion in Kenya
religion			percent^[1]^[2]
Christianity			85.5%
Islam			10.9%
No religion			1.6%
Other			1.8%
Don't Know/no answer			0.2%

Irreligion in Kenya is uncommon among Kenyans, with only 1.6% claiming no religion. Atheism is greatly stigmatized in Kenya.^[3]^[4]

Harrison Mumia registered the first atheist society in Kenya on February 17, 2016. The Kenyan Government suspended the registration of the Atheists In Kenya Society barely three months after it was registered. Harrison Mumia moved to the High Court of Kenya to challenge the suspension of the society and won the case in February, 2018.^[5]

Demography

According to the 2019 census, about 755,000 Kenyans identify as irreligious or atheist.^[6] Atheist advocacy groups claim that the number of irreligious Kenyans is closer to 1.5 million.^[6]

List of non-religious Kenyans

Barack Obama Sr.^[7]
Richard Leakey^[8]
Harrison Mumia, President of the Atheists In Kenya Society^[9]
Ssemakula Mukiibi, Chairman of Freethinkers Kenya Association (FIKA)^[10]

References

^ "2019 Kenya Population and Housing Census Volume IV: Distribution of Population by Socio-Economic Characteristics" (PDF). Kenya National Bureau of Statistics. Retrieved 2 May 2021.
^ "CIA World Factbook results for Kenya". CIA. Retrieved 2021-11-07.
^ "Atheism Not Against Kenya's Constitution". The Star. Retrieved 2013-08-24.
^ "Atheism is greatly misunderstood in Kenya". Daily Nation. Retrieved 2013-08-24.
^ "Petition 308 of 2016: ATHEISTS IN KENYA vs. THE REGISTRAR OF SOCIETIES". Kenya Law. Retrieved 2020-11-16.
^ ^a ^b Nzwili, Frederick (2022-02-07). "After moving out of their comfort zone, atheists in Kenya gain visibility". Religion News Service. Retrieved 2022-02-08.
^ Obama, Barack (16 October 2006). "My spiritual journey". Time. Archived from the original on January 22, 2013. Retrieved 5 March 2008. My father was almost entirely absent from my childhood, having been divorced from my mother when I was 2 years old; in any event, although my father had been raised a Muslim, by the time he met my mother he was a confirmed atheist, thinking religion to be so much superstition.
^ Leakey, Richard E. (1984). One Life: An Autobiography. Salem House. ISBN 9780881620559 – via Google Books. I myself do not believe in a god who has or had a human form and to whom I owe my existence. I believe it is man who created God in his image and not the other way round; also I see no reason to believe in a life after death. Having said all this, I cannot deny that I am nagged still by that big question 'What is Life?'. What is the 'thing' that is there in an organism one minute and gone the next? There is, I know, more to life than I understand and to me this is epitomized in that mysterious frontier between life and death - the 'spirit' as it were - that cannot be quantified but which is in living things both animal and plant and not in the dead.
^ Wasonga, Josaya. "God does not exist in Harrison Mumia's world". Retrieved 18 February 2017.
^ "The rise of atheism in modern Kenya".