Did anyone see the Channel 4 documentary on the Islamists' takeover of southern Somalia yesterday evening (Unreported World, 7:30pm)? The documentary made repeated comparisons to the Taliban and alleged that the Islamic Courts Union was allowing al-Qa'ida fugitives to settle in the country.
What I saw gave the lie to any suggestion of "Somali Taliban", however: the fact that schools were being set up, with a curriculum partly borrowed from Kenya and partly from the Gulf region, with lots of smiling girls in blue hijabs and children being sent from, among other places, Streatham and Leicester. The boy from Streatham said he preferred Mogadishu, which does not surprise me - Streatham's a dump. In the streets, there were no burqas to be seen (and if there were, I'm sure the programme would have showed them) - a few niqabs, but most of the women wore brightly-coloured locally-styled head-wraps.
The fact of British Somalis being sent for education here is completely unlike anything we saw under the Taliban. There, the Taliban promised for years that they would set up some great Islamic education system when the country was secure, while its supporters credited it with making the country safe (something even the group's western critics admitted, although people certainly were not safe from the Taliban itself). We cannot defend any excess the ICU may be indulging in, but they are not the Taliban and never will be.
AssalamuALikum,
where can is see this online.
Abootalha: you probably can't unless someone thought to record it and post it to YouTube or somewhere like that.
Excesses such as this:
Somalia Official Issues Beheading Threat
Wednesday December 6, 2006 4:01 PM
By MOHAMED SHEIKH NOR
Associated Press Writer
MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) - Residents of a southern Somalia town who do not pray five times a day will be beheaded, an Islamic courts official said Wednesday, adding the edict will be implemented in three days.
Public places such as shops and tea houses in Bulo Burto, about 124 miles northwest of the capital, Mogadishu, should be closed during prayer time and no one should be on the streets, said Sheik Hussein Barre Rage, the chairman of the town's Islamic court.
Those who do not follow this edict ``will definitely be beheaded according to Islamic law,'' Rage told The Associated Press by phone. ``As Muslims, we should practice Islam fully, not in part, and that is what our religion enjoins us to do.''
He said that the courts are announcing the edict over loudspeakers in the town.
The decision is not binding on courts in other towns.
Somalia's Islamic courts have made varying interpretations of Quranic law, some applying a more strict and radical version of Islamic law than others.
As a result of such disparate variations, residents in the capital of Mogadishu complained, forcing the Council of Islamic Courts officials in October to set up an appeals court with better-educated judges.
The Council of Islamic Courts have swept through most of southern Somalia since taking over Mogadishu in June.
Their sometimes strict and often severe interpretation of Islam has raised the specter of Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime, and contrasts with the moderate Islam that has dominated Somali culture for centuries. Some of the courts have introduced public executions, floggings of convicts, bans on women swimming at Mogadishu's public beaches, and the sale and chewing of khat, a leafy stimulant consumed across the Horn of Africa and in the Middle East.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlates...262173,00.html
perhaps?
The fact of the matter is that the Uninion of the Islam Courts is the De facto as well as de Jure reality in Somalia. Thus they do not need any Somalis in the Western Diaspora being apologetics for them. They are there simply because of the will of the people. The people of Somalia from North to the South love them, and want them to bring the country under control. Somalis are sick and tired of the warlords and clan chiefs who bring to the country nothing but destruction.
No one tells the British government, the American states, or the Canadian government or any other Western nation how to run their judicial and executive branches. Having said that, I do not think that they have the right to comment on the affairs of the Somali people. If Somalis culturally believe that Chad or Kad is bad for the people and should be a controlled substance, then that is what the Somali people decide. I believe that is none of the business of the West. Mogadishu is no New York. If there are flogging in Mogadishu there are Lethal injections in Tax and California and are in fact a political tool for the ruling elite, predominantly White North European settlers who systematically dish out the death penalty for Latinos and back. As for Chad it is a controlled sustance in the United States of America and Canada, so what makes the legal decisions the Uninion of Islamic Courts any different.
What I honestly believe is the attack made on Taliban in Afghanistan was not morally and legally justifiable. It was in the same spirit Yesteryears European Crusaders invaded the Middles East and Africa to civilize in their eyes the uncivil. To simply put putative androcentric misanthropic view of the right-wing New Democrats, Conservatives, Labour Parties, Republicans, and the like who joined their forces to destroy one Islamic country after another.
In addition, one can bring far-fetched sentiments to justify ones position. If the Afghanis decided to put their daughters out of school I do not think that is the problem of the French, the English, the German, the American, or the African or the Jew for that matter. Let us call a spade a spade. If democracy is so great you would definitely have the most harmonious societies in the West, but it is one not that great I believe would not have to use the power of the gun to convert other into buying it. My point precisely is that we Africans have a long standing tradition that is more democratic than the current hegomony of the rich and powerful over Western societies and those they control in other jurisdictions.
Franckly, Somalia and its system or the type of political system Somalis aspire to are none of the business of the British be it an MP or a journalist. If anything British idealogy are seen on the ground as the Idealogy of yesteryears colonizers, rapist, war-criminals, slavers, and biggots. If I gave you a concrete example my grand-father died in battle with the Italians in the Southern Somalia while twenty of his brothers were brutally murdered in the battle of taleh by the British East African Squadron. My question to the forum is were they not democratic back then, or is democracy some new hypethey are selling now. Yes the world is divided into to camps that of binary polarization and the honest reality is that they the Christandom i.e. the West are on the camp of the evil.
Furthermore they have been doing this sort of justified aggression and looting and defacing of the cultures of others. They only language they understand is that of decapitition and death that is the same spirit that the North African Muslims did to Spain, Italy, and parts of Greece, when they captured cardova, Almina and Palermo, and the like.
As muslim brothers you do not have sing from the same rap-sheet as that of the filty kafir. If they
Westerns come to Somali without the will of the Somali people they will face the same faith the Americans, and earlier at least historically the British, the French, the Italians, the Portuqueesse have faced during our struggle to stave off the successive attempts of the infidels in muslims lands and in particular Somalia.
Yes there is opression in this world and it is that of Western captalism and chauvenistic view. Remember brothers and sisters Leeds and Manchester were both built from the loots of the African continent. I dare the British to tell the truth to the people that they are nothing but cheats, that there is no hypocrazy but that of the West.And that the New fascism has English, Canadian, and American face i.e. Anglo-saxon.
What I honestly believe is the attack made on Taliban in Afghanistan was not morally and legally justifiable. If the Afghanis decided to put their daughters out of school I do not think that is the problem of the French, the English, the German, the American, or the African or the Jew for that matter. Let us call a spade a spade.
Eh, didn't the 9/11 attacks on America by al-Qaeda given it the right to overthrow al-Qaeda's puppet Taliban regime in Afghanistan? (That's the only reason for the war which I feel matters - if someone bombs you you can bomb them back).
And besides on the issue of girls being denied education, even the Taliban themselves didn't claim that Shari'ah prohibited female education. Instead they confined women to the home under the pretext of "ensuring their safety in a war-torn country". It's the same sort of excuse used by Bush and Blair to crack down on civil liberties.
The "West" is determined to set up a puppet government in Somalia.
First the Americans supported the warlords in Mogadishu and when the warlords got chased out of town by ordinary folk, their American paymasters turned to the Kenyan and Ethiopian governments to do their proxy wars but Kenya wasn't, still isn't, interested.
Kenya, despite endemic corruption, has in recent years seen its economy and middle class grow and they know they'd have the most to lose if a regional war broke out. Kenya is a regional hub and Somalis, both indigenous Somalis and Somalis from Somalia, have greatly contributed to its economy. So, Kenya would never be interested in engaging in a proxy war on behalf of the U.K and U.S.A.
But Ethiopia is a different kettle of fish altogether. The country is bankrupt, its people starving and being wiped out by AIDS, the Ethiopian government would do anything for a few American dollars.
The "West" is determined to set up a puppet government in Somalia.
Why exactly? Is Somalia an important strategic location, or does it have any important resources?
Why exactly? Is Somalia an important strategic location, or does it have any important resources?
Ha ha! Neither. The simple reason is that they are paranoid Somalia will become an Al-Aqaeda/Taliban run country.
But this assumption is rubbish and shows their total lack of understanding of the Somali character, Somalis value individual freedom above all else. Subjugation and blind obedience to a leader is something alien to the Somali character. Therefore, neither Al-Qaeda nor a pro-Western government will flourish in Somalia. The best thing to do is leave them alone to find their own solutions, which they are more than capable of and have recently demonstrated.
There are two major clans in the whole of Somalia, the Isaaq to the north with their breakaway republic, and the Darod to the South. The "transitional government" is supposed to represent the Darod but it has only 10% of their support (from two Darod sub-clans) with the rest supporting the UIC. It's hard to see how such a government with such negligible support from its own people can run a country, but uncle Sam is not discouraged by this fact, they have just forced through a Security Council Resolution allowing arms and the armed forces of the neighbouring countries into Somalia. Somalis say they see this as a hostile invasion and will fight to the last man.
Isn't Somalia important as the Straits of Bab el Mandab is the gateway to the Red Sea and thus, the Suez Canal? Since the "West" (US and UK really) prepare for strategic threats over a long period, they probably are concerned that a "Somali Taliban" could eventually sweep the whole of the Horn of Africa, aligned to a possible Islamic state in Yemen or Saudia that would attempt to block trade through the Red Sea which would mean Europe's trade with Asia would have to pass around Africa's Cape.
I disagree that the Taliban (the Afghan original) were Al-Qaeda's puppets. People that knew Bin Laden have suggested that he and Mullah Omar were not in fact friends or even close at all, and that when the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan there was an intital suspicion and according to "The Power of Nightmares" he even warned Osmam that there can be only one ruler in Afghanistan.
The Taliban allowed Bin Laden refuge soley out of a sense of gratitude to him and his Arab legion for the assistance they gave against the USSR.