 A crowd of 600 Afghan clerics gathered in front of an historic mosque yesterday to strip the fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar of his claim to religious authority, in a ceremony that provided a significant boost to the presidency of Hamid Karzai.
| Sammy in his underwear, Mullah Omar without his turban... What's the world coming to? |
The declaration, signed by 1,000 clerics from across the country, is an endorsement of the US-backed programme of reconciliation with more moderate elements of the Taliban movement that Karzai has been pursuing ahead of the country's first parliamentary elections, due in September.
| Moderate Taliban confine their wife-beating to their own families... |
Symbolically, the ulema shura, or council of clerics, was held at the Blue Mosque in the southern city of Kandahar, the spiritual home of the Taliban movement. At the same venue in 1996 the Taliban leader held up a cloak said to belong to the Prophet Mohammed, which is kept in a shrine in the mosque. He was proclaimed Amir ul-Mumineen or Leader of Muslims by the same clerical body, one of the few occasions the title has been granted anywhere in the Islamic world in the modern era.
| Yeah, buddy! That's the kind of resume entry I want! |
As afternoon prayers approached yesterday, some 600 clerics, heavily bearded and wearing substantial turbans and flowing robes, from 20 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces, entered the blue-domed mosque's main courtyard, flanked by heavily armed guards.
| One can imagine the scene... |
With the assembled clerics seated on the marble floor before him, the head of shura, Maulvi Abdullah Fayaz, said: "Karzai is elected through free and fair election and religiously we have to obey his orders. None of the orders of the previous Emirs, including Mullah Omar, is accepted." He said that following the Taliban, "accepting their orders and through their orders killing people and destabilising the country", was "against sharia law". A list of 13 proclamations was read out during the three-hour ceremony.
| How could they take the excitement? |
The support of the religious establishment came with strings attached, reflecting concerns over the liberal influences in Afghanistan since the Taliban fell in 2001. The clerics demanded the construction of hundreds of religious schools, a prohibition of drugs, alcohol and "sexual films" and a call for women's rights to remain within the limits of sharia law. The shura also called for the arrest of Newsweek staff responsible for an article claiming that interrogators at Guantanamo Bay flushed a copy of the Koran down a lavatory, if it proved to be untrue. The story caused riots across Afghanistan that led to the deaths of 16 people.
Groups of young men in black turbans and robes - supporters of the Taliban still commonly seen on the streets of Kandahar - watched proceedings from a distance.
| ... muttering sullenly and fingering their scimitars... |
The meeting of the council followed several days of escalating violence across the south, believed to have been committed by loyalists to the cause of Mullah Omar. |