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| Africa Horn | ||
| Islamist leader slams Bush on Somalia policy | ||
| 2006-07-10 | ||
MOGADISHU - The hardline leader of newly powerful Islamists said all of Somalia must be ruled by sharia law and US President George W. Bush should be prosecuted for bankrolling defeated secular warlords. “There is no Muslim nation that is safe from his (Bush’s) oppression. He should stop his wrong leadership,” Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, told Reuters by telephone from his rural base. “He used the warlords to kill people. If it’s possible for him to be charged, he deserves to be brought to justice,” Aweys, an army colonel turned cleric, said.
Aweys, who is on a US list of 189 individuals or entities ”linked to terrorism”, said Washington was lying about him and accusations that the Islamists were harbouring three foreign extremists accused of 1998 and 2002 bombings in east Africa. “The American views cannot be trusted. Whatever they say is mostly lies, nobody can take their word anymore.” Aweys urged Bush to stop “open aggression and threats” towards the Muslim world. “We are being denied our right to be Muslims,” he added in a lengthy conversation from Guriel village in the central region of Galgadud, some 350 km (220 miles) west of Mogadishu, where he is working to strengthen an Islamic court he founded last year. “If he (Bush) doesn’t stop his aggression, these people (Muslims) will go after him,” he added in the weekend interview, conducted before Sunday’s bloody Mogadishu battle between the Islamists and a pocket of the city still in warlord hands. Aweys said the world should respect the sharia law Islamists were installing in Mogadishu and other areas they have captured across southern Somalia. “I want the world to respect our sharia and beliefs and cooperate with us and also recognise our administrations and humanity. They should work with us as free people who have a right to choose their own future and religion,” he said. The Islamists at first tried present a moderate face but now strict sharia such as whipping has been applied to criminals and Islamic courts announced plans to stone five rapists to death. A leading Mogadishu cleric has said that Muslims who do not pray five times a day should be killed, fuelling foreign fears that they are planning Taleban-style rule. Somalis generally practice a moderate form of Islam. The Islamist movement, which sprung out of sharia courts, is in a political standoff with the weak, Western-backed interim government based in a provincial town. Somalia has been without central rule since the 1991 ousting of a military dictator. The two sides are to meet in Sudan for talks on July 15. “We hope an agreement can be reached,” Aweys said. The government says it will only deal with moderates among the Islamists. ”The good thing about the Somali people is that once they meet they normally agree as long as there is no external influence. Our only fear is interference by Ethiopia and their likes including the Americans,” Aweys said. The Islamists say neighbouring Ethiopia has sent troops to stop their advance and support the interim government, an accusation denied by Addis Ababa. | ||
| Posted by:Steve |
| #8 Choke on it, fatwa-face. |
| Posted by: Jotch Thruter9873 2006-07-10 21:29 |
| #7 Jeez, every swinging dick takes a whack at Bush |
| Posted by: Captain America 2006-07-10 19:29 |
| #6 Arclight strikes down through the center of Mogadishu until these shitheads are all destroyed or they surrender unconditionally. Otherwise we'll have another Afganistan we'll have to fumigate. I would say nuke the place, but that's not humiliating enough. We bomb the sh$$ out of them, then give half to Ethiopia, half to Kenya. The northern part of Somalia that has declared its independence from these idiots can continue as it is. The rest needs to disappear. It just might send a message to the rest of Africa that we're tired of their dictator-for-life governments, and will actually DO something to put a stop to them. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2006-07-10 16:00 |
| #5 Here is the wiki on sharia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharia |
| Posted by: Brett 2006-07-10 14:39 |
| #4 Does anyone know of a good source of information pertaining to Sharia Law? I think we need to see more about what Sharia Law really means. It might wake up some of the willfully ignorant. -M |
| Posted by: Manolo 2006-07-10 14:01 |
| #3 But I-slam is a reliogn of peice. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2006-07-10 11:11 |
| #2 A good first public communications project for Hirsi Ali? |
| Posted by: Jules 2006-07-10 10:16 |
| #1 4 AC130s deployed to Djibouti, please. |
| Posted by: Brett 2006-07-10 09:58 |