Somalia Official Issues Beheading Threat
Pastor Dale Morgan
Somalia Official Issues Beheading Threat
*
By MOHAMED SHEIKH NOR
The Associated Press
Wednesday, December 6, 2006; 11:14 AM
MOGADISHU, Somalia -- 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 northeast 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.
___
Associated Press Writer Salad Duhul in Mogadishu, Somalia contributed to
this report.