A month ago, Mohamed, a Somali teenager, publicly hacked his father's killer to death in a punishment sanctioned under the Union of Islamic Courts as a crowd of 700 looked on.
Omar Hussein, the man convicted of killing his father, was tied to a stake at the school where Mohamed's father had worked, and had his head covered by a bag.
He shouted: "There is no god but Allah' as Mohamed stepped up and plunged the knife into his head and throat time after time.
One witness said: "It was horrible to watch because blood was splashing over the boy.
"But he just carried on stabbing him. He stabbed him around 12 times with a huge knife.
"People fainted because it was so horrible to watch. I saw at least two women collapse. Eventually when he realised the man was dead he just stopped and walked away.
"He was very calm and had a blank look on his face."
Speaking afterwards, Mohamed said simply: "I am happy now because I killed the man who killed my father."
Sheik Ibrahim Mohamed Nur, a UIC imam, said: "The justice of Allah has been implemented and there is no better justice than what Allah recommended." And warned that the same fate awaited others they convict.
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteThis is not a simple ‘eye for an eye’ event; we are witnessing the establishment of the Sharia system in the capital of Somalia by the UIC. The ICU are former members of al-Ittihad al-Islami (AIAI), a radical Islamist organization that once sought to establish an Islamic state in East Africa and was accused of having ties to al-Qaeda.
Ideologically, the ICU and AIAI share many similarities. While the ICU wants an Islamic state in Somalia in the short term governed by Sharia law, media reports allege that the Islamic courts are eyeing a bigger Islamic state in the long term carved out of East Africa, similar to the old goals of AIAI, which wanted to create an Islamic state out of Somalia and Ethiopia.
The war on al-Qaeda has increasingly become ideological rather than a straightforward manhunt. Afghanistan is a reminder that foreign affairs can have an adverse impact on our lives in the West.