Posted by
L Gravel on Wednesday, December 06, 2006 5:39:06 PM
From
FoxNews/AP:
Residents of a southern Somalia town who do not pray five times a day will be beheaded, an official said Wednesday, adding the edict will be implemented in three days.
Shops, tea houses and other public places 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. His court is part of a network backed by armed militiamen that has taken control of much of southern Somalia in recent months, bringing a strict interpretation of Islam that is alien to many Somalis.
Those who do not follow the prayer edict after three days have elapsed, "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."
Somalia's Islamic courts have made varying interpretations of Koranic law, some applying a more strict and radical version of Islam than others. Some of the courts have introduced public executions, floggings of convicts, bans on women swimming in Mogadishu's public beaches and on the sale and chewing of khat, a leafy stimulant consumed across the Horn of Africa and in the Middle East.
Meanwhile, I
still hear the occasional gripe that Christians in this country are forcing their beliefs on everybody else. This is because of the following audacious behavior:
1. Christians generally vote.
2. Christians generally believe the government should not interfere with a person's private sexual choices. However, some conservative Christians believe a.) the rest of us should not be forced to sanction or celebrate someone else's non-traditional choices, b.) traditions enduring a thousand years or more should be respected, and c.) children are best served if they have a mom and a dad.
3. Most people believe the government
should interfere with families in cases where children are in life-threatening danger. Some Christians believe strong scientific evidence that indicates pregnant, human mothers carry human babies.
4. Christians generally do not want to be forced to fund really creepy practices, such as putting a human embryo in a petri dish and sucking the life out of it in order to harvest certain types of cells.
5. Some Christians do not think the children of parents lacking the wealth of the Kennedy family should be forced to attend government schools, where by court order God cannot be mentioned.