Death for not praying in Somalia

[Mayabird]

Somali Muslims warned of death for shirking prayers


Requirement for Muslims to observe daily prayers under penalty of death confirms hardline nature of Sharia courts.


MOGADISHU - Somali Muslims who fail to perform daily prayers will be killed in accordance with Koranic law under a new edict issued by a leading cleric in the Islamic courts union that controls Mogadishu.

The requirement for Muslims to observe the five-times daily ritual under penalty of death was announced late Wednesday and appears to confirm the hardline nature of the increasingly powerful Sharia courts in the capital.

"He who does not perform prayers will be considered as infidel and Sharia law orders that that person be killed," said Sheikh Abdalla Ali, a founder and high-ranking official in the Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia (SICS).

"Sharia law orders the killing of any Muslim person when he fails to perform prayers," he said in an address at the opening of a new Islamic court in Mogadishu's southern Gubta neighbourhood.

Ali added that it was the duty of every Somali to implement the provisions of Sharia law, which when fully accepted would allow "everybody to enjoy life based on peace and prosperity."

It was not immediately clear who would enforce the regulation or how but the courts have well-armed militias that routed a US-backed alliance of warlords in June after four months of bloody battles for control of Mogadishu.

Members of such militia shot and killed two people in central Somalia late on Tuesday while quelling a protest against a ban on watching the World Cup at a local cinema and have in the past been tasked with carrying out court rules.

Muslim militiamen have also presided at several public executions ordered by the Islamic courts in recent months and some Mogadishu residents have complained of harassment at their hands for not dressing properly.

The United States supported the vanquished warlords in a bid to stem what US officials described as the "creeping Talibanization" of Somalia by the courts that Washington accuses of harboring extremists, including Al-Qaeda members.

The Islamists flatly reject the charges but have vowed to impose strict Sharia law across the overwhelmingly moderate Muslim country in what many see as a direct challenge to Somalia's largely powerless transitional government.

The Islamic courts have signed a mutual recognition pact with the government and are due to meet with senior officials in it next week in Sudan but remain at deep odds with the administration on several key issues.

Among them is the deployment of a foreign peacekeeping force to help the fledgling government restore a functioning central authority to Somalia, which has been in the throes of chaos for the past 16 years.

President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed and prime minister Ali Mohamed Gedi are strong advocates of peacekeepers but the Islamists have vowed to resist and fight against any foreign troops on Somali soil.

On Wednesday, Yusuf and Gedi renewed appeals for an urgent deployment in talks with visiting Arab and African officials at the government seat in Baidoa, about 250 kilometers (155 miles) northwest of the capital.

The team of about 30 military experts and diplomats from the African Union (AU), the Arab League and the east African Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) was sent to assess conditions for a possible deployment.

The delegation was in Mogadishu on Thursday awaiting talks with Islamist officials, who are expected to reiterate their opposition to the peacekeeping mission that has been endorsed by the AU.

The Horn of Africa nation of some 10 million was plunged into anarchy with the 1991 ouster of strongman Mohamed Siad Barre whose fall ushered in more than a decade of lawlessness in which warlords ruled a patchwork of fiefdoms.

The Islamists now in control Mogadishu have moved to fill the power vacuum by restoring some order in areas they control.

http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=16910

[frigidmagi]

Damn it, I was gonna post this... You beat me to it Maya.

[Ali Sama]

It should be death for not thinkingwith your ead, but then again we be commiting self genocide. rofl.

[Rukia]

I actually heard about this one man who was from a place like Smaila who married an american woman. When they went to meet his parents and went to mass(?) they put a gun to the wife's head and told her that she was going to pray or they would kill her. She had gently stated that she was not of the religion, did not know the prayers or the language, and that's how they acted.

[frigidmagi]

Muslims are required to pray about 5 times a day. I imagine it's pretty easy to miss a prayer by sheer accident.

[Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman]

Muslims are required to pray about 5 times a day. I imagine it's pretty easy to miss a prayer by sheer accident.

It is, and people do miss it sometimes, depends on the load of their activity. What I don't understand why these idiots killed people who miss their prayer. This whole Sharia thing is stupid and I wonder who invented the shit on the first place.

[frigidmagi]

This whole Sharia thing is stupid and I wonder who invented the shit on the first place.

If I remember from my religious class right it's based on legal decisions and opinions of the Mummunand.

[Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman]

This whole Sharia thing is stupid and I wonder who invented the shit on the first place.

If I remember from my religious class right it's based on legal decisions and opinions of the Mummunand.

Mummunand?

Wait, IIRC you told me something about the Wahabi. I also remember reading somewhere that (IIRC) there are four branches of Islam, where Wahabi is one of them. The Wahabi is the branch that takes Koran in the most literal way possible, and they became dominant by the end of 19th century. Now their dominance have spawned the Sunni fundamentalism (Sharia and such). Was that you who told me that (through PM), or did I read about it somewhere else?

Back to the topic, it seems that skipping prayers is not something that deserves worldly punishment in Koran (even if it is taken literally). IIRC there is no verses in Koran about worldly punishment for people who skip the shalat, but I got to check with my Mom (she's quite a knowledgeable Moslem, and a devout one. And no, she doesn't believe in Sharia either). Also (again, IIRC), it was told somewhere that Allah pardoned Mohammed for skipping a prayer when he was very tired and overslept through the prayer time.

Well I need to check my sources first, since my knowledge about Islam is pretty much limited, but if those are true, then those Somalian Sharia enforcers deserve to be shot.

[frigidmagi]

Mohammed I meant, my spelling sucks and words do not sound the same to me so when I try to spell by sound it usually looks pretty bad.

[Ali Sama]

This whole Sharia thing is stupid and I wonder who invented the shit on the first place.

If I remember from my religious class right it's based on legal decisions and opinions of the Mummunand.

it's not. Their radical extreemits who want power. In iran they do the 5 prayes in 3 slots. morning they do morning. Afternoon is for afternoon and evening and at sunset it's for te remaining 2. I don't pray and i know lots of people who don't. It's not forced on anyone.