GLOBAL JIHAD
Death
sentence for not praying
Islamic
regime spells out law for Muslims in Somali capital
Posted:
July 6, 2006
5:00 p.m. Eastern
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
Muslims who fail to
pray five times daily will be sentenced to death under the rule of Islamic
clerics who have taken over the Somali capital Mogadishu.
"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, reported Agence France-Presse.
The edict was issued by a leading
cleric speaking at the opening of an Islamic court in the capital last night,
who added it was the duty of every Somali to implement the provisions of
Sharia, or Islamic law.
The Quran requires
Muslims to pray five times daily.
Mogadishu was taken over in June by
militia – now called the Conservative Council of Islamic Courts – that routed a
U.S.-backed alliance of warlords after four months of fighting. The U.S. wanted
to stem what officials call "creeping Talibanization" of Somalia by
the courts and harboring of terrorists, including al-Qaida members.
Late Tuesday, militia members broke
up a protest against a ban on watching television, shooting dead two people
among a crowd viewing a World Cup game at a local cinema.
The accused killers, however, face
prosecution under Sharia law for shooting unarmed civilians and could be
sentenced to death.
In recent months, according to AFP,
Muslim militiamen have presided over several public executions ordered by
Islamic courts.
Somalia is regarded as a
predominantly moderate Muslim country, but the Islamists have vowed to impose
Sharia law nationwide, challenging a mostly powerless transitional government.
Last month, the Islamic courts
signed a mutual recognition pact with the government, but are at odds with the
regime over a number of issues. The Islamists oppose a proposal to deploy
foreign peacekeepers to help establish central authority.
The African nation has been in
turmoil, with no effective government, for the past 16 years.
The leader of the Islamic militia,
Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, is listed by the U.S. State Department as a suspected
al-Qaida collaborator. Bush administration officials say Aweys was an associate
of Osama bin Laden in the early 1990s.