Friday, September 28, 2012

Mali’s Sharia Nightmare

This is what life would be like under islam's sharia

As one Timbuktu woman said, “It only took them about an hour and a half to break apart our heritage, our culture.”DO YOU WANT TO LIVE LIKE THIS!!

 


Mali’s Sharia Nightmare

 

 As one Timbuktu woman said, “It only took them about an hour and a half to break apart our heritage, our culture.”

Posted by Bio ↓ on Sep 28th, 2012 Comments ↓


Islamists are creating a nightmarish Sharia-run state in northern Mali, complete with public floggings, group amputations, and death by stoning.


The Islamist group Ansar Dine (Defenders of Faith), along with its other Islamist and al-Qaeda allies, is creating a terrifying Sharia-run state in northern Mali, complete with public floggings, group amputations, and death by stoning.

Ansar Dine, along with the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (Mujao) and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), first gained control over northern Mali in April after it commandeered a rebellion originally launched by ethnic Tuareg separatists against the Mali government.

Since then, as part of their consolidation of power in the region — an area roughly the size of Texas — the Islamist Ansar Dine and Mujao have been busily imposing Sharia law in the towns and cities of northern Mali, including the region’s largest cities of Timbuktu, Kidal, and Gao.

To that end, the Islamists have issued edicts against a wide range of acts they deem to be “haraam” (forbidden), behaviors such as smoking or selling cigarettes; drinking or selling alcoholic beverages; listening to music; failing to attend daily prayers; or women failing to cover themselves appropriately.
For those unfortunate enough to run afoul of these restrictions, the punishments are exceedingly harsh, punitive measures which include public beatings, floggings, amputations, and summary executions, such as death by stoning.

Carrying out the punishments are designated Islamic police, assisted in their tasks by a growing cadre of child soldiers, some as young as 11, who have been recruited into the Islamist ranks to serve as spies, guards, cooks and patrol officers.

For some, punishment is extra judicial, swift and on the spot, with men and women taken directly off the streets by the Islamic police and whipped and beaten in marketplaces and in public squares, beatings which are often administered by the child soldiers.

For those spared an out of court public beatdown, they are instead given an Islamic “trial,” a hearing before a panel of judges selected by the Islamist authorities — many of whom are foreign Islamist fighters — in which the accused is given a chance to tell their version of events.

The verdicts given in these Islamic “courtrooms” are often handed out the same day the trial begins, with the designated punishment, be it flogging, amputation, or execution, carried out immediately in public view before the mandated attendance of the local populace.

One man whose hand was amputated before a full crowd, described his experience with Sharia justice, saying, “They tied my hands, feet and chest firmly to a chair; my right hand was tied with a rubber cord. The boss, himself, cut my hand as if he were killing a sheep. As he cut it, which took about two minutes, he shouted ‘“Allah Akbar.’”

Of course, figuring what type of punishment is appropriate for the crime committed is determined by the nuanced complexities of Sharia law, intricacies explained by Oumar Ould Hamaha of the Mujao in the recent case in Gao of a group amputation in which the right hand and left foot of five suspected thieves were cut off.

Hamaha said the Islamists amputated the right hand and left foot of the men because “According to the Sharia, the men had to face double punishment for theft and highway robbery. The sentence for theft is to cut a hand, and the sentence for highway robbery is cutting the opposite leg.”


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About

Frank Crimi is a San Diego-based writer and author of the book Raining Frogs and Heart Attacks. You can read more of Frank's work at his blog,www.politicallyunbalanced.com.


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