The Good Atheist

Whenever you hear the words “Sharia” and “Court” uttered in the same sentence, you can bet that something fucked up is about to happen. In Somalia, a radical Muslim group known as al-Shabaab has seized control over much of southern Somalia, and they have instituted Sharia Law in that region. Yesterday, 300 onlookers, mostly women and children, watched on as 4 men had their right hand and left foot amputated for stealing some phones and guns.

Somalia’s government is rapidly losing ground in the country, and al-Shabaab is poised to continue to gain more control. Their followers are dedicated and hardened combatants, all supremely dedicated to their goal of defeating the “enemies of Islam”; anyone, in other words, that doesn’t share their fundamentalist views.

Onlookers watched as the men screamed for help while their limbs were chopped off, and witnesses refused to comment on what happened, presumably too frightened to say anything. The accused had confessed to their crimes, but the fact that they had no lawyers or representation makes me think that these confessions were probably cohersed. Hey, when you’ve already sharpened all your unsanitary knives in preperation for an amputation, you can’t have anyone being found not guilty, can you?

Somalians are accustomed to a much more reasonable and peaceful version of Islam, but it looks like the fundamentalist bullies are trying to turn the country into another radical state. This is the real “War on Terror” here; a country’s population is being held hostage by maniacs who think that cutting off a man’s hands for stealing is apporpriate punishment. Things in Somalia are going to get worst before they get better.