A sharia court run by Somalia's Shabab insurgents in Mogadishu sentenced four teenagers to each have a hand and a leg amputated as punishment for robbery June 22. A sharia judge in an insurgent-controlled area of the capital said the defendants had "robbed mobile phones and people's belongings." The Shabab have instated a strict interpretation of Islamic law in territory they control, and have carried out stonings [2], floggings and amputations before. Amnesty International condemned the sentence, saying the defendants had no lawyer and had not been allowed to appeal. (Reuters [3], June 22)
As of today, the punishment has not been carried out. A Shabab spokesman told the Associated Press the sentence was postponed because of fears the men could bleed to death in the hot weather. (VOA [4], June 23) Last month in Kismayo, in Somalia's south, ruling Islamists invited a crowd to the town's public park to see a man suspected of stealing $90 worth of clothing get his hand cut off. (BBC News [5], May 20)
So if these Shabab are so intransigent in their rejection of modernity that they use amputation as a form of punishment, why are they amputating people for stealing cellphones rather than for using them? What a bunch of posers (as we recently had reason to say of Afghanistan's Taliban [6]). It is telling that the legitimate global rebellion against the technosphere [7] engages in no such neo-medievalisms.
See our last posts on Somalia [8] and the struggle within Islam [9].
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