(Updated: Originally published November 5, 2006)
Further debunking of the lies we were told about the Islamists:
"In Somalia, Islamic Militias Fight Culture Wars" by MARC LACEY
MOGADISHU, Somalia, June 18 — With the old warlords gone, Mogadishu is safer, and more dangerous, too. It is a happier place, and a more oppressive one.
Talk about a contradiction in terms! Sheesh!
Commandment One: The Times shalt not fairly portray Islamists.
In the old Mogadishu, militiamen would barge into a home and haul a girl or woman away and rape her.
Our guys! The CIA-backed, murderous warlords!
Moderate sheiks led by Sharif Ahmed, a fresh-faced former geography teacher, extends his hand. He lunches with visiting reporters to show he has no disdain for foreigners. He is backed by moderate business people who are eager to bring calm to Somalia and get back to business.
Amid the horror of Mogadishu, the attempt at justice was welcomed, especially in places like the Bermuda neighborhood, where one ugly incident prompted neighbors to form a Shariah court. Gunmen had dragged a teenage girl from her home and raped her. When they returned weeks later, they found the girl gone, so they took her mother. She resisted, so they shot her to death. When her husband tried to save her, they shot him.
Soon, the clan-based courts merged in a powerful alliance that eventually took on and toppled the warlords who had been ruling and running roughshod over Mogadishu residents.
But those courts owe part of their strength to the Bush administration, which tried secretly to undermine them. In recent years, American intelligence agents paid warlords to root out Islamic militants operating in Mogadishu.
Our guys! Told ya!
Mr. Ahmed, 41, bearded, soft-spoken and erudite and the top leader of the Islamic courts who was trained in the Koran in Sudan and Libya:
"We are a Muslim people, we want to live in a peaceful way, we want to live with the rest of the world in a peaceful way. We are not terrorists and we do not associate with terrorists."
That doesn't stop AmeriKa's Zionist-controlled media, though!
The Islamic courts are not World Cup haters, either, Mr. Ahmed has said, explaining that a rogue militia, not an official order, led to the closing of some theaters. Somalis continue to pack into public theaters in other parts of town, where the local militias have opted for moderation.
What's one more lie exposed, really?
So what is the problem?
Let's hear from some Somalis:
Ismahan Ali Mohamed, 18, an aspiring actress, was stopped by militia, had her clothing torn and was told to wear a looser garment, now wearing a flowing hijab that covers all but her face, removing it inside a hotel restaurant to reveal a bright pink outfit that still covered her but allowed more of a glimpse of what was underneath:
"It feels heavy and it's not comfortable. With this, I feel happy and beautiful and free."
That's the freedom? The right to get dolled up like a, well, you know.
Ubah Mohamed, 34, runs a beauty shop and is a friend of Ismahan, feared the new rules:
"If these Islamic people get their way, we'll have to cover all the way. I'm a beautiful girl and I like to show others how beautiful I am. Behind the veil, no one can tell."
And you will be losing a little bit a bidness, too, so there is like, no conflict of interest?
Malyun Sheik Haidar, 31, who publishes a small newsletter devoted to women's issues, heard from a man involved in one of the Islamic courts that her publication would probably be shut down:
"He said, 'Women have a right to sit in your house and do domestic things. You don't have a right to do a journal on human rights.' "
Is this the liberation we bring to repressed women of the world?
The driving of our immoral, sex-driven, corrupt society?
This is the barometer for women's liberation in the world?
This is the model we are pushing?
Look how deeply our propaganda has altered minds in developing world -- while at the same time, destroying a culture.
It is as if we are promoting an unbounded, hedonistic, depraved way of life to the world that could be described as (gulp) Anti-Christian in its form and nature.
Please let's hear from a level-headed Somali woman!
For every complaint the new leaders are receiving, though, many more praise them for quelling the random violence that became normal life in Mogadishu.
Hakima Mohamud Abdi, 52, a businesswoman:
"Before, women were kidnapped, raped, killed and tortured. Now we've seen a great change and we're very satisfied."
So even though most praise the Islamist for getting rid of our thugs, the Times gives you a 3-to-1 complaint ratio.
Pffffftttt!
Mohamud Adaan, a businessman who has given donations to the courts, said he expected slow changes that over time would reduce drug use, prostitution and other vices. Even the use of khat, a plant that is chewed as a popular natural stimulant, will be addressed, he said, since it has been shown to rile up the young armed men who cause so many problems in Somalia.
"We will not make changes fast. We will take time. We will rehabilitate people. We will not just step up and outlaw this and that."
Analysts say a struggle is going on within the courts, which are made up of many interests, ranging from Islamists of all stripes to business people and community leaders.
Shariff Osman, the Canadian-educated dean of the computer science department at Mogadishu University:
"If you look at me, I don't have a beard and it would bother me if someone stopped me and said that my face was a problem. It's in the coming days and weeks that we'll see how this plays out. People now have a euphoria that the warlords are gone. They are waiting for what's next."
Six months later, the U.S. and Ethiopia overthrew the Islamist government.
Here is some follow up on the nice Somali women you just met:
"Women in Somalia feel power slipping as Islamic law takes hold" by Robyn Dixon/Los Angeles Times September 03, 2006
MOGADISHU, Somalia -- Her face is soft and round, cocooned in a loose blue cotton hijab. Her eyes, black onyx full of mystery.
But Maryam Mohammed covers her smile with hennaed fingers, casts her gaze downward, a picture of shy anxiety -- not the image of someone who has done the most dangerous job in one of the most dangerous cities on Earth.
Until recently, Ms. Mohammed was one of many women making the daily khat run, braving a gantlet of gunmen on the airport road to meet small planes crammed with the highly addictive narcotic leaf so they could bring it to market.
Ms. Mohammed, 20: "I was feeling proud of myself, and I felt brave that I was risking my life for my family."
For 15 years, Somalia was ruled by clan-based strongmen, each with his own private army. The capital was divided among the warlords and controlled by their AK-47-toting fighters, many of them children.
Over that period of chaos, violence and war, the women of Mogadishu have risked their lives time and again -- and in the process changed their country.
First they became the wartime breadwinners in this male-dominated society.
Malyun Sheik Haidar, 31, who publishes a women's newspaper:
"Women had to help the family to survive. That's when they got their voice, when they shared the life of the family with the men."
This spring, women stepped up again. Weary of suffering stoically, they jammed the switchboards of Mogadishu's independent radio stations with angry protests about the warlords' violence.
It marked a stunning shift in Somali culture. People here call it a popular revolution that helped defeat the warlords and ushered in the reign of the Conservative Council of Islamic Courts.
The women helped bring the peace-making courts in? No kidding?
But now that women have helped end the brutal power of the warlords, they may be forced to abandon their newfound status.
Already women are swapping traditional Somali dress, which is open at the face, for the Saudi-style black hijab, which covers the face and body.
As the family breadwinner, Ms. Mohammed was a part of the economic revolution, but she was too preoccupied with the raw business of survival to worry about the political revolution of recent months.
Like many young people raised in the warlord era, she has little education, just three years of school, because her father couldn't afford to send her to private school. There was no government, thus no government-provided schools, hospitals, police, water, electricity or sanitation.
Her brother, a militiaman for warlord Muse Side Yalahow, taught her how to fire an AK-47. After he was killed in a fight more than a year ago, she approached local women for advice on how to trade khat. She ended up on the airport run.
Ms. Mohammed, who made $2.50 a day:
"I was trembling. I knew the militias could attack us at any moment and kill me and steal the khat. But the problem of our daily survival drove me to do it."
Before the warlords' defeat, militias and freelance gunmen were some of the most regular khat customers, but they did not always pay.
Sometimes they'd shoot khat sellers in the market or ambush them on the road. In one such ambush, Ms. Mohammed's friend was shot and killed beside her.
Nine months ago, Ms. Mohammed, under pressure from her family, quit the dangerous trade. She joined a militia, thinking it would be safer, but three months later she found herself in the recent battles for Mogadishu:
"I don't like to kill people. I don't like to fight. In battle, you die or kill. I was very frightened in battle, but I had to do it for the money."
Like many women in Mogadishu, she feels less vulnerable to violence nowadays, but she is afraid it will be harder to find work under the Islamic regime:
"I don't see them as something good. I'd like to leave Somalia if I can and do business, have a small shop or even a job with a decent salary, like a secretary or a cleaner."
Anab Mohammed Isaaq, 35, has five children ranging in age from 7 months to 10 years. She wears a white band on her head to signify mourning for her husband, who was killed by a stray bullet in the Mogadishu fighting. She supports the family by selling clothes in the market, earning 50 cents to a dollar a day.
She has lived in fear for her two daughters, Nasteexo, 10, and Hamsa, 7. In her neighborhood of metal shacks, militias armed with machetes have come at night and hacked through walls, stealing girls. A neighbor's 4-year-old was kidnapped, raped and killed.
Ms. Isaaq: "The problems are all on women. That's why they were complaining and talking to the media."
Our guys, folks! The WARLORDS that were funded by the CIA!
Like the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Islamic courts won popular support in the mid-1990s by trying to enforce a degree of order, reducing theft and crime. When the courts' militias recently drove the warlords from Mogadishu, they had the support of the majority.
Way back when, when everybody loved the Taliban -- including Bill Clinton.
The courts represent various strands of Islam, some more fundamentalist than others, but there are fears that the recent rise of Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys as chairman of the group could mean more repressive, Taliban-style rules. Aweys took over from the more moderate Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, who is now chairman of the group's executive committee.
Ms. Haidar, 31, the women's newspaper publisher, was recently warned by a figure in the courts to give up working and stay home:
"If this continues, it will close down my newspaper. This is our only expression. We are talking about children's rights and women's rights, and if they stop us from doing that, it means we lost our rights."
I guess thuggish occupation by Ethiopia (which never makes the papers anymore) is better?
Even under the more moderate leadership, Islamic guards had been stopping minibuses to check women's clothing and men's hairstyles.
Islamic guards grabbed Ismahaan Ali Mohammed, 18, an aspiring actress, and hacked her clothing with scissors because it was deemed too tight and un-Islamic.
WTF? Always repeating the same stories? WTF?
Wearing heavy eyeliner that exaggerates her beauty, she and her friend, Nawaal Mohammed, 18, could not be more different from Maryam Mohammed, the former khat trader. They are self-confident, assertive and eager to soak up the pleasures of youth. But these days they must cover their bright dresses with the hijab.
Nawaal Mohammed has two boyfriends and used to wander the streets holding hands with the favorite of the moment. They went to the movies. She even kissed them secretly, in their houses or hers.
Two boyfriends at the same time?
Ms. Mohammed dreads donning a drab hijab before leaving the house, likes to wear tight jeans and chafes under the new restrictions:
"Now I'm afraid to be arrested or beaten. It's safer than before, but we have no freedom. We are not happy with this Islamic Sharia law. It's hot. It's too heavy. If I wear hijab, I don't feel pretty. I feel that I don't have any freedom. I used to wear pants and a shirt. It's my style. I felt good. It made me feel beautiful."
Well there you go again. Shitty MSM press regurgitating the same shit!
Kinda get tired of it after a while.
