Somali Muslim Cleric Hate
Muslim cleric says govt will flop
March 6,
2006
Mogadishu: A hardline Somali cleric with big influence in Mogadishu has said
Muslims will oppose the Horn of Africa's fledgling government because it is
based on anti-Islamic principles.
"A government that does not rule by the book of God does not deserve support,"
Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweis, has said.
Aweis, who is on an American list of most wanted terrorists and runs one of
Mogadishu's powerful sharia courts, said the new interim administration formed
in Kenya in 2004 could not be supported because it was organised on secular
lines. That would clash with the Islamic sharia law that suits the largely
Muslim nation of 10 million people, he argued.
"Such a government will only bring losses because people will clash, hate and
disobey it, and so it will not have authority over them."
The government, led by President Abdullahi Yusuf, relocated to Somalia last year
but has been unable to impose authority and remains based in the provincial town
of Jowhar because of fears over security in the capital, Mogadishu.
It is
unclear how much popular support it can command.
Somalia has been without proper central government since warlords toppled former
dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.
Aweis said Islamists would not oppose the government with violence, but doubted
it would have any success.
Aweis resurfaced in 2004 after vanishing amid heightened American scrutiny after
the September 11 2001 attacks. Western security services see Somalia as a
potential safe haven for terrorists.
He runs the Ifka Halanka Islamic court in northern Mogadishu. The courts are the
only source of organised justice for the city's nearly one million people.
A former soldier, Aweis started preaching in the late 1970s and has a burning
desire to see Somalia under sharia law. He said sharia law was Somalia's only
way out of its turmoil and lawlessness.
He urged Yusuf's government to view the Islamists not as enemies but as a
legitimate opposition group. - Reuters
Cleric accused
of terror ties
Items compiled from
Tribune news services
Published June 25, 2006
MOGADISHU, SOMALIA -- A
fundamentalist Muslim cleric who is listed by the U.S. as a suspected Al Qaeda
collaborator was named Saturday as the new leader of an Islamic militia that now
controls Somalia's capital.
The militia, which changed its name Saturday to the Conservative Council of
Islamic Courts from the Islamic Courts Union, said it had appointed Sheik Hassan
Dahir Aweys. The U.S. State Department has said Aweys was an associate of Osama
bin Laden in the early 1990s.
The Islamic militia seized control of Mogadishu and much of southern Somalia
from an alliance of warlords earlier this month.
Aweys, a cleric believed to be in his 60s, appears on a U.S. list of individuals
and organizations accused of having ties to terrorism. He went into hiding after
Sept. 11, 2001, and re-emerged last August.