The new rulers of Somalia have decided to allow their new subjects to gently adjust to theocratic rule:
Somali Muslims who fail to perform daily prayers will be killed in accordance with Koranic law under an edict issued by a leading cleric.
The requirement for Muslims to pray five times a day under penalty of death appears to confirm the hard-line nature of the increasingly powerful Sharia courts in the Somali capital, Mogadishu.
"He who does not perform prayers will be considered as infidel and Sharia law orders that that person be killed," said Sheikh Abdalla Ali, a founder and high-ranking official in the Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia.
"Sharia law orders the killing of any Muslim person when he fails to perform prayers," he said in an address at the opening of a new Islamic court in Mogadishu's southern Gubta neighbourhood.
Sure sounds like a vote winner, guys.
In other news, the only religious movement even stupider than radical Islam, the Church of England, comes up with the idea to ditch its patron saint, because of perceived offence to...people not in the church.
UPDATE: We have another contender for religious tard of the day!
The Australian Government has sacrificed millions of people on the altar of the market, preferred to help the rich over the poor, and has made human rights negotiable, outgoing Uniting Church president Dean Drayton said in his farewell speech yesterday.
Ahuh.
He also said Australia was "sucking dry" its Pacific and regional neighbours to maintain its own lifestyle.
For "sucking dry" read "providing millions of dollars in aid and support which is then pissed up against a wall."
Sometimes I think Diderot was right, "I should like to see, and this will be the last and most ardent of my desires, I should like to see the last king strangled by the guts of the last priest"
Posted by Quentin George at July 7, 2006 07:26 PM