An Islamist lashes a man accused of raping a 3-year-old girl in Somalia's capital Mogadishu, September 13, 2006.

MOGADISHU, Sep 14, 2006 – Somalia's Islamists plan to dispatch emissaries around the world to try to allay fears that the sharia law they envisage for the war-ravaged Horn of Africa nation would result in a Taliban-style rule.

The newly powerful movement's top information officer, Abdirahim Ali Mudey, told Reuters on Thursday the recent visit to Libya by senior Islamists Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys and Sheikh Sharif Ahmed was part of a wider diplomatic push.

Other delegations and emissaries would soon be sent to various countries to describe their belief that sharia law is the only way to ensure peace in Somalia.

"We have prepared delegations to go to various continents to show the world that we are not what people are saying," said the soft-spoken, 40-year-old, teacher-turned-cleric during an interview at his new office in Mogadishu.

Mudey denied the Islamists planned to copy Afghanistan's Taliban model, saying the movement only sought to promote the norms and cultures of Somalia according to the teachings of Islam in the predominantly Muslim nation of 10 million.

Born out of sharia courts that sprang up in lawless Mogadishu in the mid-1990s, the Islamist movement developed into a strong political and military force before taking Mogadishu and a southern swathe of the country this year.

While Somalis have been delighted to see order restored in areas taken by the Islamists, many are perturbed by signs of fundamentalist practices such as closing video parlors, enforcing dress codes and ordering a radio station to stop playing love songs.

"We and the Taliban share the religion only. We are two different societies," Mudey said.

"We have our own cultural folk dance and songs but all that has been changed by Western music, which is badly influencing our people. That is what we are against. ... We just want to rule our land by the sharia law."

"ISLAMISTS ARE NOT DICTATORS"

Mudey said the Islamists want Somalia to reconcile and unite, and had no intention of forming their own national government since that might provoke more civil war.

"We are not dictators, we work for the people," he said.

"We want to talk to this weak government, we want to talk to (the self-declared independent enclave of) Somaliland, we hope to have a united Somalia at the end of this year."

The Islamists' rise has challenged the shaky Western-backed interim government's aspirations to reimpose central rule for the first time in Somalia since dictator Mohamed Siyad Barre was ousted by warlords in 1991.

Mudey said the Islamists opposed federalism and the proportional clan representation system -- two fundamental principles of the interim government -- but were ready to talk through differences amicably without resorting to force.

"We have just stopped clan feuds, we do not want to start another war based on federalism," he said.

The Islamists have invited government officials to Mogadishu in an effort to help reconciliation, following several rounds of talks in Khartoum, Mudey said.

"I think (President) Abdillahi Yusuf will be amazed by the rousing welcome he will receive in Mogadishu," he said at his office in a dilapidated former government building, which once housed the dreaded National Security Services.

"He (Yusuf) might die out of excitement, these are his people, he is our head of state."

Source: Reuters

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