Somalia’s association with chaos, murder and lawlessness is now so well-established that when Jeffrey Gettleman of the New York Times called it “The most dangerous country in the world”, it hardly raised any eyebrows. When it comes to how and why Somalia earned this shameful status, the fingers are usually pointed at Somalia’s warlords and rightly so. But lately, a new group of murderous cut throats have joined in Somalia’s hellish nightmare. These are the so-called men of religion who are using the Islamic religion to obtain political power. Initially, many of these people came together under the umbrella of the Islamic Courts and claimed that their goal was to promulgate the Islamic Sharia laws. After the Ethiopian military intervention, these groups stressed that they were fighting the Ethiopian occupiers. But it turns out that the main goal of the Somali Islamists was neither to drive Ethiopian troops out of Somalia nor to make Somalis more Muslim, but rather to grab power for themselves. That is why once the exit of Ethiopian troops became imminent they began to splinter into factions.
The sad part is that southern Somalis who have destroyed their country with wild abandon and have also buried many of the ideals of Somali brotherhood and solidarity, have now turned to ruining the name of our great Islamic religion by engaging in actions that contradict the teachings of Islam and saying that they are doing it in the name of Islam. In this respect the southern religious warlords and their followers are worse than the previous warlords.

 

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