Says MEMRI: “On November 21, 2003, Somali journalist Bashir Goth wrote an extensive article detailing how Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi Islam has corrupted the Islam of his native Somalia.”
He calls Wahhabism an “alien, perverted version of Islam that depends on punctilious manners more than it depends on deep-rooted faith. A strange uniformity… has crept into the social manners of our people. The unique fashion and identity of our people has changed forever. We have become a people without fashion, without culture, and without identity…”
“It is a pity… to see that, at a time when Saudi Arabia, the home of Wahhabism, is reassessing the damage that Wahhabism and extremism had done to their country’s name and to the reputation of Islam all over the world… that Wahhabism has to find a save-haven in our country. . . .
“The most conspicuous foot soldiers of Wahhabism are the moral police known as Mutawi’un, who roam in the streets like riot police and force people to perform rituals or adhere to Wahhabism’s code of decency in dressing and other mannerisms. [This] religious police… forced a group of schoolgirls to their deaths by forcing them to go back to an inferno that had been their school. Their crime? Forgetting the head coverings in their haste to save themselves…
“This is the Wahhabism that the Saudi-oriented clerics want to impose on Somaliland. This is the sect that produced 15 of the 19 suicide bombers of Sept. 11… It is a closed [mindset] that turned Islam into a fragile creed that lives in constant fear of children’s toys and games such as Barbie dolls and Pokemon… This is the brand of distorted Islam that the neo-Muslim clerics want to enforce on our people. . . .
“It is time to tell these sick men that the bare breast of the woman suckling her child is not about pornography, but about motherhood. The girls and boys sitting next to each other in class are not indulging in a sex orgy, you demented paranoiacs, but enjoying a healthy educational environment. The girl walking in the street without a headcover and wearing a big smile is not about flirting; it is about beauty of life. The woman holding a lively conversation with a male friend in a coffee house or a shopping mall is not about illicit affairs; it is about a much-needed human relationship and a healthy exchange of intellectual ideas. The woman wearing the traditional diric and hagoog and regally strolling in the street is not about indecency but about culture. The nightingale voices of our female singers are not about eroticism, you philistines, but about art, music and enjoyment of one of God’s marvelous gifts…
“It is time we have to speak out. If we don’t do it today, we won’t be able to do it tomorrow. Because there will be no tomorrow as our country descends into 7th century Arabia.” (Thanks to nicolei.)