Somali apostate murdered at wedding

When I read began reading the story, I saw "Somalia (MNN)" and thought "wow, they already have a town named Somalia in Minnesota? Maybe near the Minneapolis airport?"

It took some further reading to realize they meant the other Somalia.

"Even though most Somali Muslims don't speak Arabic, it is considered the "language Allah hears" and is therefore used in Muslim ceremoniess"

Wow - so the supreme Allah only understands Arabic? Can't really be that clever then can he - seeing as someone like Jose Mourinho can speak several languages fluently. Goes to show that Jose is really a "special One".

:)

Joking aside can someone explain the whole he who leaves his religion should die thing - does that mean someone who leaves Christianity to BECOME a Muslim must be killed as they left their religion - or is it the usual whatever suits the Muslims needs rule?

Can you imagine the media and grievance-industry outcry if a Christian - anywhere in the world - had converted to Islam and was subsequently murdered by his Christian brethren?

he knows he's is a apostate and his death is only a matter of time. why he doesn't leave escapes me. i would walk a hundred miles or more to save my own life.

poor guy...

What I'm going to write is obvious, too damn obvious, but if Islam were such a great religion as all of Allah's slaves claim that it is, would they need the death penalty for apostasy in order to keep people from leaving it? But we know that since the death penalty for apostasy is prescribed in Mein Qurampf, those brain-dead true-believers have "no choice" but to use it against anyone who comes to their senses and decides to leave Mohammed-the-Pedophile's little sick cult.

And that so many dhimmis in the West can still support such nonsense just gets more and more unbelievable by the millisecond.

So 'Almighty Supreme born Allah', who was arrested a while back for traffic violations and drug possession, only understands Arabic. That's odd since he created every language.

It's pretty clear that Allah favored the Arabs. He still favors them, which is why Islams vehicle for Arab supremacy, makes Islam a racist organization, even if they admit non Arab submitters.

Not all Mohammadans are racists, but Islam is.

Apostasy...It is very easy to become an apostate, even inadvertently.
Note especially the last sentence. # 20. Is also interesting...

From 'Reliance of the traveler'.

ACTS THAT ENTAIL LEAVING ISLAM

o8.7 (O: Among the things that entail apostasy from Islam (may Allah protect us from them) are:

(1) to prostrate to an idol, whether sarcastically, out of mere contrariness, or in actual conviction, like that of someone who believes the Creator to be something that has originated in time. Like idols in this respect are the sun or moon, and like prostration is bowing to other than Allah, if one intends reverence towards it like the reverence due to Allah;
(2) to intend to commit unbelief, even if in the future. And like this intention is hesitating whether to do so or not: one thereby immediately commits unbelief;
(3) to speak words that imply unbelief such as "Allah is the third of three," or "I am Allah'' — unless one's tongue has run away with one, or one is quoting another, or is one of the friends of Allah Most High (wali, def: w33) in a spiritually intoxicated state of total oblivion (A: friend of Allah or not, someone totally oblivious is as if insane, and is not held legally responsible (dis: k13.1(O:))), for these latter do not entail unbelief;
(4) to revile Allah or His messenger (Allah bless him and give him peace);
(5) to deny the existence of Allah, His beginningless eternality, His endless eternality, or to deny any of His attributes which the consensus of Muslims ascribes to Him (dis: v1);
(6) to be sarcastic about Allah's name, His command, His interdiction, His promise, or His threat;
(7) to deny any verse of the Koran or anything which by scholarly consensus (def: b7) belongs to it, or to add a verse that does not belong to it;
(8) to mockingly say, "I don't know what faith is";
(9) to reply to someone who says, "There is no power or strength save through Allah": "Your saying 'There's no power or strength, etc.' won't save you from hunger";
(10) for a tyrant, after an oppressed person says, "This is through the decree of Allah," to reply, "I act without the decree of Allah";
(11) to say that a Muslim is an unbeliever (kafir) (dis: w47) in words that are uninterpretable as merely meaning he is an ingrate towards Allah for divinely given blessings (n: in Arabic, also "kafir");
(12) when someone asks to be taught the Testification of Faith (Ar. Shahada, the words, "La ilaha ill Allahu Muhammadun rasulu Llah" (There is no god but Allah, Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah)), and a Muslim refuses to teach him it;
(13) to describe a Muslim or someone who wants to become a Muslim in terms of unbelief (kufr);
(14) to deny the obligatory character of something which by the consensus of Muslims (ijma', def: b7) is part of Islam, when it is well known as such, like the prayer (salat) or even one rak'a from one of the five obligatory prayers, if there is no excuse (def: u2.4);
(15) to hold that any of Allah's messengers or prophets are liars, or to deny their being sent;

(n: 'Ala' al-Din 'Abidin adds the following:

(16) to revile the religion of Islam;
(17) to believe that things in themselves or by their own nature have any causal influence independent of the will of Allah;
(18) to deny the existence of angels or jinn (def: w22), or the heavens;
(19) to be sarcastic about any ruling of the Sacred Law;
(20) or to deny that Allah intended the Prophet's message (Allah bless him and give him peace) to be the religion followed by the entire world (dis: w4.3-4) (al-Hadiyya al-'Ala'iyya (y4), 423-24).)

There are others, for the subject is nearly limitless. May Allah Most High save us and all Muslims from it.)

What a way to wreck a wedding! I guess they're not such special occasions in Somalia, as they are in Dar al-Harb.

If I were the groom, I'd really be ticked off about this.

They have "guards" at Somali weddings? Why do weddings need "guards"? Is that to keep the ll year-old bride from bolting?

"Mein Qurampf" --Proud Kaffir

That's effing GREAT! Can't wait to use that one.

"And that so many dhimmis in the West can still support such nonsense just gets more and more unbelievable by the millisecond."

Posted by: Proud_Kaffir7908 at October 23, 2008 9:43 AM

Really. It's unbelievable. It's like out of Dr. Seuss or something.

Errata sheet: "generous compassion for those in need, a quality necessitated in the Five Pillars of Islam" should read "generous compassion for those Muslims in need, a quality necessitated in the Five Pillars of Islam". Then Mr. Nur's murder wouldn't seem so ironic.

Eighty thousand Somalis, almost all of them Muslims, have been allowed into this country. What they have done can be seen in Lewiston, Maine, where their enormous burden on the benefits system left so little for the native poor, who had been paying into that system for decades, that the Mayor of Lewiston publicly expressed his alarm at the Somali influx, and for his pains was mechanically, and roundly, denounced as a "racist.”

Or it can be seen in the places where some Somalis do work, rather than live on benefitrs, such as that meat-packing plant in Iowa, where the non-Somali workers, who bear the brunt of the behavior and attitudes of the Somalis in their midst, revolted when the meat-packing company was prepared to supinely give in to Muslim demands, demands that would have given preferential treatment to Muslim workers. One of the non-Muslim workers was widely quoted: "The Latino is very humble," said Garcia, 73, who has worked at the plant, owned by JBS U.S.A. Inc., since 1994. "But they are arrogant," he said of the Somali workers. "They act like the United States owes them."

In Minneapolis, Somali and other Muslim taxidrivers have refused to pick up peoplecarrying liquor (at the airport where those arriving from abroad dutifully carry their Duty-Free) and also blind people with seeing-eye dogs. Fascinating to consider that because in seventh-century Arabia some Arab, who may or may not have existed, is said to have said that he wouldn’t enter a house “with statues or dog” in twenty-first century America a blind person waiting patiently for a taxi may not be picked up. And consider this, while we have stopped to look at that Hadith: for 1350 years Muslims have had to stifle whatever creative impulse they might have had to create statuary, and not only that, but wherever they have been able, have destroyed the statues – Greek or Roman, Byzantine or Buddhist – all across the vast lands they have conquered, and they haven’t stopped today – look at what the Taliban did not only to the Bamiyan Buddhas (with engineering help from Pakistanis and money from Saudis), but also to the already pathetically teeny-tiny contents of the Kabul Museum, with its remains of so many civilizations, had had overlapped or overlaid one another , in palimpsestic fashion, over that swath of territory now known as Afghanistan.

Those Somalis were allowed into this country as “refugees.” But why are Muslims who leave a Muslim country, where they are not persecuted for being non-Muslims but instead can do the persecuting, and who bring their supremacist Total Belief-System with them, and show, in a hundred ways, that they believe their faith Superior and they Superior as well (owed a living in Lewiston, owed special favors in Iowa, owed exemption from the hack-license rules in Minneapolis), and it is we, the Infidels who gave them misplaced rescue and succor of every kind, who must change our ways, who must yield to them.

Who decided that, because the Americans went to Somalia to prevent the natural state of Hobbesian man into which Muslim lands descend without a Muslim bully-boy or despot to manage things the way Muslim rulers do, through their absolute control of the military and the mukhabarat and some version of the mutawwa – the three M’s of Muslim rule that keep those Arab despots the longest-ruling rulers or dynasties or juntas in the last century. See Khaddafy in Libya, see the Hashemites in Jordan, the Sherifians in Morocco, the FLN military men in Algeria, the Bourguiba-Ben Ali reign in Tunisia, the military, embodied currently by Mubarak, have ruled over Egypt since the coup of Nasser and Naguib back in the early 1950s, the Al-Saud, the Al-Thani, the Al-Maktoum, the Al-thises and Al-thatses, up and down the Arab side of the Persian Gulf, see the vicissitudes of the same small group of zamindars and generals who rule, and own, Pakistan, see see see. Military, Mukhabarat, Mutawwa (the variant spelling in the Islamic Republic of Iran is “Mullahs”),

That’s the Three M’s of Modern Muslim Rule. Forget your Hobbes and Locke and Rousseau, your Mill and Bentham, your Bagehot, your Oakeshott, your Rawls or, in the alternative, your von Hayek. It’s a completely different world, the world of Islam. This is something our credulous, hopeful, sentimental, arrogant rulers, the ones who were going to “remake the Middle East,” did not understand, because they had lost, in the hectic vacancy of Washington, the habit of study, the ability to think.

Perhaps that lesson can be learned even by some of those raised in the Age of Ignorance, the Western Jajiliya – the Age, that is, before an Awareness and Grasp of Islam, as a Total Belief-System with an amazing hold on the minds of men (but them, most men, everywhere, are primitive, which is why it is best that their primitiveness be channeled by a faith less dangerous to all those who do not submit to the same faith, and one that just possibly is founded on principles that, if actually followed, could do a lot of good). Just because you rise to the top in Washington, you can’t stop learning, and you have to learn, to undo the clichés of the past, about Islam as a “bulwark against Communism,” or about Islam as a “religion of peace” (which arises from the dreamy idea that All Religions Are The Same, and We All Want The Same Thing), and you have to learn about the texts and tenets, so that unlike James Baker, with his Saudi baker-and-botts wheeling-dealing, unlike Bill Clinton and George Bush Sr. with the fabulous largesse the Saudis and other Muslims have presented to their Presidential libraries and unlike the “respected” (by whom? For what?) Colin Powell, supremely aware since his earliest military days of the need to be attuned to politics and pleasing the powerful (he hasn’t looked back, he “seen his opportunities and he took ‘em”), who was happy to pocket the keys of the Jaguar that Prince Bandar, his tennis-and-racquetball partner and pal (from whom he has learned so much about the Al-Saud, about Saudi Arabia, about Islam, so much that he can pontificate indignantly about unfair worries or suspicions about Muslims in high office, and can get away with using as his point of departure (and his sole point, come to think of it), a single photograph of a Muslim mother grieving at the grave of her Muslim son, one of a handful who must have enlisted in the American army, without being asked to explain what makes Colin Powell so sure that the doctrine of Islam is not worrisome, what makes him take as “representative” this particular soldier, and not the Muslim Marine who went AWOL, leaving his post and returning to Lebanon, not the Muslim soldier who rolled a grenade into a tent killing two officers, not the Muslim sailor who apparently was offering to give secrets about his ship to other Muslims for their own deadly use, not all the other examples of Muslim mendacity, but only this single example, of a photograph, that caused Colin Powell to become, on national television, without a single bit of information about Islam other than what he gleaned from Prince Bandar (he of the jangling keys to the Jaguar, pocked by Mrs. Powell just a few days after Colin Powell left office, and could now “accept the gift” that a few days before would have been illegal), a great and reassuring authority on Islam.

Some, many, of these people must be prevented from again being in positions of authority, and all those who have not yet shown signs of coming to understand, of even making the attempt to understand – through direct and personal study, and not through vicarious study, that is having an aide or two has read a book or two, and then “summarize” in power-point form what “Islam is all about” – should be kept out of any position, for they represent, in their ignorance, and in their continuing influence (inertia plays a part, inertia and being overawed by those who, simply because they have served high up in this or that administration, are foolishly accorded a respect that their own display of mind does not suggest they have earned, or are capable of earning).

And not just in foreign policy, but in domestic policy. If you cannot recognize the Jihad, don’t want to find out what it is, what it means, and why Islam is not merely a “religion” in the commonly-accepted sense but also an Identity, a Loyalty, both to what is a Total Belief-System and to the other Believers, the other Members of the world-wide Umma, a an identity, and a loyalty, that trump all other possible identities and loyalties (or at least, that is what Islam inculcates – a few may ignore what is inculcated, but then they may well be “Muslims-for-identification-purposes-only” Muslims), then you may not be able to connect the contents of the article above, about the killing of the Somali Christian, for daring to be a Christian (and daring to suggest that the attendees at a wedding, including the bride and groom, had a right to understand the ceremony), with the attitudes of Somali Muslims, “Muslim refugees from Islam” (???), who have been allowed to settle deep within our borders, within what Muslims themselves are taught to regard as enemy lines, the lines of Dar al-Harb.

VampireJack,
Only Islam demands that those who leave it be killed by fellow believers. It is part of the Koran. There is no such injunction anywhere in the bible. Christians usually pray for those who have "strayed". They don't murder them.

And here's a bit more from a previous JW article on Arabs and Black Africans:

"Even though, under Western pressure, slavery has been officially abolished in Muslim countries (which cannot permanently reject slavery, as it is recognized in Islam) the blacks of sub-Saharan Africa are, whenever they come into contact with Arab or even local Muslims, still being exploited, massacred (as the Biafrans) or sold into slavery (as in the Sudan). This is happening most notably in the Sudan, which a hundred years ago was still mainly black and overwhelmingly non-Muslim, but thanks to steady Jihad encroachments has been taken over by the dominant northern Arabs.

It was not Muslims, but the British who suppressed the Arab slave trade in East Africa. That trade had supplied black slaves for many uses, but particularly sought were male children who were castrated on sight where they were seized. Those who survived the primitive operation (with of course no anesthetic) were then taken by slave coffle from the interior and marched either all the way up to the Muslim slave-markets of Egypt and North Africa from Tripolitania to Mauritania, or taken by dhow to the coast, often to Muscat, and from there to the slave-markets of Arabia, Riyadh and Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo, even as far as Constantinople and Smyrna. In “The Hideous Trade” Jan Hogedoorn has calculated that the mortality rate due to the castration and subsequent forced marches, ended with barely 10% of those initially taken actually managing to reach those slave markets alive.

This wreaked havoc all over East and Central Africa, and even had consequences in West Africa. V. S. Naipaul has noted that the Muslim conquest of Hindustan left the Indians with a “wounded civilization.” Similarly, in his short monograph on “The Wanderings of Peoples” the British historian A. C. Haddon notes that in Africa “the slave trade, as carried on under Arab influence...contributed powerfully to the dislocation of tribes."

Such dislocation followed upon the activities of the Arab slavers. Think of Tippoo Tib, whom Stanley writes about. His depredations have received little attention, though those of him and other Arab slavers were by far the worst of the calamities visited by outsiders upon black Africa. Unlike the European colonialists, the Arabs who use Islam as the vehicle for their own imperialism have never had to account for this. Yet they have never ceased to press forward, to make demands on black Africa. They helped encourage the “Jihad” – as Colonel Ojukwu called it in his Ahiara Declaration – that led the Christian Ibo in Nigeria to fight for their independence from the Muslim north; with Egyptian pilots strafing Ibo villages, and the entire Western world ignoring the Biafrans. Only Ghana and Israel recognized Biafra diplomatically. And with a million civilians massacred, the Muslims of the north, with that Egyptian help, managed to suppress the Biafran movement. They continue to this day to divert the oil wealth from the largely Christian south to support the Muslim-controlled army and the depressed, inshallah-fatalistic economy of the Muslim north.

Why then do not, at long last, the countries of black Africa make some demands for reparations on the Arabs, awash in money? Black Africa is poor; it is made poorer still by the cutting off of relations with the most successful foreign aid program, one based on encouraging self-sustaiining agricultural development,that of Israel, which was cut off at Arab insistence after the Six-Day War. It is made poorer still by the rise in oil prices, and made yet even poorer by the havoc played by the Arabs wherever they can -- from Khadafy’s pressure on Chad to the Sudanese government’s massacre of blacks in the Sudan, to the enslavement of black by Arab Muslims in Mali and Mauritania, to the Muslims from outside who are putting steady pressure on the Christians in such formerly secure Christian countries as the Ivory Coast and Togo.
If Black Africa is poor, the Muslim Arabs are fantastically rich. They have done nothing to deserve that wealth; it is merely a question of sitting on top of oil and gas reserves. An accident of geology. The black Africans have for nearly forty years done the diplomatic bidding of the Arabs. What have they gotten for it? A few of the Big Men may have been paid off to become Muslims – one thinks of Idi Amin, turning Muslim and then retiring for life to Saudi Arabia. Similar stories of others who “reverted” for a payoff could be told. But what about the permanent damage done to black Africa by that “dislocation” and that vast slave trade, and the continuing pressure of the Arabs -- which one can see, for example, in the not-so-veiled threats made by Egypt to Ethiopia, a country that has endured intermittent famine, and that wishes, quite naturally, to at long last divert some of the headwaters of the Nile for irrigation projects? But Egyptian officials mutter darkly that this must not be attempted, that the Nile belongs to Egypt alone, and Egypt will deign to “permit” Ethiopia only so much water, only so much prosperity.

Is it beyond the wit of the Infidels in the West, in Europe and America, to back up black Africa as it makes demands for reasonable reparations from the Arabs? The Arab slave trade did so much damage; yet Arabs, unlike Americans and Europeans, have never publicly recognized their own role, much less attempted to offer the kind of grants to Africa that have come from Europe and America. Why should the billionaires of Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E. and Kuwait be allowed to pretend to be members of the “Third World,” as they have ever since Bandung? Why is the farce not exposed, and demands made, and unless those demands are met, the states of black Africa end their imposed role of dutifully echoing whatever those rich Arabs demand of them?

Somewhere, in all of those schemes and pan-African dreams, there must be some black African leaders willing and able to demand that the Arabs make up for their slave trade in black Africa, which began earlier, ended (if it ended at all) later, and was far more extensive, than the European slave trade -- and to do in the only coin that is now recognized – that is, coin.

If Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the U.A.E., were forced to disgorge, as pentitential pence, to black Africa every year, say, $50 billion (for the three of them together, that is only about 2-3 weeks income from oil, it would be at least one way of compensating for the damage inflicted by the Arab slave trade on black Africa. It would also use up some of the money that otherwise, inevitably, goes to fund mosques, madrasas, propaganda, Da’wa, arms acquisition, and other instruments of the Jihad.

Suppose the Arabs refuse to come through with the sums requested. The very act of raising the issue may force them to come through with something. In any case, the truth about Arab supremacism, and the continued Muslim recognition, validation and permanent legitimization of slavery (because of its appearance in the Qur’an and its being practiced by Muhammad), may make it just a bit harder for Da’wa to be conducted quite so successfully as it is now among carefully identified black populations both in Africa, and still more important, within Europe and North America. And that result would be highly desirable. It requires only the truth."

[Posted by Hugh at November 24, 2005]

Ironically, Nur is now remembered for his generous compassion for those in need, a quality necessitated in the Five Pillars of Islam...
.......................

As I recall (ironically) being known for one's "generous compassion" is rather a Christian thing, also.

Vampire Jack wrote:

Joking aside can someone explain the whole he who leaves his religion should die thing - does that mean someone who leaves Christianity to BECOME a Muslim must be killed as they left their religion - or is it the usual whatever suits the Muslims needs rule?
.........................

Jack, of course "apostasy" only refers to those who leave Islam. Anyone who converts to Islam is considered a "revert", that is, someone who "returns to the true religion". Only someone who leaves Islam is subject to being killed.

No other religion mandates that people who leave the faith be killed. Oh, in some cases--such as with the Amish--converts are shunned. In many religions, the convert is no longer considered saved. In many faiths, understandably, former co-religionists hope that the convert will return to their former faith.

But no other religion considers conversion out of faith a death sentence. Only Islam.

Memo to President Bush:

Let's invite several hundred thousand of these muslim rustics to live amongst us in the USA. You know, 'muslim moms & dads' - that kind of dimwittedness.

Oh, yeah, and those Uighars from Guantanamo: let's turn them loose inside the White House fence. They could serve on the security detail (they've already got the weapons training). Plus, they'll just be doing more of that work Americans won't do ...

Sleep tight, Mr. President.

Sleep tight, Mr. President.

Posted by: HotSpur at October 23, 2008 12:38 PM

By the way, didn't you beg for votes on your 'Christian Faith'? Or is your 'Christian Faith' label same 'war president' label .. just for votes?

Hugh wrote -

"Perhaps that lesson can be learned even by some of those raised in the Age of Ignorance, the Western Jajiliya – the Age, that is, before an Awareness and Grasp of Islam, as a Total Belief-System with an amazing hold on the minds of men (but them, most men, everywhere, are primitive.."

I don't know who say that mankind was only two generations removed from savagery (I think it was H.G. Wells) but in Islamic
"paradises", I think the interval of time is considerably shorter.

So what's the difference between a Somali wedding and a Somail funeral?

............please feel free to select a punch line of your own.

JeffS wrote:

Errata sheet: "generous compassion for those in need, a quality necessitated in the Five Pillars of Islam" should read "generous compassion for those Muslims in need, a quality necessitated in the Five Pillars of Islam". Then Mr. Nur's murder wouldn't seem so ironic.
..................................

Jeff, your point is well taken--certainly, most Muslims make a point of limiting the beneficiaries of "Zakat" to fellow members of the Ummah.

But even here, I must take issue--when there is a devestating tsunami in Aceh, or an earthquake in Qom, or massive flooding on the coast of Bangladesh--is it the wealthy Gulf states, is it the rich Emirates that rush to help the victims?

Not as a rule. The ones sending doctors and medical aid, and making food drops, and begging local governments to be allowed to send in search-and-rescue teams--well, mostly that would be the "Filthy Kuffar". Or, as we know it, the West.

"Ironically, Nur is now remembered for his generous compassion for those in need, a quality necessitated in the Five Pillars of Islam..."

Correction: The Five Pillars of Islam are not about universal compassion for those in need. They are about compassion for MUSLIMS in need. Do Muslim charities ever care for or benefit Non-muslims? Very little if at all.

The ones sending doctors and medical aid, and making food drops, and begging local governments to be allowed to send in search-and-rescue teams--well, mostly that would be the "Filthy Kuffar". Or, as we know it, the West.
-gravenimage

We know that a natural disaster of one type or another will affect a Muslim country sometime in the next few years.
What if, just once, the West sat on its hands?
What if we dithered and took our time?
The Muslims seek our destruction anyway, so why shouldn't we let them see what the future holds?

Seems that the "forever hold your peace" line was taken to the extreme.

The difference between a Somali wedding and a funeral = the distance to the graveyard.

One thing that should be remarked on: Somalis who become Christians do not seem to be backwards in coming forward, even at serious risk of their lives.

The same fierceness that makes Somalis so thoroughly obnoxious, dangerous and destructive when they are in thrall to Islam, becomes something else entirely when it is tempered by the wholehearted embrace of Reason (see Ayaan Hirsi Ali) or by passionate devotion to Christ, as in the case of this latest Somali Christian martyr (note that he had obviously grasped one of the central principles of the Christian faith - that worship and ceremonies must be in a language 'understanded of the people' - and lost his life not only for leaving Islam, but for incautiously trying to share with his Muslim relatives/ neighbours his new insight about the dignity of the vernacular).

I recall another story, here at jihadwatch some time ago, about a Somali, converted to Christianity in the UK, who promptly went off to Somalia to work as a schoolteacher (again: he'd obviously absorbed, and taken on board in a big way, the Christian emphasis on literacy and respect for learning) and of course, along the way, to be a living witness to his new faith. He knew the risk, none better. He took it. He got killed.

A Somali liberated from Islam and in love with truth and logic (Ayaan) or with the Biblical God of Love (these two martyrs, and others) is a sight to behold: like watching a carrion crow or a vulture suddenly transformed into the sunward-soaring Eagle of St John the Divine.

Correction - in my posting above my turn of phrase in this line " one of the central principles of the Christian faith - that worship and ceremonies must be in a language 'understanded of the people' was not entirely clear. 'One of the distinctive emphases of Christian practice - that worship and ceremonies must be in a language 'understanded of the people' would have been better.

Lamin Sanneh, a West African who left Islam for Christianity, wrote a book called 'Translating the Message' in which among other things he points to the difference in attitude toward indigenous languages, exhibited by Christians and Muslims.

He approves greatly of the fact that Christians from the West did not denigrate or try to obliterate the local languages, but rather, set to work at once to translate the Christian scriptures into the mother tongues of the people they wished to evangelise, thus (in the process) enabling the preservation of language and lore; and he contrasts this with the disdain exhibited by the Muslims, their exaltation of Arabic as the only 'pure' language.

This Somali Christian would have been killed anyway, for being an apostate from Islam; but it is interesting that the immediate occasion was his having, by asking for a Muslim ceremony to be translated from Arabic into Somali, drawn everyone's attention to a most uncomfortable truth: the Arab chauvinism and supremacism inherent in Islam.