The price of “law and order” under sharia: No freedom of expression, and no fun. And a joyless, uncreative society is one that largely destroys the incentive to inquire, innovate, and improve one’s lot in life.
“Islamist rebels whip 32 dancers in Somalia,” by Abdi Sheikh for Reuters, November 15:
MOGADISHU (Reuters) – Islamist insurgents whipped 32 people in Somalia on Saturday after arresting them for taking part in a traditional dance in rebel-held territory south of the capital Mogadishu.
Fighters enforcing a strict form of sharia law have been slowly advancing on the city, raising the stakes in their two-year rebellion and undermining fragile U.N.-brokered peace talks to end 17 years of chaos in the Horn of Africa nation.
Last month, they stoned to death a young woman accused of adultery in the rebel-controlled southern port of Kismayu.
Islamist spokesman Sheikh Abdirahim Isse Adow said those arrested had been warned several times against dancing.
“We arrested 25 women and seven men who were dancing near Balad (town). We released them after whipping them. We warned them many times, but they wouldn’t listen,” he told Reuters.
“The dancing of men and women together is illegal and totally against Islam. We neither killed them nor injured them, but only whipped them according to the Islamic law,” Adow said.
How magnanimous.