Hiiraan Online

by Hassan Zaylai
Wedesday, July 08, 2009

This time, let us send any more tries at forming a government for Somalia in exile to the ash heaps of history. Let there be no more steady streams of unsavory characters, some of them outright criminals, to some hotels in outside Somalia to represent falsely the country which they destroyed. 

No more parachuting on Mogadishu, from without Somalia, former shoe shiners, butchers, Madrasa teachers, Halwa sellers, and impenitent clan-warlord thugs as political leaders who could govern!

And so, a new era of diehard, all Wadad power of the most extreme kind begins. Within days after they firmly take power, Mogadishu will become the most void of social crimes in all Africa, if not the world. On this, I agree with Charles Onyango-Obbo: /op2/2009/july/al_shabaab_puts_mogadishu_s_rapists_and_robbers_on_notice.aspx

What pickpocket, rapist or murderer? Add to that list: no more expired food or medicine sold to the public! Yet another one to the list: drowning pirates, as punishment (Al-Shabab style) for the crime, in the very sea in which they pirate! Or else, who will risk certain floggings, amputations, beheading or drowning? 

People in Mogadishu will, for the first time in a longtime, feel an eerie and forgotten silence from uncontrolled gunfire. From involuntary hibernation, they will spill into the streets in peace and catch some deserved, long overdue sunlight and wind against their skins. At evenings, they will linger out and about away from their wrecked-by-war homes.

Who would want to rush back into dens of nightmares; the places where their mothers, fathers, sons or daughters caught artillery shrapnel or bullets to their deaths?

As people feel secure, they will do the business of debris removal from homes, front-and-backyards and sidewalks.

For the overwhelming majority of Mogadishu residents, as elsewhere, it would be no concern of theirs who and with what law rules over them. So long as they feel secure and safe, why would they bother? People will go about their daily lives! A welcome and much appreciated change, no doubt, from daily hell of 18 years. 

Having secured peace and the public praise for it, the Islamists have to govern the country with more than firm policing or punishment rituals.

Will their agenda confine itself to “Somalia for Somalis?” Will they see their foreign Jihadist friends to ports, thank them and bid them good-bye? What will they do?

A word of advice to would-be Islamist rulers in Somalia: Whatever you do, do not turn the country into a training ground for terrorists. Be Somalis, for once, who would conform to tradition of never being a carry-water or weight mules for someone else. What business of yours to fight the world for Osama?

You must declare publicly and plainly a peaceful coexistence intent with Somali neighbors. Stop giving them nightmares about “holy wars” with the neighbors.

Ethiopia and Kenya have both much to answer for their historical occupation of Somali lands. However, in the long run, the best way Somalia could help subjected Somalis in these countries is for Somalia to be strong again. Be smart! Do not give our enemies, at our weakest hour, the excuse to further damage and see to it the Somali state never reconstitutes.     

Rebuilding Somali lives and livelihood in Somalia, which will be a long and daunting task by itself, should leave no room or time for anything else. Be an instrument to bring the shattered Somali family together; be healers of your people!

There will be borders to secure; sovereignty to reclaim; a national police and army to rebuild from scratch. In other words, the State of Somalia, with all involved domestically and internationally, must stand up from self-inflicted madness of 18 years. Call, I say to you Islamists, Somalia’s best and brightest from Diasporas. Install them on key positions, each to his or her ability.

If you heed my advice above, the rest of the world will most likely leave you alone. No threat to the world begets no negative response from the world.

Still, you will have to answer for what you brought anew, of a particular Islam, to your people! Eventually, you will be accountable to the people on the most important issue in their lives: Their Islamic faith. What have imported to the Somalis?

If you think you just discovered for Somalis the correct Islam, for which you have been killing and dying for in imposing it by force on Somalis, you are delusional!

Somalis have been Muslims for ages. No verse in the Qur’an or a saying by the prophet (SAW) has been a mystery to or obscured from successive Somali Ulemas of more than thousand years. What is this nonsense you teaching Islam afresh to Somalis about?

No one single argument you put forth in support of your claims, like assigning shirk (apostasy) to what you mischaracterize as Somali grave-worshipping, which compels you to desecrate graves, can pass the scrutiny of Somali, traditional Ulemas.

On Imam Shafi’ or any one of the other 3 Imams of Islamic jurisprudence works, your claims—Point by point—will suffer irreversible defeats.

Hell will freeze over before Somalis convert in a whole-sell to the refuted and discredited ideology of Muhammad Ibn Abdul-Wahab, a minor figure in Islam!

Somalis’ standing with God is at issue—nothing less. Not a clan, country, peace, progress or the whole world, you name it, is as important as one’s position with God on the Day of Judgment.

You Wahabbis upend our Somali, true Islamic traditions. Therefore, you put us all on the road to hell. Peace in Somalia now by amputations, beheadings or stoning to death is not worth a nanosecond in God’s hell later. That is if we Somalis, for the peace and order you bring, allow you to infect us with your false doctrines. It will not happen!

With no longer a con-job of a government for Somalis to divide and disunite over, Somalis will come together. They will join and link, like a chain, from the deepest south, central, east, north to west of all Somalia. They will sweep you extremists like a fire on a dry forest. Wait for it, for it will come to reclaim God’s true religion from your lie.

I must say I am thankful to the Islamists for introducing to Somalia politics and war of conviction. 18 years, the Somalis—however hard they tried—could not untangle clan politics and its wars. The Islamists’ discipline and incorruptibility, on faith however wrong, had now set the par high for Somalis. These Islamists neither rob nor molest anyone under their control. On the contrary, they would punish for such acts severely! This is why they have been successful.

Clan militias cloaked as government forces—what government?—cannot withstand the fury of the Islamists. How could they? They have no motivation to stand their grounds. Hence, they run within 5 minutes in battle with “soldiers of god.” Notice the lowercase with their deity, for their god is not the true God (SWT). But, all that matters for them Islamists is they think they are the true believers! All the same, belief is their source of strength and inspiration.   

Unwittingly, however, their examples are the lessons for other Somalis on correct, religious and national grounds to bring them militants down eventually and set Somalia on proper course. It is a lesson about Somalis, of different clans and regions, uniting on ideas or beliefs. That is powerful, thanks to Al-Shabab!   

For if you Islamists found an awesome conviction in deceit masqueraded as truth, the real truth must find a way to show itself in the rest of Somalis to challenge you. This has to be!

You have not cornered the market on conviction, although at the moment you seem the only visible group with it. If Somalis will not come for you, for your reckoning, then their Islamic tradition of centuries would have been for naught. Then that would prove you as the bearers of genuine Islam to Somalis, and for the first time. I don’t think so!

Kill and die for Islam, other Somalis have that in them too in abundance—except for aggression and global upheavals, as the case with you fanatics! 

Come for you, they will; and on that day, all the angels of God (SWT) and the spirits of Somali dead saints, whose graves you defiled, should sing the praises of Allah. I promise you, the day will come when you, Bid’a heroes, will find yourselves at the receiving end of unmerciful, and sanctioned-by-God, valid Jihad against you. This will be done by Somalis for Somali faith and tradition preservation—not for Washington or any one else.

On that day, I hope you so brave now will not run or shave your beards and deny you were card-carrying members of Al-Shabab or Hizbul Islam.  Bad boys, bad boys, what you gonna do when they come for ya, as the song goes!

After your absolute defeat, for no less will suffice, Somalis will proceed forming, within Somalia, a lasting government. Ould-Abdalla need not apply for that job that day. No one single foreigner should attend then on that hour with Somali affairs!

May Allah bless and help the Somali people.