All aspects of the beautiful life created by Allah meant to nourish and nurture all living things have been turned into catastrophic phenomena by a group of presumptuous and lame-brained men who possess insufficient, unpersuasive, or substandard principles and judgments. The exceptional, authentic, and original religion of Islam has been deliberately infused with irrational and innovative practices and beliefs that are tantamount to hypocrisy. In the absence of law and order, those who depend on these types of avaricious misfits preaching hatred and distorted ideologies, become victims of misrule or turn sadistic and vainglorious in the long run.
The torchbearers of these seeds of doom may be identified by how they behave towards their subjects for they portray the tendency to kill, maim, or dislocate every living thing and rape innocent unarmed women and girls. They continue to annihilate innumerable innocent mothers so as to inherit and indoctrinate their children and bring them into their fold. The same children will be transformed into armies of irritated and unforgiving suicide bombers, mine-layers, assassins, gunners, and poorly-trained riflemen who kill by impulse at any given time leaving death and destruction in their wake. To these children and their psychotic leaders, everyone else except them, is branded kaffir (disbeliever).
Superficial religious misinterpretations spearheaded by shallow-minded religious fanatics in regions like Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan have been the cause of incivility and intolerance leading to unprecedented internal strife, terrorism, and piracy. The aftermath of these religious squabbles open numerous doors for mass exodus of refugees, proliferation of weapons and arms smuggling, impoverishment, water shortages, sewage breakdown, prostitution, disease, cross-border raids, armed banditry, poaching, desertization due to environmental degradation, internally displaced persons (IDPs), homelessness, brain-drain, infrastructural decay, economic stagnation, and statelessness.
Somalia remained a stable governable state from the time it attained independence in 1960 until the collapse of the central government in 1991 when all of a sudden it transformed into a ludicrously unsteady, ungovernable, and ultimately a failed state altogether. The nation’s insalubrious political arena catapulted to greater heights immediately after the military junta fell apart. The rise of tribal hegemony and the craving for territorial expansion led to the escalation of irredentist mentality. Entire communities were forcefully disbanded from their original locations and made to live in squalid conditions while new arrivals rejoiced at the newly-grabbed lands and homes.
The rise of cold-blooded, desultory, ignominious, and gluttonous warlords who emerged after the demise of General Aidid brought about an era of prolonged national self-destruction. The defeat of the warlords in 2006 by the Union of Islamic Courts (ICU), the coronation of Abdullahi Yusuf as president of the Somali transitional federal government and the subsequent defeat of the ICU by Ethiopia’s occupation forces laid ground for the explosion of religious extremism and malevolent ideological fragmentation along clan lines.
Above all, Al-Ittihad Al-Islam, a religious group that has thus far ceased to exist after being routed by Ethiopia’s mechanized army, was the precursor of all religious fomentation in the early part of the 90s. Remnants of Al-Ittihad leaders conscientiously and clandestinely pilfered into various religious assemblages with the crucial aim of carrying out onslaughts against the formation of every conceivable and internationally recognized legitimate Somali transitional government with ideological and political leanings toward Ethiopia, Kenya, and the West.
Referred to as jihadists in contemporary global politics, Somalia’s religious movements have become internationalized, institutionalized, and politicized as they have made great strides in subscribing to the global jihadist consortium waging wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and other hotspots interconnected by globalization and cyberspace communication. The rise of Hizb-Islam, Al-shabab, and Ahlu-Sunna Waljama’a (ASWJ) all developed after the collapse of the ICU and for the most part after the departure of Ethiopian occupation army from Somali soil. With the exception of ASWJ, the former two embody strict religious traditions never before experienced by the people of Somalia.
The presence of African Union peacekeeping troops (AMISOM) from Burundi and Uganda has further aggravated the security situation in the country. Al-shabab and Hizb-Islam’s daily altercations with AMISOM troops make life unbearable for the few remaining residents of Mogadishu. Heavy shelling by AMISOM troops stationed in the presidential palace, Mogadishu harbor, and the international airport has resulted in uncountable civilian deaths and casualties. The stable autonomous province of Puntland and the unrecognized breakaway region of Somaliland have not been immune from extremist attacks either. The death toll from suicide bombings and assassination of political and religious figures continue to grow exponentially. Unless Somalis unite on a dynamic common political ground and rally behind an acceptable religious path, the current horrendous state of affairs resembling vestiges of Calvinism will prevail. Allah forbid.
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