Technoccult

I hope that in my writings about Islam I have made it clear that although I’m opposed to Islam (as it is practiced, not necessarily as it was practiced in the past or as some people believe it should be practiced), I’m also opposed to: the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, US violence in Pakistan, and Israel’s aggressive expansion and disproportionately violent responses to Palestinian terrorism. Just to name a few things I am opposed to. I have a suspicion that US intervention in the Middle East and Israel’s mega-expansion efforts are a leading cause of radicalizing Islam in the Middle East and elsewhere. I’m not educated enough in that area to draw a conclusion yet, but this article supports my suspicion:

Events have taken a different course in Nigeria, where the Islamists came to power locally. After the end of military rule in 1999, 12 of Nigeria’s 36 states chose to adopt Sharia. Radical clerics arrived from the Middle East to spread their draconian interpretation of Islam. Religious militias such as the Hisbah of Kano state patrolled the streets, attacking those who shirked prayers, disobeyed religious dress codes or drank alcohol. Several women accused of adultery were sentenced to death by stoning. In 2002 The Weekly Standard decried “the Talibanization of West Africa” and worried that Nigeria, a “giant of sub-Saharan Africa,” could become “a haven for Islamism, linked to foreign extremists.”

But when The New York Times sent a reporter to Kano state in late 2007, she found an entirely different picture from the one that had been fretted over by State Department policy analysts. “The Islamic revolution that seemed so destined to transform northern Nigeria in recent years appears to have come and gone,” the reporter, Lydia Polgreen, concluded. The Hisbah had become “little more than glorified crossing guards” and were “largely confined to their barracks and assigned anodyne tasks like directing traffic and helping fans to their seats at soccer games.” The widely publicized sentences of mutilation and stoning rarely came to pass (although floggings were common). Other news reports have confirmed this basic picture.

Residents hadn’t become less religious; mosques still overflowed with the devout during prayer time, and virtually all Muslim women went veiled. But the government had helped push Sharia in a tamer direction by outlawing religious militias; the regular police had no interest in enforcing the law’s strictest tenets. In addition, over time some of the loudest proponents of Sharia had been exposed as hypocrites. Some were under investigation for embezzling millions.

Full Story: Newsweek