News Analysis: Islamic Sharia law, panacea for Somalia's woes?

by Abdurrahman Warsameh

MOGADISHU, March 3 (Chinese media) -- The Somali government, led by the moderate

Islamist President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, has announced this week it would

implement the Islamic Sharia law in the country after influential clerics and

two major insurgent groups demanded it, but analysts said this may not be enough

to appease the opposition Islamist groups bent on unseating the government.

Early in February, a group of prominent clerics met in the capital

Mogadishu and issued several recommendations for the government including, among

other things, the imposition of the Islamic Sharia law in Somalia and the

withdrawal of African Union peacekeepers from the Horn of Africa country torn

apart by nearly two decades of civil strife.

"We have not only issued these recommendations for the government but also

met the President and asked him to implement Allah's Laws in the country which

he accepted," Sheikh Ahmed Abdi Disow, deputy chairman of Somalia's Union of

Islamic Scholars, told Chinese media.

The implementation of the Islamic Sharia law is one of the core demands of

the armed Islamist groups in Somalia including even the current President's

Islamic Courts Union which briefly ruled much of southern and central Somalia in

the latter half of 2006 before the movement was driven by allied Ethiopian

troops and former Somali government led by Abdulahi Yusuf Ahmed.

"Sharia is not new to the Somali government as it is recognized as the

bases for all legislation by the current transitional national charter and the

president is only articulating that law when he said that the Sharia law will be

implemented in Somalia," presidential spokesman Abdullahi Qadar told Chinese media.

Opposition insurgent groups said the current Somali government is no

different from the previous government and does not implement Sharia law in the

country.

Muqtar Hersi, an independent Islamic scholar in Mogadishu, said different

groups in Somalia advocate different version of the Islamic law: moderate or

strict and it seems that the issue of Sharia is far from being resolved.

"With the current Somali government led by the moderate Islamists and the

influential Islamic scholars being mainly moderates, it looks the kind of Sharia

advanced by the government and the scholars is quite different from that of the

armed groups," Hirsi told Chinese media.

Hersi said the recent announcement by the Somali government that it was

willing to implement Sharia in the country is far from appeasing the radical

groups who demand their version of strict Islamic law be imposed in Somalia, a

country of mainly moderate Sunni Muslims.

The opposition groups, such as the hard-line Al-Shabaab movement which

already imposes its version of strict Islamic law in the vast areas of south

Somalia and the newly formed coalition of insurgent groups known as Hezbul Islam

(Islamic Party), maintain that since the current government law is based on the

secular charter and includes members of the previous government, it is not the

right institution to implement Sharia.

"I do not understand that why we flighted the previous government when we

say this one implements Sharia and the other one did not? Both are the same with

only a change at the top," Sheikh Muse Arale, spokesman for Hezbul Islam told

Chinese media. "The fight will continue as long as true Islamic State is not

established in Somalia."