FOX NEWS: BAMAKO, Mali – In one town in northern Mali a man has been whipped for drinking alcohol. In another, pictures of unveiled women have been torn down. In a third, traditional music is no longer heard in the streets.
While government soldiers were fighting each other this week for control of the capital in Mali's southwest corner, Islamist fighters were asserting control over the Texas-sized northern half of the country. The Islamists, some of whom are foreigners, are imposing strict religious law, setting up a possible showdown with Tuareg nationalist rebels who say they want a secular state and who seized northern Mali in March alongside the Islamists.
In the fabled city of Timbuktu, whose winding alleyways lined with mud homes fill with sand blown in from the Sahara, pictures of unveiled women have either been torn down or covered over with black paint, according to El Hadj Baba Haidara, a member of the Malian parliament for the city. The Islamists have also cut the signal for national TV broadcasts to the city because they consider the women not properly covered and don't approve of the music the station plays, Haidara said.
"No one came come here and tell us how to practice Islam," Haidara said. "Timbuktu has been Islamic since the 12th century and we have our own way of doing things."
Down the road from one of Timbuktu's mosques, whose wooden doors are decorated with metal crescents and stars, Islamists have made their base at a bank. A sign at the entrance says "Islamic Police" in Arabic and French. Residents have been given a phone number to report serious crimes and other emergencies, but widescale patrols haven't been deployed to enforce Shariah, at least not yet. But punishments are being meted out.
On Monday in Gao, one of the three biggest cities in north Mali, two men caught smoking hashish were given 30 lashes in front of the police station, according to Hama Dada Toure, a teacher in Gao. One man who had allegedly beaten his pregnant wife was given 10 lashes and ordered to pay her.
Toure said a flexible tree branch is used in the whippings, the blows delivered with less than full force. The Islamists make the person being punished say "Allahu Akbar. La illah illa-Allah" — meaning "God is great. There is no God but God" — each time the branch strikes them. » | Associated Press | Wednesday, May 02, 2012
Another sharia story »
