The New York Times reports:
DAKAR, Senegal — Radical Islamists who control northern Mali extended their campaign of enforcing harsh Shariah law on Monday, amputating the hands and feet of four young men they accused of robbery in the main square at Gao, a principal town in the region.
“We cut their right hand and their left foot, in the city of Gao, at the Place de l’Indépendance,” Aliou Mahamar Touré, a professed Islamic commissioner with Mujao, an offshoot of Al Qaeda that controls Gao, said in a telephone interview. “We cut all that today. It is not us who ordered this. It is God.”
…In Gao, the real jihadists took their four young victims to the town center at midday Monday, according to a municipal counselor who saw the amputations, Abderahmane Oumarou Maïga. They tied them to pillars, “feet at the top, heads at the bottom,” Mr. Maïga said, “solidly attached.”
For “each one, they cut off their hand and foot,” said Mr. Maïga, using what he called “giant scissors,” which had been specially fabricated, under duress, by a local blacksmith. “It was under threats that they did their dirty work,” Mr. Maïga said.
Revolting.
What an endless game of insanity. I heard a report that this “offending” film was made/liked/ supported by the Florida preacher who burned the Koran. If true, people will denounce the preacher for stirring the flames. Of course this is nonsense. The preacher should have the right to freedom of speech and expression regardless of the threats made against him/the troops/the U.S., anybody.
What we have done is capitulate, giving the high ground to the shouters, who then dictate to us what is permissible, what is tolerable to be said. Thus, they say if you make a film that disturbs us, we will kill you, so don’t do it. They are using threats of intimidation and blackmail to stop and limit opposition. It’s like capitulating to another mafia.
The even larger problem is that our squad of religious delusionals attempts to placate their squad of religious delusionals, with each squad attempting to delineate what is acceptable when talking about the other fellows’ delusional gods. This kind of numb-nuttiness will continue until we, sometime in the future, perhaps, mercifully, begin to come to terms with our own origins and our own inability to simply accept reality, even if it is a hard reality to accept. (And it is, I don’t really like it anymore than anybody else does).