Not long after the fall of Phnom Penh in 1975 I remember hearing accounts of how the victorious Khmer Rouge was smashing up radios, gramophones, televisions and other consumer goods. It was at that moment I felt certain that Cambodia would turn out to be one of the worst of the Communist tyrannies. On taking a city, most successful armies (even the most well-behaved) indulge in at least a little looting, but the young (sometimes very young) Khmer Rouges for the most part did not. They were something else together, so indoctrinated, so disciplined, that they\u00a0were prepared to wage\u00a0war not only against technological progress (thus the later move to the countryside) but, more sinisterly still, against some of the simplest of human pleasures.<\/p>\n
Seen in that context, this <\/a>news from Somalia (to be sure, foreshadowed elsewhere by, say, the rule of the Taliban) makes ominous reading:<\/p>\n MOGADISHU \u2014 A hardline Somali Islamist group issued a 10-day ultimatum Saturday to Mogadishu-based radio stations to stop playing all kinds of music or face unspecified penalties, an Islamist leader said. The Hezb al-Islam group, which controls patches of the war-riven Somali capital, said playing music on radio stations was evil.<\/p>\n “We call on the local radio stations to stop broadcasting the songs and all music as well. We give them a 10-day deadline and any radio station found not complying with the orders… will face sharia action,” said Moalim Hashi Mohamed Farah, a senior Hezb al-Islam official, referring to Islamic law.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n In the same report, we see another characteristic of much of today\u2019s Islamic wave, its rejection of nation and nationality in favor of a universalism that trumps all and bodes ill:<\/p>\n “We also issue orders banning the local media from using the word ‘foreigners’ to refer to our Muslim brothers coming from outside the country to help us fight against the enemy of Allah,” he [Farah] told reporters.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Not long after the fall of Phnom Penh in 1975 I remember hearing accounts of how the victorious Khmer Rouge was smashing up radios, gramophones, televisions and other consumer goods. It was at that moment I felt certain that Cambodia … Continue reading