A confession of sorts (and far more than I need to reveal) - occasionally I will mention the following to a class (which is why it is not secret and not a huge deal for me to reveal), depending on the subject. 1996 - Flight 800 blew up and crashed after take-off in New York. I was very young and very disturbed by those events - the plane crash and loss of so many lives - I went on an alt site (no idea if alt exists any more) - and posted to 2-3 different sites - assuming it was a terrorist attack.
I received a reply.
That reply was followed by more than five years worth of emails to a person I thought quite highly of. This person knew a considerable deal about life in Pakistan and Afghanistan. They had spent time there in the 80s doing work. I met the person and the family - spent time with them one summer at their home. Both of the members of the family were employed by the same source - although they did different work.
This person introduced me (via print media) to bin Laden in 1996. I read everything I was given and within a year or two, knew the guy pretty well - and liked the fact he was standing up to globalization, intolerance, and the dehumanizing of man. I do not like the left for it imprisons the mind, even while radical Islam imprisons the body, the left imprisons the mind and it was difficult dealing with the rise of power in the West and what I regarded as a threat to man - the globalization of everything. I like small, I like tribal and bin laden was for me, all that - he opposed the big, and was if nothing else tribal. He also didn't hurt the little people - soldiers and buildings were acceptable to me then, and I appreciated that sense of decency. I was also told how Shura or Sharia courts worked - this person explained in a very personal example. I found them to be very reasonable and more humane than the Court system we promote in the West.
All that changed in 2001. My intimate knowledge of this person, their connections to foreign places and foreign people - went away for some time. I went to visit them in 2002, and spoke of those events very vaguely. My host had not changed their mind, but I certainly had. Cold blooded killers. I could not understand how my host could not see that, why they would not see what stared at them. By 2003, my communications ceased and remained so for about a year and they popped up again. It lasted for six months until I basically told the person to drop dead.
University had changed me and this person stepped in at that moment to take advantage of a foolish child - and I believed the person. 2001 changed it, watching the gruesome beheadings from Iraq and Afghanistan over the last 5-7 years, and watching them because it forces me to confront several issues. Those barbarian beasts do not cut off the head of anyone until they go through a process. Shura almost always has occurred. Some qazi or sheikh has discussed it and a council decided beheading was appropriate. For those beasts, it does not happen randomly - they may capture an American, but the individuals who capture him must go to a local qazi/qadi or the equivalent and explain what they have done, listen to their options, and if the plan is to 'execute' the person, they need the official sanction from the religious. A council must meet and decide.
So assume - take an example I know of: several youths burned an embassy or consular office in Afghanistan. The building belonged to Iran. The youths were captured and tried. Their sentence: a fine of (I am making this amount up) $1000 and death, to be carried out as soon as the fine was paid - period, end of case. No time limit was set on payment. The court did justice - death for the property destruction, but the humanity part - pay as you will. $1 a year or whatever amount. Justice.
Now assume the person is charged with aiding the enemy of Allah. Very serious charge. Allah is at the top of the list of beings not to offend in Islam. It is a VERY serious crime. Aiding and abetting apostates, aiding the enemy of Allah, conducting mischief, causing harm to the people of X ... the sentence has already been decided. You can't escape the apostate and enemy of God clause - no walking away from this one, and no Islamic court will find any choice but death given the claims.
So why the pretense? Exactly. Pretense. They pretend.
Unlike Obama who seems to be operating under the delusion that reason is part of the everyday process for Islamic fascists, I actually learned something in 2001.
Given the above ...
French agents face sharia trial in Somalia
by Mustafa Haji Abdinur
Sat Jul 18, 11:14 am ET
MOGADISHU (AFP) – Two French agents kidnapped in Somalia will be tried soon under Islamic Sharia law for aiding "the enemy of Allah," an official of the hardline Shebab rebel group holding them said Saturday.
A Somali minister said the pair had been taken out of the capital and there was concern for their safety.
Separately, three foreign aid workers were also reported kidnapped overnight in a Kenyan town close to the Somali border.
The French agents "were caught assisting the apostate government and their spies," a senior Shebab officer told AFP on condition of anonymity.
He said they will "soon be tried and punished under the Sharia law, they will face the justice court for spying and entering Somalia to assist the enemy of Allah.
"The decision about their fate will depend on the outcome of the Islamic court that will hear the charges against them," he added.
The two agents, in Somalia to train government forces, were snatched at gunpoint from their hotel in central Mogadishu early Tuesday.
Shebab is one of two allied Islamic insurgent groups battling to overthrow the transitional government which is supported by the international community.
Somalia's Social Affairs Minister Mohammed Ali Ibrahim told French news channel France 24 Saturday from Mogadishu that the two men had been taken out of the capital.
"As long as they were here, there were contacts," he said. "Intermediaries were in contact with Shebab and we knew they were in good health, but since this morning they have been taken away."
"We must be concerned about them and take strong action", he added.
He said France was putting pressure on Eritrea, which allegedly arms Shebab and other extremists in Somalia -- something Asmara denies -- and the Somali government was also sending envoys to Shebab.
"They trade in human beings," Ibrahim said. "Either they kill them or they demand an enormous ransom."
On Friday, Ibrahim said the "main reason for the kidnapping is that certain Shebab have associates imprisoned in France, pirates."
French President Nicholas Sarkozy's chief of staff Claude Gueant said Friday that Paris did not believe the men were in imminent danger, but "tortuous bargaining... could take a while."
Fifteen Somali pirates are being held in France after being captured by the French navy in the Gulf of Aden. They are accused of taking part in the hijacking of two French yachts.
Earlier Saturday, a Somali government official said three foreign aid workers were kidnapped overnight in Mandera, a Kenyan town close to the Somali border.
"We are investigating the incident by tracing the kidnappers," Sheikh Adan Mohamed, a senior official in the neighbouring Somali town of Bulohawo, told AFP by telephone.
The nationalities of the three and the organisation for which they worked were not immediately known.
"There was a shootout at their office which was raided by gunmen and they shot a night guard in the head," a Kenyan security official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Foreigners are regularly kidnapped in Somalia, which has been mired in civil war since 1991, and usually freed in return for a ransom. Journalists and aid workers are particularly targeted.
Canadian journalist Amanda Lindhout and Australian photographer Nigel Geoffrey Brennan, snatched in Augustlast year, are still being held, as are four European employees of French aid organisation Action Against Hunger and their two Kenyan pilots, kidnapped in November.
Meanwhile Somali pirates on Saturday said they had released a German ship and its crew after being paid a ransom of 1.8 million dollars (1.3 million euros).
In Berlin the German foreign ministry identified the ship as the MV Victoria, flying the Antigua and Barbuda flag, which was captured on May 5 with 11 men on board.
A foreign ministry spokesman in Bucharest told the Newsim agency that all the men were Romanian and were in good health.
Pirates attacked more than 130 merchant ships off Somalia last year, a rise of more than 200 percent on 2007, according to the Kuala Lumpur-based International Maritime Bureau's Piracy Reporting Centre.
Naval powers have deployed dozens of warships to lawless waters off Somalia over the past year in a bid to curb attacks on one of the world's busiest maritime trade routes.
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