By Abdulkadir M. Wa'ays

On Friday night 14 November 2008, militiamen from the Union of Islamic Courts raided a traditional folklore dancing event on the suburbs of Bal’ad town in the Middle Shabelle region, 30 kilometres north of the capital Mogadishu. They took 32 folklore dancers — 25 women and seven men — into custody. On the next morning the folklore dancers, accused of taking part in an ‘un-Islamic event’, were lashed in public against their will in front of hundreds of spectators.

“I was whipped against my will because I don’t believe in the draconian version of Islam that these self-styled clerics are forcefully imposing on us. My only crime was singing and dancing in a traditional folklore event, a cultural tradition that I inherited from my ancestors,” said one of the flogged women, who spoke to Freemuse on condition of anonymity because of her personal safety.

Such punishments are unpopular among ordinary Somalis who have traditionally practiced a moderate form of Islam. As various groups of Somali Islamists advance on the capital Mogadishu from different directions, after they have taken over almost the southern and central regions of Somalia, they continue to publicly lash or stone people to death for one alleged crime or another in the areas under their control.

Warnings against singing and dancing
All the lashed, including the spectators, have gone underground, and are not willing to speak about this ordeal, as if nothing had happened to them or they had never witnessed it, for fear of their safety.

But Sheikh Abdirahim Isse Adow, the spokesman and the commander of the Islamist group, who led the militiamen that raided the event, told reporters in Mogadishu that “they had warned those arrested and lashed several times against singing and dancing.”

“We warned them many times, but they wouldn't listen. The dancing of men and women together is illegal and totally against Islam. We neither killed them nor injured them, but only whipped them according to the Islamic law,“ Adow argued.

’Every man for himself‘
As an integral and core part of Somalis’ traditional art form and music, still practiced in the rural areas, young nomads get together for nocturnal folklore dancing events with songs sung by young men and women in a bit to interact, flirt, and socialize among themselves. The current modern music of Somalia has been transformed from its traditional folklore dances.

This flogging incident happened on the same day when President Abdullahi Yusuf of Somalia admitted it in a speech to Somali MPs who gathered in the Kenyan capital Nairobi that his government is on the verge of collapse and that Islamist groups now control most of the country.

The Somali Islamists have made significant military gains in recent months, leaving the embattled western-backed transitional federal government only in control of some parts of the capital Mogadishu and Baidoa, where parliament is seated.

Yusuf said that the government only had a presence in the capital Mogadishu and in Baidoa, “and people are being killed there every day. Islamists have taken over everywhere else,” and called for the formation of a new government as soon as possible, warning that it would otherwise be “every man for himself.”

“The Islamists kill women city cleaners, they will not spare legislators,” he said.

Brutal tactics
All the Islamists belonging to radical and moderate groups have employed brutal and the same tactics in enforcing their version of sharia law in the areas under their control. In Kismayo, a radical group, Al-Shabab, stoned to death a 13 years old child for alleged adultery last month, while the socalled ‘moderate group’ now flogged 32 people in Bal’ad.

“They are not different. All Somali Islamists groups view all that relates to music as un-Islamic, and the musicians as representatives of Satan for corrupting the morals of the society,” said a 21-year-old boy in Bal’ad town, who fears to even listen to or watch a film in his bedroom. “Because I am fearful of being whipped to death in public by the Islamic militia of Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed,” he told.

Funded by exiled Somali supporters
Paradoxically, chairman Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and his militiamen have been unleashing brutal crackdown on music, cinemas, and music-related events as part of their unrelenting efforts to silence the music and musicians of Somalia since 2006, yet the Western governments, and the United Nations view him and his militiamen as ‘moderate Islamists.’

On 17 October 2008, Sheikh Abdirahman Janaqow, the deputy chairman of this Islamist group, UIC, which now flogged the folklore dancers in Bal’ad, showed up in a conference held at the university city of Lund, Sweden. The conference was organised by a Lund-based Somali NGO called Somali International Rehabilitation Centre, and the city mayor officially opened it.

After the conference was concluded in Lund, Sheikh Janaqow stayed behind several days in Sweden, and travelled to Stockholm where he attended meetings organised by his huge group of supporters in Sweden.

“You know, the Somali Islamists groups can not financially sustain their military operations in Somalia for a single day without the diaspora dollars,” some Somali immigrants based in Sweden told Freemuse. They did not want to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Paradoxes
A London-based Somali community leader told the British newspaper Telegraph on 8 November 2008, that much of the funding of the Islamists is coming from the Somali diaspora in Britain.

“People are sending money over to back the Shabaab because they want to see the Ethiopians kicked out, even if they don’t have much sympathy with the Islamist agenda,” said Mohamed Abdullahi, director of the UK Somali Community Initiative.

“Our friends, colleagues, and music lovers can not secure a visa for us to perform or attend a music related conferences in Europe, while the supporters of the Islamists in Europe takes only few days to obtain a visa for their leaders,” says a Somali musician in Nairobi who spoke to Freemuse on condition of anonymity.

“What a paradox! The perpetrator gets precedence over the lashed, and indeed receives a warm welcome in Europe. In that case, shall we all join the men holding the whips?” he exclaimed.