From an interview with Saudi cleric Nasser bin Sliman Al-Omar:
Nasser bin Sliman Al-Omar: With regard to the World Cup… Let me ask you, brother Muhammad… May Allah protect your daughter and sons, but imagine that you are about to undergo a surgical operation, and they tell you the doctor is late because he is watching the game. How would you feel?
Interviewer: Undoubtedly, very bad.
Nasser bin Sliman Al-Omar: OK, imagine that while paying a condolence call, one of the people gets up and turns on the TV to watch the game, and he begins to clap his hands?
Interviewer: No doubt, this is bad.
Interviewer: Our brothers are being killed in all corners of the world, yet we sit down to watch the World Cup?
[...]
I am saying to the fathers, to the mothers, and to the people who watch these games: On Judgment Day, a page in the book will be opened for you, and it will say that you sat and watched the games. Will this make you happy or miserable? Will this make you happy on Judgment Day, when you face Allah, or will you wish you had never watched these games?
Really, Abdul, all this sitting around watching sports on TV you’ve been doing lately is making me question your committment advancing my political agenda by risking your life slaughtering innocents, while I’m safely in hiding. Did you go to all that trouble to kill that ankle-showing slut sister of yours just to bring your own shame on the family?
Only few years back we all heard about the problems posed by the subsitution of Saudi-funded Madrassas for actual education in Africa, but silence on the subject has been deafening lately. I, only semi-jokingly, propose the creation of US Special Forces, Audit Divsion, dedicated to the eradication of these hate-factories posing as religious schools.
Anyway, following up on the soccer pronouncement, a response:
Residents say Islamist militiamen have shot in the air to disperse hundreds of Somalis protesting against moves by sharia courts to stop them watching the soccer World Cup in the capital, Mogadishu.
The soccer tournament had drawn huge crowds to TV screens set up under trees and iron-sheeted shacks.
It provided some escape from the tension that has gripped Mogadishu since Islamists seized control from an alliance of warlords on Monday (local time).
Witnesses say scores of young men set fire to tyres late last night in protests that carried on into the early hours of today, after Islamist gunmen pulled the plug on makeshift cinemas airing the World Cup.
Residents say two people were wounded when militia tried to break up the demonstrations.
The militia have also ordered a ban on films.
Except, presumably, the snuff films Islamofascists are so fond of producing, broadcasting and watching.
Similar moves by Islamist militia to close cinemas and video stores in Mogadishu last November triggered heavy fighting that killed at least 12 people and wounded more than 20.
Leaders of the capital’s influential Islamic courts oppose western and Indian films, which they say promote immorality in the mainly Muslim nation of 10 million people.
Ah - so it’s not films in general, it’s just any film that doesn’t feature a cowardly psychopath using a rusty knife to saw off the head of a jew or a zionist stooge. Those sorts of films do so much more to promote virtue than some Bollywood song and dance number.
Some residents fear the latest move to outlaw foreign entertainment is proof the Islamists want to create a Muslim state, following their victory against a self-styled anti-terrorism coalition of secular warlords, believed to be backed by the US.
Isn’t their actual statements to that effect proof? Though if ABC news in Australia shares any characteristics with our own MSM, they may have a reason to create doubt where there is none.
I will note that I read that the ICU was founded in opposition to UN efforts to inflict a western-style state kleptocracy on Somalia, which by itself is fine with me, but the substitution of a Sharia-state sounds a little like amputating your arm to spare yourself the pain of a papercut.