SOMALIA: DESPERATE PLIGHT OF CHRISTIANS

Over the past two years the gunmen who enforced rulings from Mogadishu's various clan-based Islamic courts joined forces and formed Somalia's strongest militia: the Islamic Courts Union (ICU).

In February 2006 warlords controlling Mogadishu, Somalia's capital, joined forces and formed the 'Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Anti-Terrorism' to tackle the ICU whom they accused of sheltering foreign al-Qaeda militants.

In early June Mogadishu fell to the Islamists after four months of fighting. Some Somalis (and Western journalists) expressed relief that the reign of the warlords had ended, that the fighting was over and the ICU was bringing peace and security to Mogadishu. However, the rise of the ICU is very bad news for Somalia's small Christian remnant.

The situation has gone from dangerous and horrific to totally desperate. Somali Christians, both inside Somalia and those living as refugees in neighbouring states, need our prayers – urgently.

Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys (61) has been appointed head of the ICU's 90-member Shura Council which will now serve as a 'parliament' in all areas the ICU controls. Aweys, who has been designated a terrorist by the US and the UN, formerly headed al-Itihaad al- Islamiya, an Islamist militant group accused of having links to al- Qaeda in the 1990s and of involvement in the 1998 US Embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya.

Stratfor Intelligence says the ICU is not a coherent group in terms of ideology or structure and is playing the Islamist card to consolidate its hold on power.

Associated Press has obtained a one-hour video made by the ICU for fund-raising and recruitment which shows Somalis training and fighting alongside Arab militants. The audio contains Arabic anthems and poetry urging Muslims to join the global holy war to advance Islam and defeat its enemies. .

The ICU has vowed to enact Sharia Law throughout the country. Aweys says Sharia Law is the solution to all Somalia's problems and has vowed, 'He who does not perform prayer will be considered as infidel and our Sharia Law orders that person to be killed.

The Sharia Law orders the killing of any Muslim person when he fails to perform prayer.' He added that implementing Islamic Sharia Law in Somalia is obligatory on every citizen. (Shabelle Media Network, Mogadishu, 5 July). Sources report that three Christian men were killed in Mogadishu recently by automatic gunfire as they returned home from a prayer meeting.

Recently some children of Somali Christian refugees in Kenya have been kidnapped by Muslim relatives and taken to Islamic institutions in Somalia for 'rehabilitation'. Kenyan police and the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) are working to address the issue. It's hard to imagine how the situation could improve in Somalia, wracked with violence and crippled by it. The only place to go is to the living God who in the beginning, by his word alone, made beauty and order from darkness and chaos.

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