Posts Tagged ‘amputations’
Islamic court in Nigeria bans Twitter/Facebook discussion
An Islamic court in Nigeria has banned a rights group from hosting debates on the Twitter and Facebook websites on the use of amputations as a punishment.
The court, in the northern city of Kaduna, backed a case brought by a pro-Sharia group arguing that the forums would mock the Sharia system. The rights group, the Civil Rights Congress of Nigeria, said it would appeal against the ruling.
Sharia judges can order amputations of limbs for petty crimes in some states…
The newspaper ThisDay quoted the judge’s ruling as saying:”An order is hereby given restraining the respondents either by themselves or their agents from opening a chat forum on Facebook, Twitter, or any blog for the purpose of the debate on the amputation of Malam Buba Bello Jangebe.”
In 2000, Jangebe made history as the first person in Nigeria to have an amputation carried out under Islamic law after being found guilty of stealing a cow.
The Civil Rights Congress said it had started a Twitter feed, blog and Facebook debate on Jangebe so “Nigerians could air their opinions on Sharia law as a whole”…
The Sharia code runs alongside the secular state system in 12 of Nigeria’s 36 states, and citizens can choose which system they deal with.
You might think I’d tire of outrage after a half-century of political activism. Between the jingoism, deceit and corruption of the land I live in – and the hypocrisy and greed parceled among political flunkies in the rest of the world, I’ve had enough to be concerned with.
Battles for civil rights and civil liberties in the United States, battles for national liberation, freedom from corporate imperialism sucking out every cubic meter of raw materials from the heart of this planet – have consumed my whole political life.
Still, nothing trips my trigger like some backwards bugger with a special hat on his head making life and death decisions founded upon ignorance from several centuries in the dimly-lit past. And whole chunks of the world nodding their heads in agreement.
