Time for dhikr and music

But instead of capitalising on the people’s genuine support and willingness to give in and give up everything, they had become power lusty, belligerent and fatwa-crazy. Instead of building bridges with the community, improving services, opening hospitals, winning the trust of international organisations and NGO’s to help them with projects to generate employment, they burned all bridges. They alienated the youth by banning all types of entertainment, segregated women and deprived tens of thousands of families from their only livelihood by banning Khat without bringing an alternative source of income. They even embittered traditional Islamic scholars with their self-righteousness and condescending attitude to mainstream Islam.

Not only did they become more warlords than the ones they had defeated, but they emblazoned their belligerency with Islam and brandished the spirit of Jihad, thus projecting themselves in the model of Taliban and regurgitating the tired jihadist rhetoric of Al Qaeda. They mistook their easy ride to power for being an unstoppable revolution and started stirring instability in the peaceful Republic of Somaliland by branding the leadership of that democratic country as an infidel and threatening to bring Somaliland under their cloak.

Just like they introduced a strange school of Islam to Somalia, they had also imported the scary phenomenon of suicide bombers in an attempt to assassinate the leadership of the Transitional Federal Government, TFG, in Baidoa. They stonewalled the peace talks counting on the support of unsuspecting Arabs and they sent their die-hard agents to Puntland to wreck havoc to that peaceful and self-ruling state.

In a gross miscalculation of their military power and world geopolitics, the Islamists have used hostile language against neighbouring countries, the United States and the Judeo Christian world. By reviving the Somali irredentist policies of reunifying all Somali people in the Horn of Africa and creating greater Somalia, they reminded Ethiopia and Kenya of the era of wars and instability they had with the successive Somali governments over their claim for the Somali regions in their respective countries.

But as is often the case with all self-aggrandising megalomaniacs, they fizzled into thin air when the hour of truth has arrived and all their bravado had ended into a farcical denouement. While they threw the young children they recruited in the name of Jihad into the fray, the Islamist leadership took flight liked scared chickens. None of them was reported to have died heroically fighting at the front. They just burst like a bubble. Even their prolific web site qaadisiya.com fell silent, failing to sign off the last chapter of their fantasy medieval caliphate.

Now, it is time for the people of Mogadishu to reclaim their freedoms and their true religion. Time to read the Quran with piety and not with politics; time to perform Dhikr in the Sufi Qadiriya style; time to dance in weddings and listen to the music of our late melody queen Magool, which the Islamists wanted to burn. It is time to let our women come out to the sunshine and swim with their children in the lido beach; time to shave the beards, watch cinemas and let our youth revel, sing, dance and ring in the New Year with Mohammed Suleiman’s eternal lyrics “… kii noo hagaagee, noqo loo hanweynyahay.” (…Be a year that brings us good fortune and high expectations.” Amen.