Umar Al bashir Sudan will adopt sharia law if country splits.

[Xaaji Xunjuf]

Omar al-Bashir: northern Sudan will adopt sharia law if country splitsPresident defends woman's flogging in speech accused of stoking religious divisions as south prepares for referendum

 

 

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guardian.co.uk, Sunday 19 December 2010 15.05 GMT Article history

Omar al-Bashir has been accused of deepening Sudan's international isolation. Photograph: Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah/Reuters

 

Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese president, said the country would adopt an Islamic constitution if the south split away in next month's referendum, in a speech today in which he also defended police filming a woman being flogged.

 

"If south Sudan secedes, we will change the constitution and at that time there will be no time to speak of diversity of culture and ethnicity," Bashir told supporters at a rally in the eastern city of Gedaref.

 

"Sharia [islamic law] and Islam will be the main source for the constitution, Islam the official religion and Arabic the official language," he said.

 

An official from south Sudan's main party criticised Bashir's stance, saying it would encourage discrimination against minorities in the mainly Muslim north and deepen the country's international isolation.

 

The referendum in south Sudan, where most follow indigenous beliefs and Christianity, on whether to declare independence is scheduled to start on 9 January.

 

The vote was promised in a 2005 peace deal that ended a civil war between north and south, and set up an interim constitution which limited sharia to the north and recognised "the cultural and social diversity of the Sudanese people".

 

Analysts expect most southerners to choose independence in the poll, due to last for a week. Yasir Arman, from the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), said Bashir's statements would encourage repression in the north. "This type of discourse is preparing the ground for a police state. The north, whether alone or with the south, is an extremely diverse place."

 

Arman said it was the north's hardline stance that had pushed southerners towards separation. "If it [the north] continues like this it will encourage other areas like Darfur, the Nuba mountains and eastern Sudan to walk out as well," he added, referring to areas on the peripheries of northern Sudan. "It will also result in Sudan having worse relations with the outside world."

 

Southern leaders have said they are worried about how hundreds of thousands of southerners living in the north might be treated after a split.

 

Arman, Bashir's main challenger in the presidential elections in April, is from the northern sector of the SPLM. He said his group would form a separate opposition party inside the north if the south seceded.

 

Bashir also defended police shown lashing a woman in footage that appeared on YouTube. "If she is lashed according to sharia law there is no investigation. Why are some people ashamed? This is sharia," he said.

 

Senior NCP member Nafie Ali Nafie said on Thursday that efforts to keep the country united had failed, in the first acknowledgement from the northern elite that the south would probably secede.

 

Floggings carried out under Islamic law are almost a daily punishment in northern Sudan for crimes including drinking alcohol and adultery.

[oba hiloowlow]

al bashiir shareeco muxu ka yaqaana sow kii muslimiinta darfur xasuuqaya...

[Xaaji Xunjuf]

Sudan to reinforce sharia after south vote: Bashir

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Bashir AFP/File .

by Guillaume Lavallee Guillaume Lavallee – Sun Dec 19, 11:02 am ET

KHARTOUM (AFP) – President Omar al-Bashir said on Sunday that northern Sudan will reinforce its Islamic laws after a January referendum which is expected to grant independence to the south.

 

"If south Sudan secedes, we'll change the constitution. There will be no question of cultural or ethnic diversity. Sharia will be the only source of the constitution, and Arabic the only official language," he said in a speech on national television.

 

Southerners are set to vote in a referendum on January 9 on whether to remain united with the north or break away and form their own country.

 

The vote is a key plank of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the mainly Muslim north and predominantly Christian south that put an end to more than two decades of civil war.

 

Analysts are predicting that the southerners will opt for independence, and senior officials in Khartoum are even beginning to accept the idea of the split.

 

An aide to Bashir admitted on Thursday that south Sudan would probably choose secession because efforts aimed at promoting unity had failed.

 

"Despite our work for unity, we should not deceive ourselves or cling to dreams. We should rely on the facts on the ground," the official SUNA news agency quoted Nafie Ali Nafie as saying.

 

"After the secession of the south, we could see the north radicalise and the creation of a Muslim caliphate," one foreign official said on condition of anonymity.

 

After the civil war, Bashir's National Congress Party (NCP) and the former southern rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) agreed on an interim constitution valid until July 2011.

 

The constitution recognises the "multi-ethnic," "multi-cultural" and "multi-faith" status of the Sudanese state, and is based on both sharia, or Islamic law, and the "consensus" of the population.

 

It also recognises Arabic and English as the two official languages of Africa's largest country, which was formerly under British and Egyptian rule.

 

Britain's Foreign Secretary William Hague on Sunday put Sudan and Lebanon into the same bracket as potential areas of renewed conflict in the Arab world.

 

They were the "two areas in January that are most obvious at this stage to watch for a political crisis or an outbreak of violence," Hague told Britain's Sky News television.

 

"So across the international community we must be ready to do everything we can to assist with those countries," he said in reference to Sudan's referendum and a UN-backed investigation into ex-Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri's murder.

 

Bashir, meanwhile, in a speech punctuated by religious references, defended the way the authorities have dealt with the case of a young woman whose whipping by police appeared in a YouTube video.

 

A police spokesman said last Tuesday that 46 women and six men had been arrested for holding an illegal demonstration after the video was made public.

 

"There are people who say they feel ashamed about this sentence. They should review their interpretation of Islam because sharia has always stipulated that one must whip, cut, or kill," said Bashir.

 

Under Sudan's 1991 penal code -- which came into force two years after the coup that brought Bashir to power -- people can be whipped if found guilty of "indecent" behaviour.

 

Several activists have sought to challenge the legality of the code under the constitution, saying it violated articles of the interim law.