Whew............What a relief

According to today's New York Times, "Nigeria Turns From Harsher Side of Islamic Law". What a relief. This merits front page coverage, since it, presumably, shows the growth of "enlightened Islam".

It seems that, in Nigeria today, they are not fully enforcing the harshest aspects of Shariah. While, previously, the Islamic thugs (errrr.. morality police, known as the Hisbah) " ... roamed these streets in dusky blue uniforms and black berets, brandishing cudgels at prayer shirkers and dragging fornicators into Islamic courts to face sentences like death by public stoning", now they "have largely been confined to their barracks and assigned anodyne tasks like directing traffic..." Also, "New programs have sprung up to encourage parents to send their daughters to hybrid public elementary schools that offer traditional Islamic education along with math and reading, in keeping with Islamic principles (really?????) that call for the education of girls." (pictures of little girls entombed in Islamic garb, here). Of course the U.S. is so thrilled with all this, USAID is helping to fund the schooling.

The article says that " .... even before then, the feared mutilations and death sentences almost never materialized. Public floggings are quite common, and in Zamfara, the first state to adopt Shariah as the basis of its criminal code, at least one man had his hand amputated in 2000 for stealing a cow, but other sentences of mutilation have rarely been carried out." If you can settle for public floggings and the occasional amputation, things are really hunky dory now. Why, maybe in a century or so, they may reach a stage of civilization comparable with 19th century Europe.

No word on whether Muslim "clerics" are allowing kids to be vaccinated against polio, though. They think vaccination is a western plot to make Muslims sterile. If only it were so.