MOGADISHU, July 6: Islamists vowed to execute Muslims who skip prayers as they tightened their religious grip on the Somali capital Mogadishu and again on Thursday rejected government calls for foreign peacekeepers.

Under an edict issued by a leading Mogadishu cleric, the five-times daily prayer required by the holy Quran will be enforced under penalty of death, a move that appears to confirm the hardline nature of the city’s Sharia courts.

“He who does not perform prayers will be considered as infidel and Sharia law orders that that person be killed,” said Sheikh Abdalla Ali, a founder and high-ranking official in the Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia (SICS).

At the opening of a new Islamic court in a southern Mogadishu neighbourhood late on Wednesday, he added that it was the duty of every Somali to implement the provisions of Shariat.

It was not immediately clear who would enforce the regulation or how, but the courts have well-armed militias that routed a US-backed warlords’ alliance last month after four months of bloody battles for control of Mogadishu.

Militia members shot dead two people in central Somalia late on Tuesday while quelling a protest against a ban on watching the World Cup at a local cinema, and have in the past been tasked with carrying out court rules.

Militiamen have presided at several public executions ordered by Islamic courts in recent months, and some Mogadishu residents have complained of harassment for not dressing properly.

The United States supported the defeated warlords in a bid to stem what US officials describe as the ‘creeping Talibanisation’ of Somalia by the courts, which Washington accuses of harbouring extremists, including Al Qaeda members.

The Islamists flatly reject the charges, but have vowed to impose Islamic law across the overwhelmingly moderate Muslim country, in what many see as a direct challenge to the largely powerless transitional government. The Islamic courts signed a mutual recognition pact with the government last month and are to meet senior officials next week in Khartoum but remain deeply at odds with the administration on several key issues.

Chief among them is a possible deployment of foreign peacekeepers to help the fledgling government restore a functioning central authority to Somalia, which has been in the throes of chaos for the past 16 years.—AFP