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USA Arms and Supports mindless moron fanatics in Syria
by Nicholas Blanford via justin - The Australian Friday, Aug 9 2013, 11:35pm
international / prose / post

A SHARIA court in Aleppo in northern Syria has issued a religious edict banning croissants from the city, classifying them as "colonial" in another indication of the spread of conservative Islamic values in areas under the control of radical rebel groups.

Syria under the rule of the Baath Party, which has been in power since 1963, is nominally a secular state but the civil war that has raged for two years has radicalised much of the mainly Sunni population and given space for the emergence of Islamic radicals.

The croissant problem is said to owe its origins to a celebratory meal after the defeat of an Ottoman Army at the Battle of Vienna in 1683. The croissant's shape, according to the legend, represented the crescent moon depicted on the Ottoman flags. Other edicts, or fatwas, include one that prohibits women from wearing make-up and shape-revealing clothes. Another, issued by the Council of the United Judiciary, decreed a year in jail for anyone not fasting during the holy month of Ramadan.

The extremist Jabhat al-Nusra faction and three other radical groups have become a de facto government in parts of Aleppo, organising the distribution of supplies as well as maintaining law and order through its Sharia councils backed by a religious police force.

The councils adjudicate on matters ranging from personal disputes to murder and rape. Punishments include lashings and prison sentences. Some Sharia councils insist that there are no executions as it is against Islamic rulings to inflict capital punishment during a time of war. However, there are many examples of executions in the name of Islam. In one notorious incident, gunmen shot dead a 14-year-old cafe worker in Aleppo after accusing him of blasphemy - the boy was overheard cracking a mild joke about refusing even the Prophet Muhammad a free cup of coffee.

Sharia councils have been welcomed in some areas to counter looting, rape and murder, but others have balked at the religious dictats of Islamic radicals. In the predominantly Kurdish north-east, clashes between Jabhat al-Nusra and Kurdish armed groups have turned into a significant sideshow to the main conflict against the Assad regime.

With Syrian Kurds intending to establish an autonomous enclave, the fighting now is more about who will later control the area's oilfields.

Mr Assad visited a former rebel stronghold south of Damascus yesterday in what is thought to be his first trip outside the city centre in months. In Homs, 40 people are said to have died when rockets hit an ammunition dump.

The Times

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[The USA is INDISPUTABLY the world's leading terrorist/civilian killing nation and it's no surprise that it allies and supports violent fanatics in Kosovo, Libya and now cannibalistic mindless fanatics in Syria in its violent (but futile) quest for world hegemony -- after all, 'birds of the feather!']

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