Have We Somalis Been Deceived in the Name of Religion All Over Again?

Dr Zakariya Weyrax Warsame

Is the Old Somali Sheikh with the Illuminating Faynuus Hidden Under His Garment—Claiming the Power of the Awliya, Invoking Sheikh Jaylani, and Deceiving Us for Money and Influence—Back, Only This Time Speaking Arabic and Selling Houses in Jannah?

There are questions a people eventually has to ask itself—questions that are uncomfortable, questions that offend the sensibilities of the pious, and questions whose answers may threaten ideas that have become too sacred to examine. For Somalis, I believe we have arrived at such a moment.

Our country has been broken for more than three decades. Since the collapse of the Somali state in 1991, we have endured civil war, clan conflict, displacement, terrorism, political fragmentation, foreign intervention and an almost generational failure to reconcile. We have rebuilt houses, businesses, telecommunications networks, masjids and fragments of government. We have produced new political conferences and new constitutions. We have raised an entire generation in the shadow of war. Yet beneath all this rebuilding, the fundamental wound remains: we have never truly made peace with ourselves.