No for jungle law

The story of burning and destroying a house of a citizen by extremists in al-Hasabah this week, under the pretext of blasphemous actions related to the Quran a mother refuted to be a prostitute, reminded me of a similar story that happened in 1993 in Sana’a.  The differences between the two stories is that the accused person in the story from 1993 was a religious man who was accused of seducing children from mosques and bringing them to his home. Rumors at that time alleged that he used to bring them home, rape them, murder them and bury them in his home or in the garden of his home. 

The rumors about the alleged murderer mounted day after day until newspapers claimed he had killed more than 50 children. I attended the incident of going to his house and garden where the investigative police brought up about 5 bones after they searched all parts of the house and the garden. While I was at the site I heard the people that had attended the incident exaggerating the number of victims found. In the morning they said that two corpses were brought out, after an hour the number jumped to five, and by noon the number had risen to 20. I was there the whole day and did not see a single sign of a corpse except for the five bones, but the number of the alleged victims kept growing all day long due to allegations by those who claimed to know.

The case escalated to the highest levels and the police and prosecution made efforts to the utmost to verify the truth, to discover later that the poor religious man was a victim from a dispute with his wife that was put into the hands of officers at the investigative police to accuse her husband of committing murders as a way to get rid of her husband. By the end the wife and her husband talked live on TV and ruled out the whole story of murders and admitted the real dispute between them. The five bones were examined later and proved to merely be chicken and goat bones.

The same thing happened this week when extremists accused a citizen of performing blasphemous actions to the Quran, tearing its pages, and stepping on it. The rumors have gone further to accuse his mother of threatening to turn the mosque next to her house into a night club, and furthermore, was accused of running a prostitution house.

It was also reported that extremists had climbed on top of the house of another citizen in al-Khaneq zone where they destroyed his satellite dish and later stabbed him and his son accusing them of watching pornographic movies.

The same thing was reported to have happened in Ja’ar town where jihadists killed people, accusing them of violating Islamic rules.

Regardless of whether the accusations were true or false, it was not the right of any citizen whatever his/her position was to judge other people and to charge them of blasphemy based on rumors. It is not the right of any person to issue a verdict against others. It is not the right of any person to destroy or burn others’ properties or harm them.

We live in a state of law and order where rights are protected and where a violation by any person should be dealt with through the court and through legal channels. What happened in al-Hasaba, al-Khaneq and Ja’ar bring us back to the jungle law.  

We are against any people that are blasphemous towards the Quran, offend the Prophet, peace be upon him, or even offend the prophet’s companions. However any offender or criminal should be referred to the judiciary since our law is based on Islamic Sharia’a.

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