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Shaikh Abdulkadir Nur Farah
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Several years ago, the prominent Somali scholar Shaikh Abdulkadir Nur Farah gave a speech at a conference in Puntland. He derided what he called “Ghuluwi” (extremism) as a new phenomenon that was gripping that country. Teens between ages fourteen and seventeen, he lamented, were being brainwashed and had become killer-machines targeting religious scholars when the latter entered or left mosques.
Last Friday, February 15, 2013, Shaikh Abdulkadir, who was in his seventies himself, was killed in broad daylight while he was praying in a mosque in Garowe. The killer was sadly a teenager. The young assassin was immediately apprehended by unarmed citizens who risked their lives to capture him.
Shaikh Abdulkadir went to Saudi Arabia in 1970 to study at the Islamic University in Madinah. He graduated in 1974 and was sent by Dar-ul-Iftaa, a Saudi religious organization, to Niger in West Africa as a religious teacher. He and his longtime friend, Shaikh Yusuf Adan, were unable to work there because they arrived after the academic year had started. The two were stuck in Niger unemployed until Siad Barre, who was the Chairman of the Organization of African Union (OAU) that year, came to Niger on an official visit. Barre encouraged the two to return to their country where they were badly needed and, in fact, took them in his plane to Mogadishu. Abdulkadir was appointed as a judge in the Hodon District. A year later, Barre would put Abdulkadir and Shaikh Yusuf in jail without any charges ever being brought against them. The two languished in prison until 1978.Continued
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