Out of cash? Try theocracy
The birth of another theocracy.
The Gambia has been declared an Islamic republic by President Yahya Jammeh who said he wanted to further distance the west African state from its colonial past.
The tiny, formerly secular country – named after the river from which British ships are said to have fired cannonballs to fix its borders – joins the ranks of other officially Islamic republics such as Iran and Afghanistan.
And Saudi Arabia and Pakistan – such lovely, rights-respecting states, all of them.
“In line with the country’s religious identity and values I proclaim Gambia as an Islamic state,” said Jammeh on state television. “As Muslims are the majority in the country, Gambia cannot afford to continue the colonial legacy.”
Nonsense. Gambia could perfectly well continue to be secular; there’s nothing inherently colonialist about secularism.
Also…Islam? Very colonialist. How does Jammeh think it got to Gambia, exactly? On the breeze, like pollen?
Despite strong commercial ties with Britain and other European countries whose citizens are regular visitors to the Gambia’s white-sand beaches, relations with the west have deteriorated in recent years.
The European Union temporarily withheld aid money in 2014 over Gambia’s poor human rights record. The Gambia, whose main industries are agriculture and tourism, ranks 165 out of 187 countries on the UN development index.
The blogger Sidi Sanneh, a former foreign minister who has become a US-based dissident, said: “Starved of development funds because of his deplorable human rights record and economic mismanagement, Jammeh is looking towards the Arab world as substitute for and source of development aid.”
So the guff about colonialism is just cant; Jammeh wants money.
He could always try a GoFundMe.
Or he could do an LRon …
Perfect amnesia about Arab and Islamic imperialism. That ‘defensive’ Jihad that somehow took them from Morocco to the Philippines, and from Zanzibar to the Alps. So MUCH oppression for them to defend themselves so vigorously.
“Starved of development funds because of his deplorable human rights record and economic mismanagement, Jammeh is looking towards the Arab world as substitute for and source of development aid”
And he’ll get it too which will enable him to screw over the people of The Gambia even more – especially the non-muslims.
Right now, Saudi Arabia (and OPEC) is selling as much oil as it can, and the global price is plummeting right now. There are also indications that world demand is peaking (the rate of increase is decreasing).
It’s not quite around the corner yet, but I think that within a decade or so, client States of Arab oil are going to be facing much the same fate as client States of the late Soviet Union did.
@2 Perhaps the Saudis will ask Jammeh to bring back slavery in orderto be more in line with Saudi human rights
This part is likely to make it all okay with a significant portion of the Western Left.