Occupy Mali: Northern Rebels Impose Hardline Islamic Law

September 28, 2012 from Al Jazeera English

In the town of Gao, in northern Mali, rebels who took over much of the country have imposed a hardline form of Islamic religious law. Schools are now segregated by gender, with Arabic being taught instead of the national language, French. Alleged thieves and criminals have even had their hands and feet amputated. The government of Mali is now asking for international help to deal with the rebels who are creating a power base in the north. Al Jazeera's Imran Khan reports.

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Mali

Mali, officially the Republic of Mali, is a landlocked country in West Africa. Mali is bordered by Algeria to the north, Niger to the east, Burkina Faso and Côte d'Ivoire to the south, Guinea to the south-west, and Senegal and Mauritania to the west. Its size is just over 1,24... Explore this topic

Sharia

Sharia is the moral code and religious law of Islam. Sharia deals with many topics addressed by secular law, including crime, politics, and economics, as well as personal matters such as sexual intercourse, hygiene, diet, prayer, and fasting. Though interpretations of sharia v... Explore this topic

Gao

Gao is a city in Mali and the capital of the Gao Region. The city is located on the River Niger, 320 km east-southeast of Timbuktu on the left bank at the junction with the Tilemsi valley. For much of its history Gao was an important commercial centre involved in the trans-Sah... Explore this topic

Tuareg

The Tuareg are a Berber people with a traditionally nomadic pastoralist lifestyle. They are the principal inhabitants of the Saharan interior of North Africa. The Tuareg language, a branch of the Berber language, has an estimated 1.2 million speakers. About half this number is... Explore this topic

Politics of Mali

Politics of Mali takes place in a framework of a presidential representative democratic republic, whereby the President of Mali is head of state with a Presidentially appointed Prime Minister as the head of government, and of a multi-party system. Executive power is exercised ... Explore this topic

Military of Mali

Mali's armed forces are the Army, Air Force, Gendarmerie, Republican Guard, National Guard, and National Police (Sûreté Nationale). They number some 7,000 and are under the control of the Minister of Armed Forces and Veterans. The IISS Military Balance 2009 lists an Army of 7,... Explore this topic

2012 Malian coup d'etat

The 2012 Malian coup d'état began on 21 March, when mutinying Malian soldiers, displeased with the management of the Tuareg rebellion, attacked several locations in the capital Bamako, including the presidential palace, state television, and military barracks. The soldiers, wh... Explore this topic

2012 insurgency in the Azawad

The Tuareg Rebellion of 2012 was an early stage of the 2012 northern Mali conflict; from January to April 2012, a war was waged against the Malian government by rebels with the goal of attaining independence for the northern region of Mali, known as Azawad. It was led by the N... Explore this topic

Islamism

Islamism is a set of ideologies holding that "Islam should guide social and political as well as personal life". Islamism is a controversial neologism, and definitions of it sometimes vary. Leading Islamist thinkers emphasize the implementation of Sharia; of pan-Islamic politi... Explore this topic

Al-Qaeda

Al-Qaida ist ein loses, weltweit operierendes Terrornetzwerk meist sunnitischer dschihadistischer Organisationen, das seit 1993 zahlreiche Terroranschläge in mehreren Staaten verübt hat, und mit zahlreichen weltpolitischen Ereignissen im Zusammenhang steht. Viele der von dem N... Explore this topic

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