I recently read a speech by the Dalai Lama in which he suggested that most of the world's problems are caused by religious preciousness (my phrase not his). Today about 10 Million people are starving because of the protectionist agenda of a religious militant group who display a gollumesque preciousness that makes adherents seem as ugly as Tolkien's selfish creature.
An anti-foreign agenda that orders people to starve rather than seek assistance is not a mandate of Islam. I think that all my Muslim friends would denounce this as violently, if not more, than I do. We have the capacity to feed the hungry, heal the sick, transform our world, but whilst religious groups (Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu etc, all of whose sacred texts speak of love, compassion, care and acceptance) are more concerned with protecting their own precious agendas we will continue to see this kind of evil abuse which results usually in the suffering of the least powerful - whilst the 'fanatics' keep up their strength for the fight.
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MOGADISHU, July 22 (Reuters: Ibrahim Mohamed) - Islamist rebels in Somalia - who control the parts of the country where famine was declared this week - have said aid agencies they expelled from those areas last year cannot return, reversing a previous pledge.
The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) was among several groups ordered out of rebel areas which are now preparing to return, describing the situation in Somalia as "extremely dire".
The United Nations told Reuters it had not heard about any new position from the rebels and planned to take last week's pledge at face value and push ahead with food shipments by air and sea.
Al Shabaab had promised to allow relief agencies with "no hidden agendas" greater access to their territory.
"The so-called aid agencies that were already banned and named are not part of the agencies we free to work in al Shabaab areas," al Shabab spokesman, Ali Mohamud Raghe, told a news conference late on Thursday in a rebel-held part of capital Mogadishu.
"They had problems with people and had a hidden agenda. We shall also expel any agency that causes problems for Muslim society," he added, urging hungry Somalis to stay in their homes and wait for the rain to come rather than going to foreign-run refugee camps.
Some 10 million people are affected by famine and drought in a region, dubbed the "triangle of death" by local media, that straddles Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia.
