Murderous Dictator vs. Taliban-Style Sharia

                                       A mass murderer prays to God.
                             (Image distributed by Syria's state run media)
                                               

By Hos

Atrocities committed by the regime of Syria, with full blessing of Iran’s theocracy, are no secret to the outside world, which has done nothing to stop them. The mass murdering machine of the Assad dynasty is still taking lives at a breakneck pace.

But now there is a new, disturbing angle to this human tragedy.

It turns out that those who are supposed to protect the civilians against the regime, the Free Syrian Army, are Islamists to the core. They are already holding trials in areas under their control, are setting up Sharia courts. These courts, which can hand down death sentences, are run without even a pretense of respect for the rights of the accused. Luxuries like representation by a lawyer do not exist in such courts.

To an extent this could be a symptom of the failure of the outside world to stop the genocide. In Libya, where the world acted relatively swiftly to stop the blood crackdown by the regime against its people, the uprising was not hijacked by anti-democratic forces. The people of Libya, in that country’s first post-revolution elections, turned their backs against theIslamists. That opportunity may have already been lost for Syria.

But that does not excuse further inaction. The world needs to stand up against the crimes committed by Assad. At the same time the rebels should be told in order to get outside help they need to guarantee the rule of law and respecting the rights of women and minorities.

If we fail this challenge, which unfortunately looks more likely every day, the future generations will look at us with the same revulsion as those who failed to stop the genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia, and the Holocaust.