Sharia Court Bans Online Discussions of Punative Amputation

A NIGERIAN court has banned Twitter and Facebook debates on the country's first wrist amputation for theft.
The Magajin Gari Sharia court in the northern city of Kaduna on Monday ordered the Civil Rights Congress (CRC), one of the country's leading rights groups, to suspend its Twitter and Facebook online debates on the amputation, which was carried out in 2000.
The court granted an interim injunction "restraining the respondents either by themselves or their agents... from opening a chat forum on Facebook, Twitter, or any blog for the purpose of the debate on the amputation of Malam Buba Bello Jangebe," said the order.
Jangebe was the first person to have had his right wrist amputated on the orders of a Sharia court in Zamfara State, a year after 12 northern Nigerian states adopted the strict Islamic penal code. The order followed a suit filed last week by the Association of Muslim Brotherhood of Nigeria, a pro-Sharia group based in the northern political capital of Kaduna, which argued that internet forums would be used as "a mockery of the Sharia system as negative issues will be discussed".

News.com.au

Sharia law, as a religious legal system, is not subject to the same malleability as would a secular legal counterpart. Questioning these divine mandates is heretical, and even discussion of the validity of these millenia old edicts is tantamount to an offense against god. Theocratic institutions are an affront to progress, and will continue to hinder efforts towards a human rights in all areas they control and influence.