[jinx]

Originally Posted by BigV

Just to clarify:
Do not be mislead by their (current) official sounding title. Just because they banded together and called themselves the "law" doesn't make it so. In our own country, in my own state even, there's a group of community leaders who have banded together raise "a call to voices seeking a peaceful and respectable resolve to the chaotic neglect by members of our local, state and federal governments charged with applying U.S. immigration law." They've declared their desire to enforce the laws that they feel are being ignored. Do they speak for all Americans? No. We would do well to apply the same sanity check to all such ad hoc groups, regardless of their press releases to the contrary.

If the Wikipedia article is acurate, I have to disagree with your comparison of these 2 groups as far as their influence and who they might speak for.

After the collapse of the Somali government in 1991, a system of sharia-based Islamic courts became the main judicial system, funded by fees paid by litigants. Over time the courts began to offer other services such as education and health care. The courts also acted as local police forces, being paid by local businesses to reduce crime. The ICU took on responsibility for halting robberies and drug-dealing, as well as stopping the showing of what it claims to be pornographic films in local movie houses. Somalia is almost entirely Muslim, and these institutions had wide public support. Supporters of the Islamic courts and other institutions united to form the ICU, an armed militia. In 1999 the group began to assert its authority. In April of that year they took control of the main market in Mogadishu and, in July, captured the road from Mogadishu to Afgoi.[1]
However, as the courts began to assert themselves as the dispensers of justice they came into conflict with the secular warlords who controlled most of the city. In reaction to the growing power of the ICU, a group of Mogadishu warlords formed the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT). This was a major change, as these warlords had been fighting each other for many years. By the beginning of 2006, these two groups had repeatedly clashed, and in May 2006 it escalated into street fighting in the capital, claiming the lives of more than 300 people. On 5 June 2006, the ICU claimed that they were now in control of Mogadishu.[2]
While, in the United States, the Bush administration neither confirmed nor denied support, American officials have anonymously confirmed that the U.S. government was funding the ARPCT, due to concerns that the ICU is linked to al-Qaeda and is sheltering three al-Qaeda leaders involved in past terror attacks, including the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. [3] There are fears in the U.S. that the ICU's victory may complicate the "War on Terrorism"...