Veiled Warning From Cleric Somali Women Lectured To Quit Wearing Veil With Misspelled Verse From Koran

The filmy, colorful veils looked great, and the price was right - just 27,000 Somali shillings, or $3.50. But the women who bought them over the weekend have learned to beware a bargain.

The veils bear a printed verse from the Koran - and it is misspelled. What’s more, Muslim clerics in Mogadishu say, it is blasphemous to wear Koranic inscriptions, even ones that are spelled correctly.

The verse was supposed to read in Somali “Inna Laha Ma’a Sabirin” or “Allah is with those who wear patience.” Instead it read “Inllaha Masabrin,” a misspelling that reduced the verse to gibberish.

Sheikh Mohamed Moalim Hassan, one of Somalia’s most highly respected Muslim leaders, declared in a lecture Sunday that misspelling a Koranic verse was a serious mistake, but “putting it on the clothes of people is even worse.

“Your clothes become dirty, you use them in toilets, and you may even throw them away,” he said. “And there Allah’s words end up in an unsuitable and miserable way.”