THEOCRACY WATCH #3: POLIO EPIDEMIC IN AFRICA FUELED BY ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISTS A major epidemic of polio in the 12 Islamified states of Northern Nigeria has spread to 14 other African countries, as well as the Muslim countries of Yemen and Indonesia, Le Mond reports today. In these 12 Nigerian states under the sharia, the religious authorities responsible for interpreting and enforcing it --known as oulemas -- decreed that the anti-polio vaccine being distributed by UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO) in cooperation with the Nigerian Ministry of Health, "is part of a plot woven by the United States with the complicity of the UN to sterilize young Muslims," Le Monde reports. The oulemas are religious sages, and their interpretations have the force of divine law that supersedes civil law (the word comes from the Arabic alim --?? -- and in the Koran, al-Alim means "he who knows all," and is one of the 99 names of God (Allah). Faced with this lethal religious obscurantism that was responsible for annulling the vaccination campaign in the 12 sharia states, the federal government of General Olusegun Obasanjo "did not react," says Le Monde.