Muslims rebels burn ancient Islamic manuscripts

[Karachi]

Mali extremists torch Timbuktu library’s ancient manuscripts




Mali extremists torch Timbuktu library’s ancient manuscripts

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Ben Curtis/AP FILE PHOTO Crumbling ancient Islamic manuscripts belonging to 48-year old Fatama Bocar Sambala, above, are shown in her mud-walled house in Timbuktu, Mali in this 2004 photo. Islamist extremists torched a library containing historic manuscripts in Timbuktu.








Krista Larson and Carley Petesch
The Associated Press

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SEVARE, MALI—Fleeing Islamist extremists torched a library containing historic manuscripts in Timbuktu, the mayor said Monday, as French and Malian forces closed in on Mali's fabled desert city.
French troops push toward Timbuktu
Ousmane Halle said he heard about the burnings early Monday.
“It's truly alarming that this has happened,” he told The Associated Press by telephone from Mali's capital, Bamako, on Monday. “They torched all the important ancient manuscripts. The ancient books of geography and science. It is the history of Timbuktu, of its people.”
The mayor said Monday that the radical Islamists had torched his office as well as the Ahmed Baba Institute — a library rich with historical documents — in an act of retaliation before they fled late last week.
He said he didn't have further details as communications to the city have been cut off.
Ground forces backed by French paratroopers and helicopters took control of Timbuktu's airport and the roads leading to the town in an overnight operation, a French military official said Monday. It marked the latest success in the two-week-old French mission to oust radical Islamists from the northern half of Mali, which they seized more than nine months ago.
French Col. Thierry Burkhard, the chief military spokesman in Paris, said Monday that the town's airport was taken without firing a shot.
“There was an operation on Timbuktu last night that allowed us to control access to the town,” he said Monday. “It's up to Malian forces to retake the town.”
The Timbuktu operation comes a day after the French announced they had seized the airport and a key bridge in a city east of Timbuktu, Gao, one of the other northern provincial capitals that had been under the grip of radical Islamists, who had turned it into a virtual replica of Afghanistan under Taliban rule.
The French and Malian forces so far have met little resistance from the Islamists, who seized northern Mali in the wake of a military coup in the distant capital of Bamako, in southern Mali.
Timbuktu, which lies on an ancient caravan route, has entranced travellers for centuries, is some 1,000 kilometres northeast of Bamako. During their rule, the militants have systematically destroyed UNESCO World Heritage sites in Timbuktu.
A spokesman for the al-Qaida-linked militants has said that the ancient tombs of Sufi saints were destroyed because they contravened Islam, encouraging Muslims to venerate saints instead of God.
Among the tombs they destroyed is that of Sidi Mahmoudou, a saint who died in 955, according to the UNESCO website.
Timbuktu, long a hub of Islamic learning, is also home to some 20,000 manuscripts, some dating back as far as the 12th century. Owners have succeeded in removing some of the manuscripts from Timbuktu to save them, while others have been carefully hidden away from the Islamists.
The destructions recall tactics used by the Taliban in 2001 when they dynamited a pair of giant Buddhas carved into a mountain in Bamiyan province. Around the same time, the Taliban also rampaged through the national museum, smashing any art depicting the human form, considered idolatrous under their hardline interpretation of Islam. In all, they destroyed about 2,500 statues.


Mali extremists torch Timbuktu library

[Karachi]

what can you say about these salafi/wahabhi influenced groups? they dont even mind destroying Islamic history itself

[Badlun]

for them only Quran and Hadith is knowledge, rest all innovation and have to be destroyed because all these are tantamount to polytheism.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...35d_story.html

Here is the reality. Once again, the militant secular atheists (paganists?) prove that they are willing to lie to advance their cause: which is to extend neocolonialism

From the Washington Post, showing why we should never trust what we read these days when it emanates from news sources aligned with such an agenda (not that the Post is immune!):

"People in the north Malian city who have knowledge of the documents reported that there was no malicious destruction of any library or collection, said the University of Cape Town, which helped fund a state-of-the-art library to house manuscripts."

"The university said that a report from Britain’s Sky News that 25,000 manuscripts had been burned was false. Other news reports quoted the city mayor, who wasn’t in the city, saying manuscripts had been destroyed, the university said."

"Media reports said that the Ahmad Baba Institute had been ransacked by the militants. But the university said a senior researcher at the institute, Mohamed Diagayete, said the majority of the manuscripts were stored in an older building elsewhere in the city."

[SiiNii]

Thanks for posting the correction from the Washington comPost. I wonder if writer of the original article, Ms. Robyn Dixon was anywhere near Timbuktu, or even in Mali.

[Karachi]

whatever the case is, the Saudi/wahabhi/salafi/alqeda all seem to be working in western interests, I believe the wahabi cult+saudi royals are part of western neo con agenda.

[faye]

the neo con agenda, just takes advantage of the muslim weaknesses, of being divided, infighting and tribalism.
even in afghanistan you can see the divisions between the tribes in just that one muslim country. members here, look down on other tribes, hate other muslim countries and the sell out muslims, who do actually assist the western invaders and invite them into the muslim lands.
until muslims make an effort to create peace between their own differing religious groups, tribes and muslim countries, there will always remain this achilles heel and lack of genuine progress, where they don't need to be supported by foreign aid.