Ancient Timbuktu
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbuktu#History , one of the most important medieval African cities and the treasure of the medieval African Islamci cultre, is being attacked by a militnt red-Tuareg militia with Tlibn-style interprettion of Islm. They destroyed tombs etc, seeing them as idolatrous. Which sound strange to me since Timbuktu is one of the holy Siffi sites.
"...A UNESCO World Heritage site,
Timbuktu has for centuries been associated with Sufis, a mystical and
spiritual fraternity, themselves closely connected with Islam. More than
200 Sufi saints are buried in free-standing mausoleums and within the
compounds of mosques, tombs that have become the latest target of the
Defenders of the Faith.
Regarding
them as idolatrous, the Islamist militia has taken hammers and shovels
to their baked-mud adobe walls. They even destroyed a pair of ancient
tombs set in the compound of the city’s celebrated Djingareyber mosque.
For
all intents and purposes Timbuktu has been sealed off from the outside
world just as it was through history. No foreign journalists are
permitted anywhere near the city, and all Western aid workers have long
since been evacuated.
Speaking
from Bamako, one newly arrived refugee there, named Lassana, recounted
his last afternoon before fleeing with his family: “A pickup truck
arrived at a mausoleum near my home,” he said. “In the back were five or
six young men with guns. They were laughing and jeering, waving their
weapons in the air. I told my wife and children to stay inside and to
make no noise. Then I went out and watched as they broke down the
shrine, whooping as they did so....
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/09/02/trouble-in-timbuktu-as-an-extremist-militia-takes-control.html
Edited by Don Quixote - 07-Sep-2012 at 14:04