Salafists and others who believe in a more orthodox brand of Islam harbor a particular animosity toward Sufism, whose mystical interpretation of the divine affords a more heterodox faith, steeped sometimes in local pre-Islamic traditions and a reverence for saints and deceased wise men. History is littered with the debris of toppled temples and smashed idols. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon deemed the acts “totally unjustified.” The International Criminal Court’s new chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, suggested they should be considered a war crime.īut beyond scolding the Islamists of the Sahel, there’s little anyone can do to stop this wretched bout of iconoclasm. UNESCO, which designates some of Timbuktu’s mosques and tombs as World Heritage sites, has desperately urged an end to the campaign of destruction. One Ansar Dine spokesman told the BBC that they plan to destroy every single Sufi shrine in the city, “without exception.” They have also knocked down tombs of two other prominent medieval saints, Sidi Moctar and Alpha Moya. Militants bearing guns, pickaxes and shovels reduced to rubble the tomb of Sidi Mahmoud, who died in 955 A.D. In the puritanical strain of Islam adhered to by Ansar Dine (and the Taliban), veneration of Sufi saints counts as idolatry, a heretical practice that cannot be tolerated. ( MORE: Mali’s Crisis: Terror Stalks the Treasures of Timbuktu) UNESCO, the U.N.’s cultural agency, says as many as half of the city’s shrines “have been destroyed in a display of fanaticism.” According to reports, the militants have set about tearing down centuries-old mausoleums of Muslim holy men in Timbuktu, a Saharan crossroads known in lore as “the city of 333 saints” and long a fabled destination for backpacking tourists. “The destruction is a divine order,” said a spokesman from Ansar Dine, a radical outfit with alleged links to al-Qaeda. Similar language and zeal was on air Monday when news emerged of an Islamist faction in Mali desecrating a number of tombs in the ancient city of Timbuktu, which in recent months fell under control of a separatist insurgency. It has given praise to God that we have destroyed them.” The extremists’ shadowy leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, lauded the destruction of the two towering 6th century monuments: “Muslims should be proud of smashing idols. In March 2001, Taliban fighters and grandees clustered around the famed giant statues of the Buddha in Afghanistan’s Bamiyan province, laid explosives at their feet and blew them up. Follow was a singular, defining act of barbarism, beamed out live for the world to see.
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