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Timbuktu mayor: Mali rebels torched library of historic manuscripts | World news | guar... - 1 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...tu-library-ancient-manuscripts Mali Africa history heritage Salafists Islamists
shared by Ed Webb on 28 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Islamist insurgents retreating from Timbuktu set fire to a library containing thousands of priceless historic manuscripts,
  • The manuscripts had survived for centuries in Timbuktu, on the remote south-west fringe of the Sahara desert. They were hidden in wooden trunks, buried in boxes under the sand and in caves. When French colonial rule ended in 1960, Timbuktu residents held preserved manuscripts in 60-80 private libraries.The vast majority of the texts were written in Arabic. A few were in African languages, such as Songhai, Tamashek and Bambara. There was even one in Hebrew. They covered a diverse range of topics including astronomy, poetry, music, medicine and women's rights. The oldest dated from 1204.
  • they exploded the myth that "black Africa" had only an oral history. "You just need to look at the manuscripts to realise how wrong this is."
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  • only a fraction of the manuscripts had been digitised. "They cover geography, history and religion. We had one in Turkish. We don't know what it said."
  • Mali government forces that had been guarding Timbuktu left the town in late March, as Islamist fighters advanced rapidly across the north. Fighters from al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) – the group responsible for the attack on the Algerian gas facility – then swept in and seized the town, pushing out rival militia groups including secular Tuareg nationalists.
  • As well as the manuscripts, the fighters destroyed almost all of the 333 Sufi shrines dotted around Timbuktu, believing them to be idolatrous. They smashed a civic statue of a man sitting on a winged horse.
  • The rebels enforced their own brutal and arbitrary version of Islam, residents said, with offenders flogged for talking to women and other supposed crimes. The floggings took place in the square outside the 15th-century Sankoré mosque, a Unesco world heritage site.
  • They weren't religious men. They were criminals
  • Ed Webb on 28 Jan 13
     
    Such a tragedy
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Dome of the Rock - Jerusalem - 7 views

www.sacred-destinations.com/...jerusalem-dome-of-the-rock domeoftherock jerusalem middleeast shrine isreal architecture islamicarchitecture
shared by Christy Hanna on 19 Mar 11 - Cached
  • Christy Hanna on 19 Mar 11
     
    This site contains important facts about the Dome of the Rock and other holy sites in Jerusalem.
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China Razed Thousands of Xinjiang Mosques in Assimilation Push, Report Says - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...n-push-report-says-11601049531 china xinjiang Uighur religion repression
shared by Javier E on 26 Sep 20 - No Cached
  • New research shows Chinese authorities have razed or damaged two-thirds of the mosques in China’s remote northwestern region of Xinjiang, further illuminating the scope of a forced cultural-assimilation campaign targeting millions of Uighur Muslims.
  • the Australian Strategic Policy Institute said satellite imagery showed that roughly 8,500 mosques, close to a third of the region’s total, have been demolished since 2017. Another 7,500 have sustained damage
  • Important Islamic sacred sites, including shrines, cemeteries and pilgrimage routes, were also demolished, damaged or altered, the study found.
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  • “The Chinese government’s destruction of cultural heritage aims to erase, replace and rewrite what it means to be Uyghur,”
  • China’s Foreign Ministry on Friday repeated its claims that Xinjiang has around 24,000 mosques and that the number of them per capita among Muslims in Xinjiang is higher than in many Muslim countries. It said that China fully protects the human and religious rights of all ethnic minorities and described the ASPI report as “smear and rumor.” It denied the existence of detention camps in Xinjiang.
  • ASPI estimated that around half of important Islamic sacred sites—many of which are supposed to be protected under Chinese law—have been damaged or altered since 2017.
  • The report estimated there are fewer than 15,500 mosques left intact in Xinjiang, the lowest number since the 1980s, when Uighurs had just begun rebuilding mosques destroyed during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution. Most of the land where mosques were razed remained vacant, it said.
  • The campaign is part of a longer-term trend to transform communities in the name of public safety. The strategy has gained pace under President Xi Jinping who has called for the “Sinicization” of religion
  • During a visit the following month, the Journal found that some facilities had indeed been closed, with former detainees sometimes sent away to work in factories. One facility had been converted into a prison after being previously described as a school.
  • Of the dozens of facilities ASPI identified as recently under construction, roughly half were higher-security facilities. The most-secure facilities had high walls, multiple layers of perimeter barriers, watchtowers and dozens of cell blocks with no apparent outside exercise yard for detainees
  • Authorities are likely singling out people who they have lost hope of re-educating and putting them into long periods of incarceration, said Mr. Leibold. It is “the only way to really explain their pretty remarkable expansion,”
  • One challenge in pressuring China’s government over its Xinjiang policies is the relative silence of Muslim-majority countries. ASPI made its work available in 10 different languages to try to raise awareness beyond the English-speaking world
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