Mali Islamists destroy holy Timbuktu sites

[LurkerBaba]

How would you define traditional Islamic thought?

Even within Sunnis there are differences. Shuridh explained that once, but I don't remember the details.

For example, some Sunnis believe that no grave shall have a high cenotaph, but most Sunnis in India do not subscribe to that view. The Saudis destroyed many such cenotaphs, which outraged Indian Sunnis, because they did not agree with the Wahhabi interpretation of Islam. Now, erecting cenotaphs is a characteristic Sufi tradition. Islam spread into India via Sufism (some may disagree).
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In Islam and Christianity 'God' is a dualist concept. Sufism is non-dual, and hence fundamentally different from traditional Islamic thought.

Islam spread into North India via conquest, Sufi saints came much later. Why don't we see any Sufis in Nepal and Assam ? These areas were never conquered

 

[Ray]

If only these illiterates and dogged religious hallucinating fanatists understood history is as important to the world as is religion!

The idiocy of these freaks will help justify that the demolishing of Babri Mazjid was the correct to obliterate history.

History CANNOT be obliterated.

The evil that these men do with lives after them!

 

[Ray]

Most Indian Muslims are Sufis are NOT Sufis or are they.

If so, could one give details?

 

[Nagraj]

Timbuktu's Destruction: Why Islamists Are Wrecking Mali's Cultural Heritage

Read more: Mali: Why Islamists Are Destroying Timbuktu's Holy Shrines | World | TIME.com

It was a singular, defining act of barbarism, beamed out live for the world to see. 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. The extremists' shadowy leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, lauded the destruction of the two towering 6th century monuments: "Muslims should be proud of smashing idols. It has given praise to God that we have destroyed them."

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. "The destruction is a divine order," said a spokesman from Ansar Dine, a radical outfit with alleged links to al-Qaeda. According to reports, they 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. 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."



Read more: Mali: Why Islamists Are Destroying Timbuktu's Holy Shrines | World | TIME.com
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. Militants bearing guns, pickaxes and shovels reduced to rubble the tomb of Sidi Mahmoud, who died in 955 A.D. They have also knocked down tombs of two other prominent medieval saints, Sidi Moctar and Alpha Moya. One Ansar Dine spokesman told the BBC that they plan to destroy every single Sufi shrine in the city, "without exception."

International outrage has been swift. UNESCO, which designates some of Timbuktu's mosques and tombs as World Heritage sites, has desperately urged an end to the campaign of destruction. U.N. 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.

But beyond scolding the Islamists of the Sahel, there's little anyone can do to stop this wretched bout of iconoclasm. History is littered with the debris of toppled temples and smashed idols. Salafists and others who believe in a more orthodox brand of Islam harbor a particular animosity to 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. Islam, as it spread outside the Arabian world, did so in large part through the peaceful teachings of Sufi orders and wandering mendicants — not just under the hooves of conquering Arab armies. Yet, recently, Sufi shrines have come under attack from emboldened and radicalized puritans in countries like Egypt and Libya; in Pakistan, the Taliban and its affiliates have waged a sectarian war on Sufis, systematically targeting dozens of tombs and Sufi sites, while killing hundreds of devotees.


Mali: Why Islamists Are Destroying Timbuktu's Holy Shrines | World | TIME.com
Read more: Mali: Why Islamists Are Destroying Timbuktu's Holy Shrines | World | TIME.com

 

[Nagraj]

@Ray Sir,
As an atheist i feel History is more important then religion.
religion is valuable only as it allows to under beliefs of our predecessors.
to me religion is useless without history.
without history all those beautiful hymes and verses become nothing more then bunch of codes meaningless sentences which we recite like zomies without feeling or understanding the deeper meaning behind them.
what do you think???

 

[Ray]

While this happened in Mali and should not concern Indians but it does.

The unfortunate part of backlash in India is not the fault of Muslims. It is the fault that squarely lies on the Govt of India.

If the law and the principle of equality was applied, there would be none of these horrid divides.

The Govt of India has always appeared to give sops to Muslim and keep them beyond the application of law or change the law to suit the Muslims as in the Shah Bano case.

And yet, all they have done for the Muslims are mere cosmetic. Nothing beyond that. The poor amongst the Muslim (as is in the case of the Scheduled Castes and Tribes) continue to suffer, while those who have benefited, continue to reap the harvest.

Take the case of the Ahmediyas. India has a significant Ahmadiyya population. Most of them live in Rajasthan, Orissa, Haryana, Bihar, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, and a few in Punjab in the area of Qadian. In India,

Ahmadis are considered to be Muslims by the Government of India. This recognition is supported by a court verdict (Shihabuddin Koya vs. Ahammed Koya, A.I.R. 1971 Ker 206).

There is no legislation that declares Ahmadis non-Muslims or limits their activities,

And yet, they are not allowed to sit on the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, a body of religious leaders India's government recognises as representative of Indian Muslims.

So, it does appear that the Govt of India is either incapable and impotent of implementing its stupid diktats fearing a loss of votes or the Muslims are right that the Ahmediyas are non Muslims.

If only the Govt took a view and implemented it, it would not give fodder to those who wish to decry the Muslims that they get away with murder.

Sufis are excellent human beings and they too are not taken to be real Muslims by the hard core.

Kashmiris are Sufis, but are they?

While all Muslims believe that they are on the pathway to God and hope to become close to God in Paradise—after death and after the "Final Judgment"—Sufis also believe that it is possible to draw closer to God and to more fully embrace the Divine Presence in this life.

The chief aim of all Sufis is to seek the pleasing of God by working to restore within themselves the primordial state of fitra described in the Qur'an. In this state nothing one does defies God, and all is undertaken with the single motivation of love of God.

To understand the issue of contradiction one could read:


The Naqshbandi/Saifiyya
Battle for Islamic Tradition
http://anwaaremadina.dk/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Lizzio_20061.pdf

 

[Ray]

what do you think???

Nagraj,

Actually, one could forgive my views since I am on the other side of the spectrum.

I am not an atheist. I am still beyond that.

I am an animist.

To me there is no separation between the spiritual and physical (or material) world,

I believe what I see.

 

[Ray]

I have experienced Sufism in Kashmir.

It is beautiful and peaceful in content and so harmonious.

And yet, I have been caught in gun battle between the Sunni and the Sufis during Moharrum when I was newly married and visiting my in laws near City Station in Lucknow!

Totally crazy!

That in no way was Sufism, and instead was totally disgraceful antecedent from history of temporal ascendancy battle demeaning and defiling the beauty of the spiritual!

Read the books of Islam (leave out those which are not favourable to the other religions) and you will find it very sublime.

Read the Hadith. There are many things that one could apply for one's good health and living even if one is not a Muslim!

One does not have to embrace a religion to understand the goodness of humanity!

 

[maomao]

Well, this is an unhappyness.

Religion is a crap. Whatever be it the Islamism or another. All religions for me are equal in their potential to dumb down the human beings. I don't think the Islam has more potential to result in violence than other. In the past, Christian fundamentalists set fire on the Alexandria's Great Library that the moslems had preserved till then.

I'm sorry to inform you that Alexandria was destroyed by Amr, by the order of the Caliph Omar the Islamic people, and actually preserved by Coptic Christians!

 

[Nagraj]

Well, this is an unhappyness.

Religion is a crap. Whatever be it the Islamism or another. All religions for me are equal in their potential to dumb down the human beings. I don't think the Islam has more potential to result in violence than other. In the past, Christian fundamentalists set fire on the Alexandria's Great Library that the moslems had preserved till then.

lol no.
it was set on fire by islamists.

 

[Nagraj]

What u say about islam in your writing can be applied to any religion without fail.
i don't see how it makes islam any special??

I have experienced Sufism in Kashmir.

It is beautiful and peaceful in content and so harmonious.

And yet, I have been caught in gun battle between the Sunni and the Sufis during Moharrum when I was newly married and visiting my in laws near City Station in Lucknow!

Totally crazy!

That in no way was Sufism, and instead was totally disgraceful antecedent from history of temporal ascendancy battle demeaning and defiling the beauty of the spiritual!

Read the books of Islam (leave out those which are not favourable to the other religions) and you will find it very sublime.

Read the Hadith. There are many things that one could apply for one's good health and living even if one is not a Muslim!

One does not have to embrace a religion to understand the goodness of humanity!

 

[IBSA]

I'm sorry to inform you that Alexandria was destroyed by Amr, by the order of the Caliph Omar the Islamic people, and actually preserved by Coptic Christians!

lol no.
it was set on fire by islamists.

This is a popular version of history, but there is not consense among the historians about actuality of the destruction.

There a version that Christian Emperor Theodosius I signed an edict forbidden pagan temples, which were destroyed after it. I based my post in this version.

Library of Alexandria - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Nagraj]

hmmm.............
Ancient and modern sources identify four possible occasions for the partial or complete destruction of the Library of Alexandria: Julius Caesar's fire in the Alexandrian War, in 48 BC; the attack of Aurelian in 270 – 275 AD; the decree of Coptic Pope Theophilus in AD 391; and the Muslim conquest in 642 AD or thereafter.