The Destruction Of Historic Timbuktu By Religious Fanatics

Far right "Christian" fundamentalist Bryan Fischer is one of America's noisiest and most virulent anti-Islamic hatemongers. Barely a day goes by when he isn't tweeting some crap about how Islam is not a religion of peace because some crackpots did something outrageous in the name of Allah. Fisher's rage against religionist excess, he never seems to understand, is what lumps him and his followers in with the loathsome Muslim fundamentalists and extremists he derides. He is them; they are him.

A few years ago, Roland and I spent a month traveling through Mali, a unique and edifying experience. Since then, the country has fallen apart... literally. The northern two-thirds of the country have been taken over by the Islamic version-- but religiously and politically-- of Bryan Fischer and his thuggish crowd. And what has ensued should give Americans warning of what would happen if radical right sociopaths like Fischer and the politicians he supports ever get their hands on the levers of power in our own country.

Aside from a couple of superficial mentions by Mitt Romney in the foreign policy presidential debate that doomed his campaign, few Americans have ever heard of Mali. They confuse it with Bali and Maui. No one I tell I went there has a clue where it is, let alone anything about how significant it was historically-- in terms of providing the gold that helped fuel Europe's Renaissance and the music that created American rock'n'roll. But when I mention "Timbuktu" there's usually a glimmer of light behind the eyes-- not that anyone knows where that is either. But at least they've heard of it, usually as some legendary place like Atlantis.

Sunday The Telegraph reported on the latest news in the on-going the Bryan Fischerization of Timbuktu. This is what religion always devolves to:

The rebels' ruthless implementation of their version of Islamic law comes just days after the United Nations approved a military force to wrest back control of the conflict-ridden area.

"Not a single mausoleum will remain in Timbuktu, Allah doesn't like it," Abou Dardar, leader of the Islamist Ansar Dine group, told AFP. "We are in the process of smashing all the hidden mausoleums in the area." Witnesses confirmed the claims.

Anything that doesn't fall under Islam "is not good. Man should only worship Allah," Mohamed Alfoul, a member of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), said.

The vandalism of the Muslim saints' tombs in the UNESCO World Heritage site came a day after other Islamists in the northern city of Gao announced they had amputated two people's hands.

The continued strict application of sharia law is seen as a sign that the armed Islamist groups are unfazed by the UN's green light for the African-led military operation.

Planners have said any intervention cannot be launched before September next year. French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian however told Monday's edition of La Croix newspaper that he thought it could be launched in the first half of 2013.

In July, Islamists destroyed the entrance to a 15th-century mosque in Timbuktu, the so-called "City of 333 Saints."

"The Islamists are currently in the process of destroying all the mausoleums in the area with pickaxes," one witness said.

"I saw Islamists get out of a car near the historic mosque of Timbuktu. They smashed a mausoleum behind a house shouting 'Allah is great, Allah is great'," another resident told AFP.

As well as in cemeteries and mosques, the revered mausoleums are found in alleyways and private residences of the city, an ancient centre of learning and a desert crossroads.

Catherine Ashton, the European Union's foreign policy chief, condemned the Islamists.

A statement from her office said she was "deeply shocked by the brutal destruction of mausoleums and holy shrines in Timbuktu...

"Their destruction is a tragedy not only for the people of Mali, but for the whole world."

Ansar Dine began destroying the cultural treasures in July.

Too Much For A Tweet... Too Little For A Post

If House Dems take back control, they'll have to contemplate the difference between Dracula & Frankenstein

Next Speaker Sweepstakes

One of my favorite congressmembers came over for dinner the other night. Very concerned about all the human garbage lining up to follow Pelosi as Speaker if Dems take back House and she shortens her stay in Congress. Fortunately Steve Israel is so thoroughly disliked by so many Members that he'd have no chance & in the epic battle between Mothra and Godzilla, my dining companion would vote for Wasserman-Schultz, not because there's any unawareness of the character issues but because, "If Hoyer were Speaker, nothing would ever get accomplished. He would feed everything we want to do through the lobbyists and nothing worthwhile would ever come out the other end." Nice! At a live chat at Crooks and Liars Tuesday, Raúl Grijalva suggested a more palatable option: Xavier Becerra (D-CA).

Stuff Happens In Other Countries Too-- Even Beyond the Eurozone

I'm lucky I went to see the 2 gigantic standing Buddhas of Bamian when I was in Afghanistan in 1969. One was built in 507 AD, the other a few decades later. In 2001 the Taliban had them dynamited because they were an affront to their primitive religious prejudices. More recently, I've been writing on my travel blog about how the primitive Tuaregs from the Sahara have swept into Timbuktu and found thousand year old monuments to Sufi saints-- a different sect of the Muslim religion than their own-- to be an affront... so they blew them up. And it gets worse every day.

Islamic extremists destroyed another two mausoleums in the northern Malian city of Timbuktu on Tuesday, attacking a graveyard attached to the city’s most picturesque mosque, according to a historian specializing in the area’s heritage.

Salem Ould Elhadj, a researcher at the Ahmed Baba Institute in Timbuktu, said the members of the radical sect set out with picks and shovels to raze the tombs of two of Timbuktu’s scholars, Baba Babadje and Mahamane Foulane, both of whom are considered saints.

Their mausoleums are in a cemetery attached to the nearly 700-year-old Djingareyber mosque, built in 1325. It’s made of mud and resembles a ziggurat and is one of the most recognizable symbols of the fabled city, often reproduced on postcards.

Both the mosque and the tombs are listed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Ansar Dine, the sect which seized control of northern Mali last month, says they do not recognize any international law, only the law of the Quran. Spokesman Oumar Ould Hamaha said that they have “divine orders” to destroy any grave that is more than 20 centimeters (7.87 inches) tall because anything taller encourages people to orient their prayer toward the deceased rather than toward God.

What's next? The Pyramids? Apparently, yes.

According to several reports in the Arabic media, prominent Muslim clerics have begun to call for the demolition of Egypt’s Great Pyramids-- or, in the words of Saudi Sheikh Ali bin Said al-Rabi‘i, those “symbols of paganism,” which Egypt’s Salafi party has long planned to cover with wax. Most recently, Bahrain’s “Sheikh of Sunni Sheikhs” and President of National Unity, Abd al-Latif al-Mahmoud, called on Egypt’s new president, Muhammad Morsi, to “destroy the Pyramids and accomplish what the Sahabi Amr bin al-As could not."

This is a reference to the Muslim Prophet Muhammad’s companion, Amr bin al-As and his Arabian tribesmen, who invaded and conquered Egypt circa 641. Under al-As and subsequent Muslim rule, many Egyptian antiquities were destroyed as relics of infidelity.  While most Western academics argue otherwise, according to early Muslim writers, the great Library of Alexandria itself-- deemed a repository of pagan knowledge contradicting the Koran-- was destroyed under bin al-As’s reign and in compliance with Caliph Omar’s command.

Maine... Good For The Gays?

A friend in Maine told me to ignore polling that shows most Mainers would vote in favor of gay marriage now. "We just tell that to the pollsters because we don't want to sound like rednecks and bigots. We have enough to be embarrassed about here with LePage spouting off again"

"Governor Romney, you are so white you make white bread look like pumpernickel."

Romney got what he wanted-- material for an ad to run in the Old Confederacy of him being booed at the NAACP Convention:



Ever wonder what it looks like when the GOP racist brain trust gets together to strategize with Willard about "The Blacks?" (And yes, Romney has always had a screwed up relationship with the NAACP.)




UPDATE: Looks Like The Pyramids Are Safe After All

The "call" to destroy the Pyramids seems to be a hoax. Something didn't smell right to me about it and this morning I read it's a rumor being perpetrated by right-wing bloggers and Muslim-haters.

To Timbuktou and back -- Howie reports from Mali

Roland and I were traipsing around Sanga last week -- a place so foreign to the American experience that one would have to be on another planet to find something more exotic -- when we ran into a gaggle of American Peace Corp volunteers on holiday. They're stationed around West Africa, mostly Mali and Burkina Faso, I gathered, and the State Department and U.S. Embassy in Bamako have decreed that no Peace Corp volunteers are allowed to venture north of some imaginary line (like around Mopti, I think), which means no Timbuktou. They said it is too dangerous because of Tuareg bandits on the roads, and that the local airlines, C.A.M. and M.A.E., are too dangerous (i.e., noncompliant with FAA guidelines) for Americans to fly on, so that their employees could not go to the northern two-thirds of the country.

We spent a few days in Timbuktou, which gets bad-mouthed by most tourists as not worth the trip. They're wrong. Timbuktou is fascinating and exotic, and if it doesn't live up to your dreams of the 13th century or to Paul Bowles' Sheltering Sky, get real and open up to what there actually is being offered. As for danger, there's nothing remotely dangerous, other than a difficult road getting there, the bad exhaust fumes from motorbikes in town and the fucking mosquitoes. (We've just given up on not being bitten; it's not possible. Just learn to love the Malarone.)

We were waiting for a couple hours for the ferry to take us across the Niger on the way to Timbuktou.

The settlement there is a Bella one. Until 1973's epoch drought nearly wiped out the Tuareg's camels and herds, the Bella had been their slaves. In 1973, basically because the Tuareg couldn't feed them anymore, they emancipated them -- although I have heard that there are still some small services that many of them do for the Tuareg (like when there is a wedding or something).

Anyway, this Bella settlement was all festive and bustling, like all the villages we visited in Mali, when a couple of pickup trucks filled with Tuaregs pulled up to the bank of the river. Suddenly things got much quieter. Many of the little children seemed to disappear. It reminded me of a scene from Star Wars, when some alien warrior people dropped by a space cafe.

Anyway, the Tuaregs were pretty well-armed with swords and daggers and God knows what else, and they don't seem to smile much -- no chatty "bonjour"s, and they certainly don't ask you for a Bic or an empty water bottle or candy. The Tuareg War ended in the mid-'90s, though, and they seem to be peaceable enough (except around Kidal) and way in the northern Sahara where Mali, Algeria and Mauretania share vast trackless wastes. In Timbuktou, they were certainly easy enough to get along with.

In fact, one of our most memorable adventures was when our guide, Mohammed, took us out into the desert one night to meet some Tuaregs who had just come from Araouane to trade for millet. They were also open to trade for the stuff we no longer needed -- mostly stuff Roland had picked up at the 99-cent store before coming here, like a pair of cheap extra sunglasses, as well as my REI walking sticks, half a dozen cans of sardines, shaving kits from Air France, a T-shirt, a roll of toilet paper, organic mosquito repellent (which seems to attract mosquitoes), etc. We got some nice Tuareg "silver" bracelets, a pipe and an agate necklace, and had a long Tuareg tea ceremony before this whole thing got started -- all by the light of the moon and stars.

I mentioned the other day that Mali is a Muslim country, in the context of how Muslim countries are normally safe places to travel. Like I've been saying, Mali certainly seems safe enough, but it doesn't actually seem all that Muslim. Women aren't covered up, and are everywhere, and seem to play leadership roles in society. I've seen more women covered head to toe in London than in Bamako. And the dancing -- well, to say some of it is erotic doesn't even begin to suggest how a Muslim fundie cleric would react.

The dour Tuaregs seem to take it more seriously than most.

A couple weeks ago I went to a wedding celebration out in the sticks. For some reason I had imagined it would be something like one I went to in a small village in Afghanistan in 1969 -- real small, two family compounds. There were no women at that one. No bride, no groom's mother. No, it wasn't a forerunner of a "No on 8" reform in pre-Taliban Afghanistan. The women were kept in strictest purdah, and although I was living in the house for months and the groom was my best friend, I never did meet his new wife. Instead of women, the entertainment at the Afghan wedding was dancing boys -- really, really young ones-- with some kohl and cheap jewlery. My friend's grandfather grabbed one, quite forcibly, and raped him behind a building while the festivities proceeded. Afterwards the disheveled boy straightened his outfit and got back into the dance, looking mighty pissed off.

The Malian festivities were nothing like that -- a fully integrated affair with raucous joy, lots of music and dancing, mostly led by women. Almost all the local celebrities who were made a big fuss over were women, including celebrated singer Mah Kouyate, who now lives in Burkina Faso and made the trip all the way to Mali. The only male celebrity, other than a famous drummer who was playing, was some local version of Liberace, who fancied himself the M.C.

But below the surface, Malian women have some big problems to contend with, even if you don't consider polygamy a problem in and of itself. Everyone tells me that as soon as a Malian man marries he's out looking for as much side action as he can find and that the women are pretty pissed off. They're also pregnant a lot. Men here hate condoms. One guy we met in Dogon country -- although he's from Segou and has been to NYC -- says he would never use a condom because it would make him unable to perform up to par. And, yes, AIDS is a gigantic problem here.

Anyway, if you're now forewarned about the dangers of sex here, consider the road travel -- or any travel. We didn't let the knowledge that a hippo can break apart a pinasse ruin our wonderful day of floating down the Niger and Bani Rivers near Mopti visiting Bozo fishing villages. Some tourists took the three-day boat trip (two nights camping) from Bamako to Timbuktou. We drove from Sanga in Dogon country after three days there. Simply put, the road from Sanga to Douentza, halfway from Dogone to Timbuktou, has to be the worst road on earth. People talk about how bad the Timbuktou road itself is -- and it's rutted, washboardlike and uncomfortable, and we broke down in the desert twice -- but it is nothing compared with the Sanga road, which is just various-sized boulders that you drive over while praying.

Roland fears Tupolevs [Russian aircraft] the way I fear sharks and crocodiles, but he was willing to pay anything to get on one to get out of Timbuktou without having to get back on the terrible road again. (I might mention that the road from Bamako in the west to Gao in the east, which covers much of the populated parts of the country, is a decent two-lane paved road.) The airlines were a little lax and dicey, but we made it fine, and who cares if there was no security whatsoever, and if the stewardess returned some guy's spear as soon as we took off?

[This is drawn from a post on Howie's Around the World blog.]


UPDATE FROM HOWIE

Roland reminded me that I should have mentioned that in every Dogon village we visited, there was a "special" women's house, where menstruating women are quarantined while they have their period. Pretty primitive!

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