BBC: Timbuktu mayor: Mali rebels torched library of historic manuscripts

Not only are the people of Mali being attacked, but so is a library that proves that science and math where being found and developed in the Middle Ages, in South Africa.  It ought to be a World Heritage Site, why would the Muslim attackers want to destroy the library?

If you want to control people, keep them ignorant.

I’m speechless. This is just incomprehensible. Tell me again why we should tolerate religion.

I’m heartbroken. Those cannot be replaced. I just don’t understand…

In today’s NYTimes, HERE:

Timbuktu Endured Terror Under Harsh Shariah Law

By LYDIA POLGREEN
Published: January 31, 2013

<snip>

After nearly 10 months of occupation by Islamists fighters, many of them linked with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the people of this ancient mud-walled city recounted how they survived the upending of their tranquil lives in a place so remote that its name has become a synonym for the middle of nowhere.

“Our lives were turned upside down,” Dr. Maiga said. “They had guns, so whatever they asked, we did. It was useless to resist.” ...

Thankfully not all of the manuscripts were lost. The irony here is that the University of Timbuktu is one of the oldest in the World and at one time had 25,000 students in attendance. Muslims then preserved learning only to have it destroyed by their ignorant descendants. There’s a lesson to be learned.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/mali-manuscripts-in-timbuktu-are-mostly-safe-south-africa-university-says/2013/01/30/4ad38f12-6b05-11e2-9a0b-db931670f35d_story.html

Cap’t Jack

jump_in_the_pit - 31 January 2013 11:02 AM

BBC: Timbuktu mayor: Mali rebels torched library of historic manuscripts

Not only are the people of Mali being attacked, but so is a library that proves that science and math where being found and developed in the Middle Ages, in South Africa.  It ought to be a World Heritage Site, why would the Muslim attackers want to destroy the library?

Flat out anti intellectualism?

garythehuman - 31 January 2013 02:36 PM

If you want to control people, keep them ignorant.

Good point.

jump_in_the_pit - 31 January 2013 11:02 AM

BBC: Timbuktu mayor: Mali rebels torched library of historic manuscripts

Not only are the people of Mali being attacked, but so is a library that proves that science and math where being found and developed in the Middle Ages, in South Africa.  It ought to be a World Heritage Site, why would the Muslim attackers want to destroy the library?

For the same reason the Library at Alexandria was destroyed: The insistence by church leaders on the continuation of ignorance, plain and simple.

“At the solicitation of Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria, the emperor issued an order at this time for the demolition of the heathen temples in that city; commanding also that it should be put in execution under the direction of Theophilus. Seizing this opportunity, Theophilus exerted himself to the utmost to expose the pagan mysteries to contempt. And to begin with, he caused the Mithreum to be cleaned out, and exhibited to public view the tokens of its bloody mysteries. Then he destroyed the Serapeum, and the bloody rites of the Mithreum he publicly caricatured; the Serapeum also he showed full of extravagant superstitions, and he had the phalli of Priapus carried through the midst of the forum. [...] Thus this disturbance having been terminated, the governor of Alexandria, and the commander-in-chief of the troops in Egypt, assisted Theophilus in demolishing the heathen temples.”
—Socrates; Roberts, Alexander; Donaldson, James (1885), “Socrates: Book V: Chapter 16”, in Philip Schaff et al., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, II, II

Lois

And what makes you think that if the Tea Party Republicans were to win both houses and the executive that they wouldn’t vote to get rid of our library system starting with the Library of Congress?

Occam