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Technician

Islamists Destroy MORE Historic Monuments

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Again: Islamists destroy monuments, this time in Timbuktu

Al Qaeda-backed Islamists in Mali destroyed centuries-old UNESCO sites Saturday, recalling the 2001 destruction of Buddha statues in Afghanistan by the Taliban.

Al Qaeda-linked Mali Islamists armed with Kalashnikovs and pick-axes destroyed centuries-old mausoleums of saints in the UNESCO-listed city of Timbuktu on Saturday in front of shocked locals, witnesses said.

The Islamist Ansar Dine group backs strict sharia, Islamic law, and considers the shrines of the local Sufi version of Islam to be idolatrous. Sufi shrines have also been attacked by hardline Salafists in Egypt and Libya in the past year.

The attack came just days after UNESCO placed Timbuktu on its list of heritage sites in danger and will recall the 2001 dynamiting by the Taliban of two 6th-century statues of Buddha carved into a cliff in Bamiyan in central Afghanistan.

These religious morons are even trying to erase their own history to better suite their updated beliefs.

They destroy monuments of other religions with smug smiles, but then get butt-hurt when some white guy draws a cartoon of their prophet.

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It's sad, but as a Westerner I think we also have to consider how we may be encouraging this. That we're sticking our dick in the Middle East and Africa, mainly for their oil and other resources, is arguably not making them better places, or its natives and such any more reasonable. And if interventionism is concerned, every time we say "wow, these Muslim extremist morons...," we mainly open the door for more of it.

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I think a collective "fuck you" to the rest of the world is a big motivation in their complete disregard to history or any religion not Islam, but I also see a sort of Mao-ism with their endless cultural revolution. China did the exact same thing to keep a certain amount of hatred and liberation from their past; I feel they are doing the same to keep fire in Islamic bellies.

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when you think about it, myk is right - only the shortsightedness of the western civilization allowed wahhabism (to which salafism is related) to become the most influential branch of islam. we just wanted the saudi oil, so we gave them an infinite amount of money to propagate their ugly, reactionary, stone age sect beliefs throughout large parts of the islamic world.

so this is irony coming to bite us in the ass, like when america put taliban to power just to get the soviet troops out of an inconsequential patch of dried up mountains. those guys exploding their own cultural heritage are probably funded and encouraged by a saudi sugar daddy who "secretly" hates the west while selling us oil for stupid prices.

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dew said:

when you think about it, myk is right - only the shortsightedness of the western civilization allowed wahhabism (to which salafism is related) to become the most influential branch of islam.

Wahhabism existed and was quite popular well before oil was as coveted as it is now for the reasons that it is now. And that's not even looking back 700 years prior when the islamic world decided they would no longer embrace learning and progress as they once had and opted instead to turn their societies backwards, literally.

But to imply that it is the fault of the west that they make good on threats to destroy their own history, in an african nation, is fucked up.

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Quast said:

Wahhabism existed and was quite popular well before oil was as coveted as it is now for the reasons that it is now. And that's not even looking back 700 years prior when the islamic world decided they would no longer embrace learning and progress as they once had and opted instead to turn their societies backwards, literally.

But to imply that it is the fault of the west that they make good on threats to destroy their own history, in an african nation, is fucked up.

The Library of Alexandria and the Sphinx's nose can attest to that. They have been erasing history and knowledge centuries before Western intervention.

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myk said:

It's sad, but as a Westerner I think we also have to consider how we may be encouraging this. That we're sticking our dick in the Middle East and Africa, mainly for their oil and other resources, is arguably not making them better places, or its natives and such any more reasonable. And if interventionism is concerned, every time we say "wow, these Muslim extremist morons...," we mainly open the door for more of it.

I don't profess to know much about US/Middle East relations concerning the acquisition of oil, but this sounds like a good opportunity to remind ourselves of exactly what sort of unflinching, non-negotiable party we've found an enemy in here, and just how dangerous it is to take the stance that the US or any of its affiliates are chiefly responsible for the committed hatred by the Middle East (not at all what I take your post to mean, however, for I acknowledge the dogged determination of the oil industry and the harm it almost certainly brings on this matter - but take issue with the condemning of an overtly antagonistic attitude toward religious extremism). It's tantamount to self destruction to sympathise on any front with an enemy of this kind, and ignorant of the real and present threat to the cultural and literal freedoms that we currently enjoy and increasingly take for granted. Islam extremists have been quick to make foes out of anyone who tread upon their backward interests, be it objecting to the throwing of acid in the faces of women or printing satire from a tiny European nation, and make a point of holding long and lasting grudges (East Timor managed to find its way into the manifesto of a certain Bin Laden) that, even if one could consider the initial fault to be with the West, result in widespread atrocities that are simply too intensely motivated and guided by zealotry that the West might then be considered the propagators of all this violence.

While I accept that it's probably not a good idea to spout off inflammatory remarks from which nothing could be gained, this is an issue which needs to be taken up at every front and given absolutely no room to develop further. The means by which it is tackled, granted, is something that needs working on.

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Quast said:
But to imply that it is the fault of the west that they make good on threats to destroy their own history, in an african nation, is fucked up.

I fail to see why given the invasiveness on Western involvement, the amount of social damage caused by our push to get cheap resources out of their lands, and their relative economic subordination. It goes well beyond how Wahhabism was introduced or spread. At this point, Western influence goes to such a point it's hard to not find some responsibility of ours in nearly any conflict in the regions. Only after isolating those factors and assuming that they make their choices in full sovereignty can we assume the idea is fucked up. Pretending they just "decided to no longer embrace learning and progress" was some kind of whimsy free choice, rather than something they lost or was taken from them, is another related notion that lacks much cultural and historic depth.

It even sickens me a bit when we get more concerned about a historical monument than about the general welfare of the people in the region. I mean, we should take this as another symptom of that issue, rather than blaming their local bully boy for harming a museum piece, and expect to see things we hold valuable sacrificed due to the harm and insensitivity we allow or further. But like I said, it's nasty because this line of thought just leads in circles to yet more violence and more of the same backlashes. We scapegoat extremist Islam to hide our own dogma and predatory incusions, because you can excuse anything once you reduce people to a barbaric caricature, or to culture deeply infected by it. It also splits Middle Eastern and African culture into goody goody "normal citizens" and the "crazy fundamentalists" that pervert them, when it's far more more complex and the extremists are often the only way anger and frustrations are clearly expressed, if in a warped and painful way, that are shared by larger parts of society for many reasons. In that sense, every time we intervene to subdue their "terrorists" we make their general society yet more submissive to our interests and more unable to respond with reason or dignity.

That's what's behind by point, more or less.

st.alfonzo said:
The means by which it is tackled, granted, is something that needs working on.

Okay, I suggest pulling out of the area at least militarily, and selling Western military or security bases overseas to help pay for the debt of the developed world. It will probably give room for certain types of strife and the future is never clear, but there's no saying that would be more damaging that to continue the current path of global inequality.

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Technician said:

The Library of Alexandria and the Sphinx's nose can attest to that. They have been erasing history and knowledge centuries before Western intervention.


The Spinx`s nose was targeted by Napoleon with his cannons as target practice, according to popular legend, it was actually vandalized in 1378 A.D. by Mohammed Sa'im al-Dahr, a "fanatical sufi of the oldest and most highly respected Sufi convent of Cairo. so the Islamist terrorists are to blame even back then. But the burning of the library of Alexandria was a crime in itself. Many precious scrolls were burned by bishops of the Christian faith as well. The Christian church has held us back far more than the Islamic faith. Each religion, Islamic and Christian has committed crimes against history. We would be in a better state today if we had kept the ancient knowledge intact. The dark ages may not have even happened and we would be living in an Atlantean society with bases on Jupiters moons and experiments with teleportation on Phobos and Deimos well underway...

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Islam is a hopeless situation. Muslim-majority countries are without fail poorer, have worse education, are more politically unstable and have a worse human rights record than any of their neighbors. Some of the oil producing countries might not be as poor, and might also be very stable politically, but still be backwards shitholes. Even those that tout themselves to be "moderate" or "westernized" such a Libya, Egypt, Syria etc. are shit compared to Israel, which is right next to them and it NOT Muslim. Pretty much pwns them in every aspect that counts. Turkey is the only one which seems to be playying the "moderate Islam" card right, but even there the internal divisions and values dissonances are strong.

Another case in point: find Bangladesh and Pakistan on the map. Did that? Good. Check their neighboring countries: China, India, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia etc.

They are all pretty populous countries, with pretty much the same type of lifestyle, same climate, etc. and YET you only see immigrants from Bangladesh and Pakistan, who are the only ones with a Muslim majority. You don't see as many Chinese, Indian, Vietnamese or Thai immigrants. Now WHY is that?

What do their non-muslim neighbors have that they don't, and which apparently keeps them from immigrating as massively? What makes it SO preferable to them to pay $10000 to an illegal immigrant smuggler end up selling drugs or washing windscreens and sleeping in squattered appartments with other 50 illegal immigrants in some european capital? Is it really THAT bad back home for them? Again, WHY don't Indians/Thais/Chinese do the same? Why don't they flock to one of the most prosperous Muslim countries instead?

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Maes said:

Another case in point: find Bangladesh and Pakistan on the map. Did that? Good. Check their neighboring countries: China, India, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia etc.

They are all pretty populous countries, with pretty much the same type of lifestyle, same climate, etc. and YET you only see immigrants from Bangladesh and Pakistan, who are the only ones with a Muslim majority. You don't see as many Chinese, Indian, Vietnamese or Thai immigrants. Now WHY is that?

Not the case in the United States; there are tons of Chinese and Indian immigrants here, and I know some Thai and Vietmanese too. Probably moreso than Pakistani.

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Yeah Maes, your argument doesn't really play out in the United States. Here, there aren't too many Muslim immigrants, but we have an absolutely huge Asian immigrant community. It may simply be that different groups tend to immigrate to different regions, thus creating the illusion of disparity between the groups.

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I don't agree with Maes (because I'm too uninformed on this particular situation to have a valid opinion one way or the other), but if anything it seems to me what you guys are saying only strengthen his argument. It takes more resources to move from Asia to the US than to any neighboring country, so intuitively it would seem to me at least some of the people who do make it to the US were in a better situation to start with.

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I'm not referring to legal immigrants (unless you cross an ocean and pass through Mexico, it's a tad hard to immigrate illegally in the USA, I think!) or those communities are present on the territory for several generations. The influx of (legal) Chinese immigrants in the USA during the 19th and early 20th century is well known, plus there are "white guilt" stories behind the Vietnamese immigrants too. The main difference is that those people entered legally through the official frontier. And a Pakistani that can make it to the US probably does so by legal means, and is probably only accepted due to exceptional -for Pakistani standards- qualifications, e.g. specialized scientist.

I'm referring to the hordes of illegal immigrants that cross Asian and Africa and then the Mediterranean on foot, hidden in trucks, in boats, etc.

I understand that you don't get much of that in the USA (only to a much lesser extent from Mexico -insert wetback jokes here-), but it's a plague for Europe, and in particular for my country, Greece, which is right at the crossroad of this flux of illegal immigrants. The VAST majority of them are Muslim (again, I wonder WHY?), unqualified, and generally a hopeless brown mob. The funny thing is that even if they manage to settle in a place which is better than their home country, they forget how "well" Islam has treated them and yearn for its "lost values" (actually no: they try imposing them) which drove them away in the first place.

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Maes said:

Israel

you mean the country with one of the craziest, most unbalanced budget in the world? if greece had the same finanical support by US/EU as israel, you'd be second sweden. :P

Maes said:

Another case in point: find Bangladesh and Pakistan on the map. Did that? Good. Check their neighboring countries: China, India, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia etc.

They are all pretty populous countries, with pretty much the same type of lifestyle, same climate, etc. and YET you only see immigrants from Bangladesh and Pakistan, who are the only ones with a Muslim majority. You don't see as many Chinese, Indian, Vietnamese or Thai immigrants. Now WHY is that?

central europe has next to zero bangladeshi or pakistani immigrants, but there are plenty of vietnamese folks around. it's actually the strongest non-european minority in my country. television tells me there are tons of chinese in the US, as well indians in both US/UK. i have no idea if there are countries with large clusters of cambodian immigrants, but cambodia has been a hellhole with locked borders for most of the 20th century, so i'd blame that. thailand has been a rich asian dragon economy for some time now, but i dunno enough about it to scratch even that off your list. still, 4 out of 5 ain't bad!

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dew said:

central europe


TBQH, no Central Europe (though CZ makes me think more of "Eastern Europe" (insert old tired Communist/Iron Courtain/Red Scare joke here) countries would be considered as a desirable destination for hopeless illegal immigrants, not until now at least, being sources of emigrants themselves.

Immigrants are actually attracted to the "big names" like France, UK, Germany etc. and much less (due to distance) to US, Australia etc. They hear fairytales about how in those countries there's "bread and pussy" for everyone, and they are willing to pay thousand of dollars to traffickers who will smuggle them in. Then reality kicks in, and find themselves unwanted, unwashed, jobless, and living like animals, but that's another story. That's where I wonder if they REALLY knew what they were doing by leaving their home countries. I have a hard time believing they were worse off there.

I realize that the tables have turned now, and CZ, with a GDP per capita higher than Greece, might be more attractive now, but for now you're -luckily for you- off the "sights" of the wretched hordes. Greece just happens to be in a very bad geographical spot at a very bad time (as usual), and thanks to the unfair Dublin 2 laws, we can't even expel or forward those illegal immigrants to their intended destination.

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In my mind religion is a disease that can only be of any positive value if it is incredibly moderate and used entirely as a way to instill morals, and even then it is unnecessary and illogical for any rational person to need it.

Radical Islamics are perhaps the worst example of what leads me to this decision, but Christianity, old/dead religions and various cults have also certainly been just as bad, if not worse, throughout history.

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Phobus said:

Radical Islamics are perhaps the worst example of what leads me to this decision, but Christianity, old/dead religions and various cults have also certainly been just as bad, if not worse, throughout history.


With the big difference being that in the vast majority of the Christian world practical considerations eventually trumped religion and their societies eventually grew out of such dangerous extremisms and found a balance (except in certain parts of the USA, including Born Again Christians and Amish).

On the contrary, most of the Muslim world didn't and they are still at the same point they were centuries ago, and they are actively running towards the past, confused and bombarded with contrasting messages from an ever-changing, competitive, globalized world. It would be as if the Christian world went into isolation and started reverting into Quaker and Amish status at full-speed.

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Some literate people wrote long ago a set of statements about how they thought the world worked, and what should be done as a society in order to live virtuously. Centuries later, a bunch of thuggish fucktards, who blindly follow what they think their holy texts say, are busily destroying their own country's heritage because that's what their bullshit tells them to do; and mostly because they're human-shaped garbage that should be buried in manure as compost is the only thing of value that could be done with them.

Now the trick question here is: are we talking about the Ansar Dine extremists putting the Islamist crowbar to their monuments, or about the EU politicians putting the Austerist crowbar to their economy?

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Gez said:

Now the trick question here is: are we talking about the Ansar Dine extremists putting the Islamist crowbar to their monuments, or about the EU politicians putting the Austerist crowbar to their economy?


Awesome. This is definitively going into my bag of tricks.

As for the answer, they both have pretty much jumped the proverbial shark, each one in their unique, but equally destructive way.

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mostly because they're human-shaped garbage that should be buried in manure as compost is the only thing of value that could be done with them.


They are people, like yourself. Their behaviour and belief system is not a cause but a result of the way and conditions in which they were brought up. As despicable as we think they behave, it does have a 'reason' other than malice.

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Mordeth said:

They are people, like yourself.

And like the women and children that they rape.

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Maes said:

With the big difference being that in the vast majority of the Christian world practical considerations eventually trumped religion and their societies eventually grew out of such dangerous extremisms and found a balance (except in certain parts of the USA, including Born Again Christians and Amish).

those american exceptions seem pretty damn significant to me! i mean, no crazy muslim is trying to weasel his way into the top tiers of the government of the strongest country in the world. except that one who's president, of course.

oh and islam is roughly 1400 years old. what was christianity doing at that age? split into two major factions - check. entering a gold age through mercantilism - check. undertaking violent crusades into the heart of the empire of the unbelievers - check. trying to reconquer their lands from the hands of a culturally superior civilization - check.

maybe we should expect a wycleff, a hus and a luther of islam pretty soon. and then the birth of a third branch of the religion. and then a massive, self-eating war between the new one and the old one. and after many years or centuries, we'll get born again muslims or saudish as well!

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dew said:

oh and islam is roughly 1400 years old. what was christianity doing at that age?

This is a bullshit argument. Religions (like nations, and cultures) aren't biological entities who are born, grow up, mate, give birth, grow old, and die. It is stupid to compare Islam with Christianity if what you get out of it is saying we should give them 622 years to mature because they're at the "rebellious adolescent" phase right now. What's next, saying Scientology is a super nice religion, because if you compare them with Islam at the same, they aren't going on an militarily-expansionist phase?

The behavior of a society is unrelated to the age of that society. Otherwise, the USA would be at the social and cultural level of Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire.

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dew said:

maybe we should expect a wycleff, a hus and a luther of islam pretty soon. and then the birth of a third branch of the religion. and then a massive, self-eating war between the new one and the old one. and after many years or centuries, we'll get born again muslims or saudish as well!


Islam has had (and still has) more moderate branches, as well as competing factions. What's bad is that it's the most troublesome and radical ones that are calling the shots for some centuries now, and "pieces of work" like the Taliban aren't but their most obvious manifestations to the casual Western observer.

In Dan Diner's LOST IN THE SACRED: Why the Muslim World Stood Still?, this is attributed to the -still ongoing- rise in predominance of the most conservative and isolationist Islamic school of thoughts ever since the rise in power of the Ottoman Empire.

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gez: way to ruin the joke. :P i'd also say putting nations and religions into the same shelf is wrong, because the former is just localpatriotism in an institutionalized form, while the latter is a powerful meme that infects nations and societies and fights with other similar memes. you can convert people with surprising ease, but you can't make someone american when he lives elsewhere - that's a lesson america is still learning these days. :)

also i'm pretty sure you're wrong with your scientology parallel as well. christian and muslim faith were both spreading like wildfire since their inception, while scientology... agh, why do i even have to explain this, fuck sakes? you should've used a proper modern religion like communism or eco-fundamentalism!

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Gez said:

Otherwise, the USA would be at the social and cultural level of Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire.

Actually, the parallels are a hell of a lot closer than you think.

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I think "Salafists" would be better. Let's start splitting these dudes from the main strains of Islam in the media and watch things start to change a bit.

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