Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: longnshort who wrote (661515)	7/10/2012 2:45:05 PM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 1586461

Advancing radical Islamists lay waste to religious heritage in Muslim world By Tom Heneghan July 4, 2012 blogs.reuters.com (A man walks at the Sidi Jubran shrine, which was destroyed by Salafists, in Zlitan city, about 160 km (90 miles) west of Tripoli March 13, 2012. The shrine's caretaker Faraj al-Shimi, saw 16 bearded Salafis carrying Kalashnikovs who broke into the tomb using a Caterpillar tractor. REUTERS/Anis Mili) The grim sacking of Sufi shrines in Timbuktu is the latest chapter in an assault on prized religious heritage across the Muslim world that has picked up over the past decade with the spread of radical Islamism. The world got a first taste of this iconoclasm in 2001, when Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban blew up two huge 6th-century statues of Buddha despite an international outcry. Since then, radical Islamists have also struck holy sites of other faiths, especially Christian churches. But their most frequent targets have been mosques and shrines of other Muslims loyal to a version of Islam less puritanical than their own. This violence has spread through Pakistan, starting near the Afghan border and fanning out to strike famous Sufi shrines as far away as Lahore and southern Punjab. (Zlitan residents protest against the destruction of tombs in front of the shrine of 15th-century Sufi scholar Abdel Salam al-Asmar in Zlitan city, about 160 km (90 miles) west of Tripoli March 13, 2012. REUTERS/Anis Mili) It broke out in the Middle East last year when, in the wake of the Arab Spring, once-repressed Salafi groups destroyed shrines in Egypt. In Libya, some militants dug up Sufi saints’ graves and dumped their remains on garbage heaps. Like the radicals’ strict theology, this assault on rival religious heritage goes back to the dawn of Islam and is rigorously enforced in its birthplace, Saudi Arabia. Sanda Ould Boumama of the Ansar Dine group now reducing Timbuktu’s tombs to rubble told France’s RFI radio: “When the Prophet (Mohammad) entered Mecca, he said all the mausoleums should be destroyed. And that’s what we’re repeating.” (The remains of the Sheikh Zewaid shrine is seen after it was blown up by Islamist extremists, at a graveyard in Sheikh Zewaid city, in north Sinai, March 7, 2012. REUTERS/Asmaa Waguih)