Muslims are 500 years too late

The Chinese and Indians believe in these Muslim shrines as well. But they visit these shrines to request ‘empat nombor ekor’, as do some Malays too. Surprisingly, whether coincidence or what, some of these numbers do strike, and this strengthens the belief in these shrines when so-and-so is reported to have won a large sum of money from a number they got from the ‘keramat’ or ‘datok’.

NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin

Mali Islamists destroy more holy Timbuktu sites

(Reuters) - BAMAKO: Al Qaeda-linked Mali Islamists armed with guns and pick-axes continued to destroy ancient mausoleums in the famed city of Timbuktu yesterday, the second day of attacks on the UNESCO heritage sites, witnesses said.

The Salafist 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 hard-line Salafists in Egypt and Libya in the past year.

Residents say the group has threatened to destroy all of the 16 main mausoleum sites in Timbuktu despite the international outcry against the attacks. UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova has called for an immediate halt to the attacks.

“We are subject to religion and not to international opinion. Building on graves is contrary to Islam. We are destroying the mausoleums because it is ordained by our religion,” Oumar Ould Hamaha, a spokesman for Ansar Dine, told Reuters by telephone from the northern city on Sunday.

Armed with Kalashnikovs and pick-axes, about 30 militants on Sunday destroyed three centuries-old mausoleums of saints, local journalist Yaya Tandina told Reuters.

“They had armed men guarding the door. Just like yesterday, the population did not react. They (population) said we need to let them (the Islamists) do what they want, hoping that someday we will rebuild the tombs,” Tandina said.

Timbuktu resident Hamed Mohamed said the Islamists destroyed the tombs of Sidi Elmety, Mahamane Elmety and Cheick Sidi Amar, all in the west of the city.

Ansar Dine is made up of Islamist fighters of various nationalities including Malians, Algerians and Nigerians.

“What shocks me the most is the presence of foreigners among them who do it with mockery while shouting Allah Akbar,” Mohamed said. “For me it is a declaration of war and a crime against our cultural heritage. It is time that the international community helped us.”

Tandina and other witnesses said Ansar Dine had on Saturday destroyed the mausoleums of three local saints – Sidi Mahmoud, Sidi El Mokhtar and Alfa Moya – and at least seven tombs.

The attack came 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.

*****************************************

The key word in the news item above is Salafi. The Muslims who embarked on this ‘cleansing’ exercise are Salafis.

The Salafis have a different interpretation of the Shariah compared to, say, the Sunnis or Shiahs. In Saudi Arabia, which is Salafi, when you die, even for Kings, your body is just dumped in the desert with no tombstones to mark your grave. Within just months, because of the shifting desert sands, no one will know where you were buried. Hence you will soon be forgotten, as there is no grave to visit and no shrine to prove you ever existed.

Many Sunnis and Shiahs, however, believe in shrines and saints. And they visit these shrines of renowned religious people (or saints) to pray and request favours. There are many such shrines in South East Asia, Singapore included. And Muslims visit these shrines on a sort of pilgrimage and believe that you can request things from these dead people and your request would be granted.

The Chinese and Indians believe in these Muslim shrines as well. But they visit these shrines to request ‘empat nombor ekor’, as do some Malays too. Surprisingly, whether coincidence or what, some of these numbers do strike, and this strengthens the belief in these shrines when so-and-so is reported to have won a large sum of money from a number they got from the ‘keramat’ or ‘datok’.

England used to have this same problem hundreds of years ago. But around the early 1500s, King Henry VIII ordered all these shrines to be demolished and the churches that housed these shrines to be burned down. They also passed a law to make praying at shrines illegal and punishable by torture or even death. Priests who persisted in the ‘old ways’ were also hanged or burned alive at the stake. So now England is free of the problem, which only now the Muslims appear to be addressing.

Anyway, while on the subject of England, do you know that Adolf Hitler and the Nazis were not the first to persecute the Jews? Actually, it was the Muslims and the English who started this trend. Hitler only copied what had already been done much earlier.

In 534, the Justinian Code of Christendom degraded Jews to second-class citizens. In 807, Harun al-Rashid, the most ‘liberal’ Caliph who is touted as the man responsible for the ‘Golden Age of Islam’, ordered all Jews to wear yellow badges.

Persecution of England's Jews increased with massacres at London and York during the time of the 11th century Crusades. In 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council, presided over by Pope Innocent III, made its infamous decree. Canon 68 declared: Jews and Saracens [Muslims] of both sexes in every Christian province and at all times shall be marked off in the eyes of the public from other peoples through the character of their dress. In 1217, King Henry III of England ordered Jews to wear on the front of their upper garment the two tables of the Ten Commandments made of white linen or parchment.

In 1269, King Louis IX of France decreed that Jewish men and women were to wear yellow badges on their outer garment, both front and back. In 1290, during the reign of King Edward I of England, all Jews were expelled from England and any Jew still found on English soil was put to death.

Have we really changed much these last 2,000 years? Same shit different days, that’s all.