The burning of Sufi manuscripts by Sunni radicals in Timbuktu is the latest event in a campaign of iconoclasm. Ansar Dine, the Salafi organisation that has been terrorising Mali in recent times, has been imposing its abhorrent orthodoxy on the ruins of numerous sacred mosques and mausoleums in what represents the cultural equivalent of genocide.
Mali is in the news now, of course, but the erasure of the heritage of Sufism from the region is widespread. Shrines, libraries and mosques in Libya have been destroyed to the helplessness or indifference of authorities and the enthusiastic applause of Saudi clerics. Civilisations that took centuries to build are being despoiled in a matter of weeks.
In Tunisia, dozens of shrines are said to have been torched in the last year, and gatherings of Sufis have been assaulted by violent Salafists. In Egypt, believers have had to form human shields around their shrines to protect them from harm. One of them, the Sheikh Zuwayed Mausoleum, has faced three attacks in the last years: two bombings and one rocket-propelled grenade. The Arab Spring, to use an unoriginal but apt phrase, has turned into a Sufi winter.
In other parts of the Islamic world sectarian conflict and terrorism has led to innumerable deaths among Shia minorities. The Shia of Quetta in Pakistan, says Danya Hasan of Human Rights Watch, “live under siege”. This month a suicide bomber walked into a snooker club and killed 82 people. Last week the latest in a series of attacks on places of worship and residential districts in Iraq claimed 23 lives in a village north of Baghdad. Even in Indonesia Shia houses have been burned down and their occupants relocated.
Islamic sectarianism, like the assaults on Christian civilisations in the region, is destroying hundreds of lives and thousands of years of history. Yet despite the scale of the damage these attacks are causing, and despite the magnitude of the hatred they are built upon, and even despite the fact that sectarian stirrings are eerily prevalent in Britain, one hears little of them in mainstream commentary. People have become suddenly energised by Mali but this is because it is the object of a war. Libya, which is still being thought of as a great success, and Iraq, which has been forgotten as an embarrassing failure, are on next to no one’s lips. As for Pakistan, well, that is too damn depressing for most people to think about.
Where, though, I wonder, are the people who tend to fret about “Islamophobia”? You would think that this would be of interest to them. The supremacist assumptions, demonisation of minorities and eliminationist assertions of the resultant hatred meet and exceed all of the criteria for the anti-Muslim bigotry they strive to diagnose. That they ignore it is a consequence of the selectivity with which they perceive perpetrators but also has something to do with the unpleasant fact that the supremacist intolerance it is evidence of confirms some of the fears that they dismiss as dangerously unwarranted.
January 30, 2013 at 4:52 pm
So…do we need to invade Saudi Arabia and compell a regime change? It seems like much of the ferment in the world is sponsored by our good buddies on the Penninsula!
I’m not holding my breath for THIS foreign policy initiative. Better to complain about Iran while we sponsor terrorist attacks and destroy their economy.
January 30, 2013 at 4:55 pm
No, but we do need to avoid it like an associate with a poor stomach and a fondness for boiled cabbage and baked beans.
January 30, 2013 at 4:56 pm
Plus, I would note that the Republican Loony Tune brigade is focusing on one embassy attack while ignoring the disatrous results of our* Libyan adventure. Will Mali become another quagmire? Of course, quagmires are PROFITABLE for the war industry, so I am not expecting anything but more “interventions” which lead to futher interventions which lead to more instability. On and on and on and on ka-ching $$$$$.
* Of course, Europe, which feels entitled to lecture the U.S. on morality in foreign policy, is largely responsible for the Libyan debacle.
January 30, 2013 at 5:03 pm
Of course, avoiding it is not easy when when we are sending them billions of dollars per year!
January 30, 2013 at 5:15 pm
Everybody is ignoring Libya. The instability and fanaticism that is present in the nation might inhibit our ability to feel smug about the worth of Western intervention so it must be overlooked.
I can’t predict the consequences of the Mali intervention. Unlike recent wars, it is not in opposition to an established power structure, which means there is less risk of institutional collapse. I am concerned, however, by the prospect of militants spilling out across the region. How many interventions, one grimly wonders, will be seen as necessary in the coming years.
Of course, avoiding it is not easy when when we are sending them billions of dollars per year!
I don’t know how much aid the US gives to the Saudis but whatever it is I’m sure that they could live without it and your people could use it.
January 30, 2013 at 5:25 pm
I was talking about oil revenues.
Of course, a good part of that money comes back when we sell them the most advanced military technology (at a nice profit).
January 30, 2013 at 5:37 pm
Ah, yes. Well, that is a complication. But even if US energy independence is idealistic, it need not be too dependent on its Salafi friends. Think of all the oil your government could save on the tanks and planes that get pushed into action against its beturbaned allies’ offshoots.
February 1, 2013 at 1:23 pm
Just to clarify, these aren’t Sufi manuscripts per se. They’re more varied manuscripts dating to the 13th Century, some of which is religious in nature (such as copies of the Quran). So, in this instance at least, this is iconoclasm, not sectarianism.
February 1, 2013 at 1:35 pm
Thanks, Naadir. You’re right. The destruction of the Sufi tombs, however, shows the latter impulse at work.