{"id":7905,"date":"2012-10-26T02:10:07","date_gmt":"2012-10-26T02:10:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=7905"},"modified":"2012-10-26T02:10:07","modified_gmt":"2012-10-26T02:10:07","slug":"silencing-timbuktu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/silencing-timbuktu\/","title":{"rendered":"Silencing Timbuktu"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted on the Corner<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I cannot say that I know that much about Mali, but my ipod knows its music.<\/p>\n

Enter the Islamists.<\/p>\n

The Guardian<\/em> reports<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The pickup halted in Kidal, the far-flung Malian desert town that is home to members of the Grammy award-winning band Tinariwen. Seven AK47-toting militiamen got out and marched to the family home of a local musician. He wasn\u2019t home, but the message delivered to his sister was chilling: \u201cIf you speak to him, tell him that if he ever shows his face in this town again, we\u2019ll cut off all the fingers he uses to play his guitar with.\u201d<\/p>\n

The gang then removed guitars, amplifiers, speakers, microphones and a drum kit from the house, doused them with petrol, and set them ablaze. In northern Mali, religious war has been declared on music.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The savagery is shocking, as is the peculiarly grotesque vandalism of an ancient cultural heritage. But there is also crushing inhumanity of it, the merciless expression of an arid religious monomania with no room, it seems, for so many of the pleasures of this world. It\u2019s not so much an assertion of the idea that there is no God but Allah, but the insistence that there is nothing but Allah\u2026<\/p>\n

Naturally, xenophobia is thrown into the mix:<\/p>\n

An official decree banning all western music was issued on 22 August by a heavily bearded Islamist spokesman in the city of Gao. \u201cWe don\u2019t want the music of Satan. Qur\u2019anic verses must take its place. Sharia demands it,\u201d the decree says.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No sympathy for the devil then.<\/p>\n

The Guardian<\/em> continues:<\/p>\n

The ban comes in the context of a horrifically literal and gratuitous application of Sharia law in all aspects of daily life. Militiamen are cutting off the hands and feet of thieves or stoning adulterers. Smokers, alcohol drinkers and women who are not properly attired are being publicly whipped. As one well-known Touareg musician from Kidal says: \u201cThere\u2019s a lack of joy. No one is dancing. There are no parties. Everybody\u2019s under this kind of spell. It\u2019s strange.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ansar adds: \u201cPeople think that the problem is new. But the menace of al-Qaida started to have an effect on us in 2007. That\u2019s when al-Qaida people started to appear in the desert. They came to the nomad camps near Essakane [the beautiful dunes to the west of Timbuktu where the Festival in the Desert used to be held] and at first they were pleasant and said, \u2018Don\u2019t worry, we\u2019re Muslims like you.\u2019 Then they began to say, \u2018We have a common enemy, which is the west.\u2019 That\u2019s when I understood that things were going to get difficult.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the whole\u2014terrible\u2014thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted on the Corner. I cannot say that I know that much about Mali, but my ipod knows its music. Enter the Islamists. The Guardian reports: The pickup halted in Kidal, the far-flung Malian desert town that is home to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[15,711],"tags":[804,737,932],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7905"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7905"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7908,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7905\/revisions\/7908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}