Mali's Salafists

I was curious what the Malian government would do when the Salafists started destroying shrines in Timbuktu. The answer seems to have been ... nothing. Possibly because the government doesn't care that much, or possibly because the army couldn't get its act together and they know it--the rebels beat them once already.

But the acts aroused a lot of outcry outside Mali. Most of what I heard was from the US, of course, though I suspect any complaint from Saudi Arabia would be muted. The Mali rebels are their kind of people.

This time around I expect to hear serious outrage now that the Salafists have taken to obliterating 8000-year old petroglyphs. I predict that the outrage will be considerably louder than before.

The Salafists will no doubt conclude that we empathize more with stone-age pagans than with medieval "heretic" Muslims, and there's something to that. SWPL said that any religion but Christianity was cool, but any ethical monotheism is going to be less cool to the SWPL crowd than shamans or mantras.

But to be fair to us, part of the matter is that we love a mystery and the petroglyph meanings are a mystery and who the heirs of the makers are is a mystery. Timbuktu's shrines are, to us, merely obscure. You can find out who was who, and what was in the ancient books if you want to.