As a child, along with the ubiquitous Mr Men series, “Alif Laila” and
Peter and Jane books, I used to read a series of children’s books about talking animals. Written by Roger Hargreaves,
the same genius who brought us characters like Mr Happy and Mr Greedy,
this short-lived series featured regulars like Moo the cow and Woof the
dog. And they all lived in a place called Timbuktu, which, I thought
with all the clarity of a six-year-old, was a perfectly wonderful name
for a fantasy land filled with talking animals.
Later, I learnt Timbuktu
was a real place in West Africa, a city of learning and culture that
became part of the empire of Mali in 1324. Mali itself was a place of
such wealth that when its ruler Mansa Musa went for Hajj in the same
year, he distributed such massive amounts of gold en route that he ended
up depressing the price of gold in Egypt and the Hejaz for decades to
come, leading to a period of hyperinflation. Even more interestingly,
Musa came to the throne after his predecessor sailed off to find the
limits of the Atlantic with a reported fleet of 3,000 ships, never to be
seen again. However, the greatest wealth in Timbuktu was not in its
gold but in its knowledge and it is related that books were the most
valuable commodities available in this historic city. It is also home to
the fabled University of Sankore and innumerable mud mosques and shrines, many of which are protected Unesco world heritage sites.
Despite its history, odds are you’ve never heard of either Mali or
Timbuktu, simply because they’re in a distant part of the world that we
really don’t care to learn much about. In fact, the world at large
doesn’t interest us much, unless it ‘drones’ us or until a blasphemous video
or cartoon is made. Then all hell breaks loose. Incidentally, hell is
exactly what’s broken loose in Mali as well. Thanks to porous borders
and tribal populations that don’t recognise those borders, the aftermath
of Muammar Gaddafi’s fall helped plunge this once promising state into
anarchy. Massive amounts of weapons left over from Gaddafi’s forces made
their way to Tuareg rebels, who promptly declared an independent state
in the north. Following this, a group of junior military officers
decided their ‘bloody civilians’ weren’t man enough to deal with the
threat and took over. The result is that Mali is now a no-man’s land
where fanatics run wild. What’s different about this period of turmoil
and previous ones is that Mali’s history may not survive it.
That’s because the groups that have benefited the most from the chaos
are the kind of Islamists we have become all too familiar with right
here in Pakistan. They are the ones that want to make you better Muslims
through the use of instructive methods like public flogging and summary
execution. They also feel that the centuries old shrines that dot Mali are a sign of apostasy
and are, therefore, on a mission to destroy them all. The fact that
most of these are also world heritage sites makes them even more
appealing as targets. After all, if the infidel West wants them
protected, then there really has to be something wrong about them.
Why is it important to know about this? Because for one thing, it
shows us that we’re not alone in facing this kind of unthinking
fanaticism. It also brings home the inevitable consequences of ceding
space, whether by design or default, to such fanatics. Also because, at
some point, Western-backed and African-led military intervention in Mali
will become inevitable and when that happens there may well be the
usual propaganda about a Muslim country being targeted. It’ll be
half-right: Mali is being targeted, but not by the West. Rather it’s
being targeted by Muslims who don’t consider anyone else to be worthy of
being called a Muslim.
A similar murder of history is taking place a little closer to home
as well, as ancient mosques and buildings are bulldozed in the name of
modernity (with perhaps a dose of unthinking dogma thrown in) and the
commonality between that and what’s happening in Mali is that we hear
little, and care even less about it. At least, not as long as those
lighting the dynamite and driving the bulldozers call themselves
Muslims, that is. Had they been Christian, Hindu or Buddhist, we would
have burned down every single damn cinema and KFC in Pakistan.