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Timbuktu, ancient seat of Islamic learning

In this photo taken Tuesday, Mar. 16, 2004, Alhousseini Ould Alfadrou, 16, sings verses from crumbling ancient Islamic manuscripts in a mud-walled house in Timbuktu, Mali. Islamist extremists torched a library containing historic manuscripts in Timbuktu, the mayor of the town said Monday, Jan. 28, 2013, while owners have succeeded in removing some of the manuscripts from Timbuktu to save them and others have been carefully hidden away from the Islamists. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

In this photo taken Tuesday, Mar. 16, 2004, Alhousseini Ould Alfadrou, 16, sings verses from crumbling ancient Islamic manuscripts in a mud-walled house in Timbuktu, Mali. Islamist extremists torched a library containing historic manuscripts in Timbuktu, the mayor of the town said Monday, Jan. 28, 2013, while owners have succeeded in removing some of the manuscripts from Timbuktu to save them and others have been carefully hidden away from the Islamists. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

SEVARE, Mali (AP) — Timbuktu, the fabled desert city where retreating Muslim extremists destroyed ancient manuscripts, was a center of Islamic learning hundreds of years before Columbus landed in the Americas.

It is not known how many of the priceless documents were destroyed by al Qaida-linked fighters who set ablaze a state-of-the-art library built with South African funding to conserve the brittle, camel-hide bound manuscripts from the harshness of the Sahara Desert climate and preserve them so researchers can study them.

News of the destruction came on Monday from the mayor of Timbuktu. With its Islamic treasures and centuries-old mud-walled buildings including an iconic mosque, Timbuktu is a U.N.-designated World Heritage Site.

The damage caused by the fleeing Islamists was limited, but irreplaceable treasures were lost.

Most of the manuscripts, which are as many as 900 years old, were gathered between the 1980s and 2000 from all over Mali for the Ahmed Baba Institute for Higher Learning and Islamic Research, which moved into its new home in 2009.

The library held about 30,000 manuscripts of which only about one third had been catalogued, according to its Web site. The world may never know what it has lost.

The manuscripts cover subjects ranging from science, astrology and medicine to history, theology, grammar and geography. All are in Arabic script, in the Arabic language and African languages.

They date back to the late 12th century, the start of a 300-year golden age for Timbuktu as a spiritual and intellectual capital for the propagation of Islam on the continent.

Michael Covitt, chairman of the Malian Manuscript Foundation, called them "the most important find since the Dead Sea Scrolls."

Tens of thousands more manuscripts — no one knows how many — were kept at other libraries and private homes in Timbuktu. Some are believed to have been secreted against the Islamist fighters, who began their desecration of the city by systematically razing the 15th-century mausoleums of several Sufi saints in July. Among the tombs they destroyed is that of Sidi Mahmoudou, a saint who died in 955, according to a UNESCO website.

The International Criminal Court at The Hague has described the destruction of Timbuktu's heritage as a possible war crime. Timbuktu has been attacked and conquered in the past, most recently in 1591 by Moroccan troops who sacked the city and burned libraries. But the city recovered and gained fame as a place where people from different races and creeds could live together harmoniously.

Even before Europeans landed in the Americas, Timbuktu had a population of 30,000.

The nomadic Tuareg tribe first set up their camel-skin and palm-mat tents there in the dry season, attracted by its location where the Niger River flows toward the southern brink of the Sahara Desert, prompting some to call it the point where "the camel meets the canoe." The tents gave way to sun-dried terracotta-colored mud brick buildings built in the Moorish style as traders, medical doctors, clerics, artists, poets and others settled there.

The city is on an old caravan route where Arab traders brought salt and other goods that reached North Africa's Mediterranean shores and traded it in Timbuktu for gold and Islamic books. It served as a major crossroads between Africa's Arab north and black West Africa, bringing together black Africans, Berbers, Arabs and the Tuareg people that consider Timbuktu their town. Its dynamism has been overlooked by the English expression "from here to Timbuktu" — conjuring up an end-of-the-earth remoteness.

Islamist extremists decimated tourism in 2011 when three Europeans were taken hostage from a Timbuktu restaurant in November that year, frightening away visitors. In April 2012, Tuareg nationalist rebels seized control of Timbuktu from government troops. A day later Islamist insurgents elbowed their way into the city. They banned music, insisted women cover themselves and began carrying out public executions and amputations.

On Tuesday, Timbuktu was in control of French and Malian troops, including some 250 French paratroopers dropped from the sky. The extremists melted into the desert without firing a shot. Townspeople were jubilant at the city's liberation from intolerant Islamist extremists.

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Faul reported from Johannesburg

Online: www.tombouctoumanuscripts.org

Hi Miguel,

It is so sad that people cannot live together in Peace on Earth. Everyone has an opinion on any given subject, and if two people cannot agree, before long a fight breaks out and someone gets hurt. One way or another, the hatred must stop. How?, is anyone's guess. When could be as close as February 15th, 2013. We have been in a position where an Asteroid has headed for Earth, but so far we have been spared. Should we ignore the warnings? I don't think so, because with the increased activity with Asteroids over the past couple of years, I believe that each episode is bringing us closer and closer to the point to where our luck will run out. Are they Asteroids?, Planet X, huge Motherships?, who knows. What I do feel, however, is that we will all know within our lifetime. Here are two videos that deal with the newest threat. Will this one be the real deal?, or will we live to kill more people that we don't like?

Feb 15, 2013: Killer Asteroid DA Headed for Earth

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIKvNNvu1fI

01.03.2013-EMP Threat Imminent

http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq4Xz4xlnew

GOD BLESS YOU

~Mike~

http://www.countryvalues65.com

Mexico breaks up alleged border sex-slavery cult

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican officials broke up a bizarre cult that allegedly ran a sex-slavery ring among its followers on the U.S. border, authorities said Tuesday.

The "Defensores de Cristo" or "Defenders of Christ" cult allegedly recruited women to have sex with a Spanish man who claimed he was the reincarnation of Christ. Followers were subjected to forced labor or sexual services, including prostitution, according to a victims' advocacy group that said it filed a complaint more than a year ago about the cult.

Federal police, agents of Mexico's National Immigration Institute and prosecutors raided a house earlier this week near Nuevo Laredo, across the border from Laredo, Texas, and found cult members, including children, living in filthy conditions

The institute said 14 foreigners were detained in the raid and have been turned over to prosecutors, pending possible charges.

Those detained include six Spaniards, and two people each from Brazil, Bolivia and Venezuela. One person from Argentina and one from Ecuador were also detained. Spain's Foreign Affairs Ministry confirmed its citizens were among those arrested.

The institute said 10 Mexicans were also found at the house, mainly women, and are presumably among the victims of the cult.

The Attorney General's Office said the investigation was still under way as to what charges, if any, might apply in the case. Given the binds of sect loyalty that had been built over an estimated three years, prosecutors were still trying to work out which of the detainees may be considered victims, and which were abusers.

The institute said the sect's leaders made members pay "tithes," with money or forced labor.

An official of the institute who was not authorized to be quoted by name said that women were recruited to the sect and then were forced to have sex with sect elders; the official described it as a form of human trafficking that included prostitution.

Spaniard Ignacio Gonzalez de Arriba set up shop in Mexico about three years ago, after a stint in Brazil and other parts of South America.

He quickly became involved in offering courses on "bio-programming," an esoteric practice that claims to allow practicants to 'reprogram' their brains to eliminate pain, suffering and anxiety.

But according to the Defenders of Christ website, he quickly moved on to claim that he was Jesus Christ reincarnated.

Photos of Gonzalez de Arriba are juxtaposed with a painting of Christ, purportedly showing how the Spaniards eyebrows, nose and mouth are "exactly like" those of Christ.

Myrna Garcia, and activist with the Support Network for Cult Victims who has worked with victims of the Defenders of Christ cult, said Gonzalez de Arriba "mixed bio-programming, Christian and New Age doctrines and fears about the end of the world ... to control followers, to keep them terrorized."

"He made them believe he was Christ," said Garcia, whose group filed a complaint with Mexican authorities about the cult's abuses about one year ago. "Like Christ, they have to adore him, if not they will lose their souls ... they have to give their lives for him."

"There were women who were forced into prostitution," Garcia noted. "It was a form of human trafficking that was extraordinarily effect from the criminal point of view," she said, because the women were terrified of being separated from the sect.

How the cult managed to thrive in an area of Mexico that is tightly controlled by the violent Zetas drug cartel remains a mystery. However, there could be some link; Gonzalez de Arriba first set up shop in the northern city of Torreon, which also has a strong Zeta's influence.

The immigration institute said in a press release that the Defenders of Christ was headed by Venezuelan citizen Jose Arenas Losanger Segovia, but according to Garcia and the cult's website, he was clearly a lieutenant of Gonzalez de Arriba.

The Interior Department said the Defenders of Christ had not registered as a religious group, as required under Mexican law. Garcia said cells of the cult might still be active in Peru and Argentina.