Africa's Muslim Civil War

Islamist militia from Niger and Mauritania have invaded Mali, destroying centuries-old shrines reflecting the local Sufi version of Islam. Reuters

Radical Islamists Wage Muslim Civil War In Africa -- Melik Kaylan, Wall Street Journal

Extremist imams and jihadists infiltrate peaceful Muslim lands, uprooting religious customs that have existed for centuries.

The recent spate of attacks on Muslim historic and religious sites in the ancient city of Timbuktu calls to mind the Taliban's destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan over a decade ago. The Taliban, of course, were obliterating the icons of a rival religion, as they saw it. The Salafist militias that have lately overrun Timbuktu and Mali are obliterating a rival tradition within their own faith.

Their actions more closely resemble intra-Islamic frictions at the end of the Yugoslav conflict in the mid-1990s that were largely overlooked by the news media. In exchange for rebuilding their war-damaged religious sites, Bosnian and Kosovar Muslims first had to acquiesce to the destruction of headstones in their ancestral cemeteries and old decorative motifs on mosque walls. This was required by their benefactors, the Mideast-based Muslim fundamentalist sources of international funds.

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My Comment: We in the West see the Muslim world as one monolithic religion .... the reality is different. Melik Kaylan's Wall Street Journal analysis is worth a read.