Rik01: Nothing like winning support among your people by blowing up their sacred sites.

BTW, I also recall, dimly, something about Timbuktu being renamed something else years ago. Since I'm not particularly interested in the general area, I haven't bothered to check.

I suspect that Al Qaeda is starting to self destruct. Without it's fanatically insane leader, it'll probably begin to disperse into splinter cells, with an assortment of self proclaimed leaders. Look for the eventual time when they start to turn on each other -- usually over one cell not being fanatical enough.

This has already more-or-less happened. The Al Qaeda core is basically defunct (though the Taliban are alive and kicking). Now there are splinter groups, like AQIM in the article, as well as the Al-Qaeda franchise in Yemen. Al Shabbab in Somalia may also count. It remains to be seen if any of them will pose more than a regional threat, but they'll have to be observed.

MadSkillz: Somacandra: hubiestubert: Al-Qaida has been angering a lot of Imams over the years.

[press.princeton.edu image 160x243]

That's true of many other Islamist movements as well. The ritzy production values and superficial devotions against the nebulous West drive more serious clerics in South Asia pretty batty.

LOL @ "muslim scholars".

"HEY I learned one book and that makes me a scholar!"

/All religion is pointless and divisive.

Do you use numbers like this: 2012? And not this: MMXII?

You can thank a Muslim scholar.

Diogenes: And people still question whether their motives are religious or about power.

You haven't noticed that these are the same thing - at least in places where the church is the ultimate (or nearly so) civil authority.

optional: Now there are splinter groups, like AQIM in the article,

Is this really a splinter group, or is it like the three kids at my middle school who bought blue jackets and called themselves the Crips until the basketball team pulled their pants down in the hall one day?

Al-Qaeda extremists destroy the grave of a Muslim saint in Timbuktu. In other news, Timbuktu is an actual place, Muslims apparently have saints, and Al-Qaeda really sucks at the whole "winning hearts and minds" thing

And there lies our common ground to start the peace process.

/Al Bundy Akbar.

Crosshair: Um, yea. They are against the creation of idols. That's why the US destroying the house bin Laden in was so stupid, fellow Al-Qaeda members would have done it themselves.

Maybe, but we have way more impressive ways and equipment to do it with. Old pickups, crappy rifles and homemade bombs don't make very impressive operator's manuals for the new recruits.

Snarcoleptic_Hoosier: BKITU: [pcmedia.ign.com image 440x556]

-4: You have desecrated our holy sites!

Yeah, but I have 4 units of iron and refuse to trade. He'll just have to suck it.

Bullshiat. I'm playing that character on Civ4 right now and I have all the uranium spots settled. And destroyers. In the year 1800. COME AT ME BRO.

seelorq: You can thank a Muslim scholar.

Hmm you seem to have spelled Persian wrong. It's ok, they got it from India anyway. Arabs didn't invent much of anything, they conquered more cultured people and called their inventions arabic inventions. All the sudden Persian poetry and Indian numerals are all great productions of the noble caliphate. They did translate Greek and Roman knowledge as well, and improved a little on them before their religion became an anchor around the neck of progress.

What about Bumfark?

When I was in college in the late 90s I was dating a girl who had parents that took a 2 month vacation across the "holy lands" of Israel, Egypt, and Ethiopia and I believe they filmed almost every minute of it. There was a fascinating tape though of where their driver in Cairo had come up to the hotel room to get them and sat around to chat for a few minutes. Being their first day in Egypt they wanted to go to the Pyramids and Sphinx stuff which is just a little out of town (you could see it from their window) and he refused on account of Egypt being a nation of Muslims and not "paganists" (he used an arabic word that I can't remember).

"The stones would be better used to build a bridge."

/haven't met many other Muslims in my time that I knew well enough to ask about this view
//couple months later the Taliban destroyed the statues in Afghanistan

Mole Man: [www.goldminemag.com image 432x437]

Man you guys are slipping here.

/link is so hot it's gotta wear shades.
//sorry won't do that RIP thing.


I was feeling nostalgic the other night, and listened to both of my Timbuk 3 cassette tapes.


lawn-off

piercer310: [i51.photobucket.com image 318x420]

unavailable for comment

It wasn't just a Buddhist statue. Al-Quadea systematically went through Afgan's central museum and destroyed all the artifacts and artwork, effectively destroying all physical remnants of the nation's history.

I guess they are threatened by them, in much the same way as some westerns are threatened by book that contain facts or ideas with which they disagree.

give me doughnuts: seelorq: MadSkillz: Somacandra: hubiestubert: Al-Qaida has been angering a lot of Imams over the years.

[press.princeton.edu image 160x243]

That's true of many other Islamist movements as well. The ritzy production values and superficial devotions against the nebulous West drive more serious clerics in South Asia pretty batty.

LOL @ "muslim scholars".

"HEY I learned one book and that makes me a scholar!"

/All religion is pointless and divisive.

Do you use numbers like this: 2012? And not this: MMXII?

You can thank a Muslim Hindu scholar.

FTFY

Hindus did not introduce them to the West. Arabs did. So let's just thank 'em both for saving us from the Hell that would have been had our eighteenth century ancestors had to write shiat like
MCCCXXXVIII on their checks all year long.

JeffreyScott: piercer310: [i51.photobucket.com image 318x420]

unavailable for comment

It wasn't just a Buddhist statue. Al-Quadea systematically went through Afgan's central museum and destroyed all the artifacts and artwork, effectively destroying all physical remnants of the nation's history.

I guess they are threatened by them, in much the same way as some westerns are threatened by book that contain facts or ideas with which they disagree.

It was the Taliban in Afghanistan who destroyed the two giant Buddhas at Bamiyan, and all that other stuff. They made a big deal of saying that they would preserve them at first, then quickly Etch-a-Sketched and blew them the fark up with artillery. For a month.

xanadian: Jesus, it's like they're the OWS of the Muslim world. But with guns and bombs.

"...and Al-Qaeda really sucks at the whole "winning hearts and minds" thing."

------------------

Doesn't really matter. You can build a school. They can blow it up. You will still be an infidel.

RexTalionis: St_Francis_P: In other news, Timbuktu is an actual place, Muslims apparently have saints, and Al-Qaeda really sucks at the whole "winning hearts and minds" thing

Not sure any of that is news to anyone but subby.

Maybe Subby never watched Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego as a kid.

The game show or the cartoon?

buckler: piercer310: [i51.photobucket.com image 318x420]

unavailable for comment

I'm sorry that you posted that. It makes me all ragey.

Remembering that makes my stomach hurt.

Bomb Mecca: They did translate Greek and Roman knowledge as well, and improved a little on them before their religion became an anchor around the neck of progress

ya mean like the yanks did (if you anyone reading this wants to bring in "Im from the south" FU I was born south of the equator you aint southern)

subby still believes in al-qaeda.

lol

these jerks were hired by Daffy Kadaffy to fight off NATO....and after he was capped they ran for home. more unintended consequences from King Barry.

Uchiha_Cycliste: RIP

Mine is still going strong.

hubiestubert: Somacandra: hubiestubert: Al-Qaida has been angering a lot of Imams over the years.

[press.princeton.edu image 160x243]

That's true of many other Islamist movements as well. The ritzy production values and superficial devotions against the nebulous West drive more serious clerics in South Asia pretty batty.

Only 40% of Muslims in the world are in the Middle East. That a tiny percentage of these folks have shaped the discussion is part of the problem. Well, that and the idiots who think that a faith that is not much older than Christianity is going to be more unified than that faith...

Christianity is older by half a millennium or so.

Were is the Outrage guy?

plainlyclueless: these jerks were hired by Daffy Kadaffy to fight off NATO....and after he was capped they ran for home. more unintended consequences from King Barry.

So Daffy turned 'em all tomb-smashy? Or was it that the l'il Libya affair merely procrastinated their native tomb-smashiness by a few months? Or they left Mali all patriotic and tomb-o-philic and then ...yeah...NATO turned 'em all tomb-smashy? So then, how is it that King Barry, by leading from behind, is responsible for unintended consequences here?

worse: not all muslims have the same saints

Rincewind53: In related news, we just killed Fahd al-Quso, one of the masterminds of the USS Cole bombing in 2000. It only took us 12 years!

That, and terming out Bush-Cheney.

seelorq: plainlyclueless: these jerks were hired by Daffy Kadaffy to fight off NATO....and after he was capped they ran for home. more unintended consequences from King Barry.

So Daffy turned 'em all tomb-smashy? Or was it that the l'il Libya affair merely procrastinated their native tomb-smashiness by a few months? Or they left Mali all patriotic and tomb-o-philic and then ...yeah...NATO turned 'em all tomb-smashy? So then, how is it that King Barry, by leading from behind, is responsible for unintended consequences here?

Because everything bad in the world is his fault. Come on, you know this.

BKITU: [pcmedia.ign.com image 440x556]

-4: You have desecrated our holy sites!

Yes, but does he need it to build those annoying Unique guys he has?

/been a while since Civ 4
// actually came here for the Mansa Munsa reference, pleased to see FARK did not let me down

Magorn: Why the fark hasn't every university the world air-dropped scholars with digital cameras and scanners to preserve these manuscripts LONG before now?

People have been working on it. I think that is something Henry "Skip" Gates is involved with, or at least he was around 2004.