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--------------------------------------------
NEWS:
1. U.S.
forces in Iraq have shut off the oil
pipeline to
Syria.
2. U.S. forces have perpetrated a mini-massacre
in Mosul, Iraq when they
opened fire on civilian demonstrators, killing
10, injuring many others.[AFP]
3. Le Monde of Paris and
Al-Jazeerah
TV have
named the Republican Guard
commander who betrayed Iraqi resistance and
called down the U.S. air strike
on Saddam
shaheed.
4. Imam Jamil's
life might be in danger as he is
moved from Atlanta to a
small town on allegations of "attempted escape."
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LIBRARY FULL OF
QUR'ANS
AND HISTORIC LITERATURE
BURNED in BAGHDAD
DESTRUCTION SEEMINGLY CARRIED OUT UNDER U.S.
PATRONAGE
[From Br. Eric Mueller, our correspondent in
Texas.]
As-Salam `alaykum!
Below is a story from today's British paper "The
Independent" that describes the burning -- at
America's behest -- of the Library of copies of
the
Holy Qur'an and Qur'anic literature, the Ministry
of
Awqaf; the Iraqi National Archives and the Iraqi
National Library.
I say "at America's behest" because Robert Fisk
is
reluctant to point the finger but says quite
clearly
that "petrol must have been used to set fire so
expertly to the building". A few days ago
according
to all reports ignoranl looters IGNORED books in
the
places they ransacked. Today the Americans, who
do
nothing to stop the destruction, want us to
believe
that these systematic attacks are the result of
mad
mobs? No! Obviously a pattern has emerged and the
power in charge of the city is obviously the USA.
They are not content to kill our people living
today;
they want to try to wipe out our past, our
culture,
and our religion. They burn museum-sized
collections
of Qur'an and Tafsir!
Have we ever faced an enemy more despicable?
Eric Mueller
Texas
-------------------------------------
[MODERN MONGOLS SACK ISLAMIC CITY OF BAGHDAD -
Ed]
http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=397350
Robert Fisk: Library books, letters and priceless
documents are set ablaze in final chapter of the
sacking of Baghdad
15 April 2003
So yesterday was the burning of books. First came
the
looters, then the arsonists. It was the final
chapter
in the sacking of Baghdad. The National Library
and
Archives a priceless treasure of Ottoman
historical
documents, including the old royal archives of
Iraq
were turned to ashes in 3,000 degrees of heat.
Then
the library of Korans at the Ministry of
Religious
Endowment was set ablaze.
I saw the looters. One of them cursed me when I
tried
to reclaim a book of Islamic law from a boy of no
more
than 10. Amid the ashes of Iraqi history, I found
a
file blowing in the wind outside: pages of
handwritten
letters between the court of Sharif Hussein of
Mecca,
who started the Arab revolt against the Turks for
Lawrence of Arabia, and the Ottoman rulers of
Baghdad.
And the Americans did nothing. All over the
filthy
yard they blew, letters of recommendation to the
courts of Arabia, demands for ammunition for
troops,
reports on the theft of camels and attacks on
pilgrims, all in delicate hand-written Arabic
script.
I was holding in my hands the last Baghdad
vestiges of
Iraq's written history. But for Iraq, this is
Year
Zero; with the destruction of the antiquities in
the
Museum of Archaeology on Saturday and the burning
of
the National Archives and then the Koranic
library,
the cultural identity of Iraq is being erased.
Why?
Who set these fires? For what insane purpose is
this
heritage being destroyed?
When I caught sight of the Koranic library
burning
flames 100 feet high were bursting from the
windows
I raced to the offices of the occupying power,
the US
Marines' Civil Affairs Bureau. An officer shouted
to a
colleague that "this guy says some biblical
[sic] library is on fire". I gave
the map location, the
precise name in Arabic and English. I said the
smoke
could be seen from three miles away and it would
take
only five minutes to drive there. Half an hour
later,
there wasn't an American at the scene and the
flames
were shooting 200 feet into the air.
There was a time when the Arabs said that their
books
were written in Cairo, printed in Beirut and read
in
Baghdad. Now they burn libraries in Baghdad. In
the
National Archives were not just the Ottoman
records of
the Caliphate, but even the dark years of the
country's modern history, handwritten accounts of
the
1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, with personal photographs
and
military diaries, and microfiche copies of Arabic
newspapers going back to the early 1900s.
But the older files and archives were on the
upper
floors of the library where petrol must have been
used
to set fire so expertly to the building. The heat
was
such that the marble flooring had buckled upwards
and
the concrete stairs that I climbedhad been
cracked.
The papers on the floor were almost too hot to
touch,
bore no print or writing, and crumbled into ash
the
moment I picked them up. Again, standing in this
shroud of blue smoke and embers, I asked the same
question: why?
So, as an all-too-painful reflection on what this
means, let me quote from the shreds of paper that
I
found on the road outside, blowing in the wind,
written by long-dead men who wrote to the Sublime
Porte in Istanbul or to the Court of Sharif of
Mecca
with expressions of loyalty and who signed
themselves
"your slave". There was a request to protect a
camel
convoy of tea, rice and sugar, signed by Husni
Attiya
al-Hijazi (recommending Abdul Ghani-Naim and
Ahmed
Kindi as honest merchants), a request for perfume
and
advice from Jaber al-Ayashi of the royal court of
Sharif Hussein to Baghdad to warn of robbers in
the desert. "This is just to
give you our advice for which
you will be highly rewarded," Ayashi says. "If
you
don't take our advice, then we have warned you."
A
touch of Saddam there, I thought. The date was
1912.
Some of the documents list the cost of bullets,
military horses and artillery for Ottoman armies
in
Baghdad and Arabia, others record the opening of
the
first telephone exchange in the Hejaz soon to
be
Saudi Arabia while one recounts, from the
village of
Azrak in modern-day Jordan, the theft of clothes
from
a camel train by Ali bin Kassem, who attacked his
interrogators "with a knife and tried to stab
them but
was restrained and later bought off". There is a
19th-century letter of recommendation for a
merchant,
Yahyia Messoudi, "a man of the highest morals, of
good
conduct and who works with the [Ottoman]
government."
This, in other words, was the tapestry of Arab
history all that is left of it, which fell into The
Independent's hands as the mass of documents
crackled
in the immense heat of the ruins.
King Faisal of the Hejaz, the ruler of Mecca,
whose
staff are the authors of many of the letters I
saved,
was later deposed by the Saudis. His son Faisel
became
king of Iraq. Winston Churchill gave him
Baghdad
after the French threw him out of Damascus and
his
brother Abdullah became the first king of Jordan,
the
father of King Hussein and the grandfather of the
present-day Jordanian monarch, King Abdullah II.
For almost a thousand years, Baghdad was the
cultural
capital of the Arab world, the most literate
population in the Middle East. Genghis Khan's
grandson
burnt the city in the 13th century and, so it was
said, the Tigris river ran black with the ink of
books. Yesterday, the black ashes of thousands of
ancient documents filled the skies of Iraq. Why?
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2003-04-16 Wed 18:17ct