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Salafist Movements Threaten World Cultural Heritage

Radical Islamism threatens its own cultural heritage along with that of others, writes Hedieh Mirahmadi. The international community has a vested interest in empowering moderate Muslim civil-society organizations and networks to protect the world’s cultural and historical legacies.
A traditional mud structure stands in the Malian city of Timbuktu May 15, 2012. Al Qaeda-linked Mali Islamists armed with Kalashnikovs and pick-axes began destroying prized mausoleums of saints in the UNESCO-listed northern city of Timbuktu on June 30, 2012 in front of shocked locals, witnesses said. The Islamist Ansar Dine group backs strict sharia, Islamic law, and considers the shrines of the local Sufi version of Islam idolatrous. Sufi shrines have also been attacked by hardline Salafists in Egypt and L

The face of radical Islamism has rocked headlines in recent months, demonstrating to the world the threat it poses to Islam’s own cultural heritage.

Many were shocked when spiritual leader Said Efandi al-Chirkawi was killed in a suicide bombing in the tiny Russian Republic of Dagestan by a woman pretending to be one of his students. Nearly 100,000 mourners attended the funeral of the revered cleric, who had been working to bring peace between warring Islamic factions. This was the second such spiritual leader in this remote region to have been killed by radical Islamists in the past year alone.

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