Ahmed Baba library in Timbuktu torched by Islamists

[cybrxkhan]

They had it already, that's where the places they are burning now came from.

Well said.



Ironic that Mali is such a @#$%hole now when it was uber-rich and lovely centuries ago. Mansa Musa and all those scholars at Mali's universities/centers of learning/whatever they were called must be rolling in their graves.

 

[emzie]

Nothing, CH? Does that mean you consider your original statement untenable?

 

[gozpel]

The muslim Captain kept all his Penthouse magazines there and his wife was going there for a book in gardening. Better torch it.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

The growing consensus today is that the (late) Middle Ages were a relatively rationalistic era, and that the Renaissance was a rebirth of ancient pagan superstitious (including medical cannibalism). The arts may have done well (although to be honest much of the Romanesque Revival of the earl Renaissance does not seem as good as the preceding Gothic to me) thanks to the conspicuous consumption of the wealthy elites, and there were a few scientific geniuses, but overall it may have been a step backwards father than forwards. There are those who think of the Enlightenment as a return to pre-Renaissance levels of rationalism.

 

[HannibalBarka]

You mean like how Europe went through the Reformation and Renaissance at the same time. It is pretty telling that both social and religious reform happened when people looked into what the Bible said and not the words of a pope. If you go into the Koran, You won't see the possibility that Christianity allowed to go through.

Let's put the last sentence aside .
Now It always puzzles me when people think of the Reformation as a "step forward for civilization". OK, it's a new religion, well a new interpretation of an old religion, a theological revolution or something of that kind, but why make this look as if it were the invention of a "better" religion or a better version of the same religion? is Chritianism in that case a "better" version of Judaism? (and Islam a better version of both )
I am not Catholic or Proestant, but I really don't see how you can "rank" them?