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Afghanistan/South Asia
Kashmir School Burns, Sparking Protest
2004-07-05
A suspicious fire gutted Kashmir's oldest educational institution on Monday, destroying 30,000 rare books on Islam, including one of the world's oldest copies of the Quran. The 105-year-old Islamia school, covering grades 1-12, had earned a place in the region's history as a progressive institution that turned out many of the region's most prominent and influential people. It also had architectural value with its high arched windows and ceilings of cedar logs. The loss stunned people who poured into the streets of this city to protest the demise of a treasured institution. Some were so upset they shut down their shops. The blaze began soon after dawn and quickly consumed the building, witnesses said. Some of the school's 2,500 students first learned of the fire when they showed up for classes. The school was built in 1899 and is run by Anjuman-e-Nusrat-ul Islam (Society for the Victory of Islam), a religious and educational trust headed by Umar Farooq, the chief Muslim cleric in Kashmir. The school housed one of the oldest and rarest libraries on Islam, with some 30,000 books, including one of the rarest manuscripts of the Quran, handwritten by Usman bin Affan, the third "Righteous Caliph" of Islam. "We suspect mischief. It doesn't seem to be an accident," said senior police officer Javed Ahmad.
But why would anybody burn down a national treasure?
Farooq is also a top leader of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, a political separatist grouping in Kashmir. Farooq, a moderate, has been targeted in recent months by suspected armed Islamic groups.
Ah. That's why.
Farooq's uncle was shot while saying prayers at a mosque on May 29 and died of his wounds a week later. On the same day, Farooq's home was attacked with a grenade.
And now they burned down his school. In Islamist circles, this is known as a frank intellectual exchange...
The school was the first attempt to inculcate modern thinking in Kashmiri Muslim society that had been bogged down with dogma and superstitions. Even in the 20th century, it was among the first Muslim religious schools in Kashmir to teach in English, and offer science subjects.
Posted by:Fred

#12  Shipman, are you really a Reverend? A Southern Baptist? You know dancing has been purged from my genes!
Posted by: Lucky   2004-07-06 12:21:12 AM  

#11  Put me down in the writs as against this so called salmonella. Which have prayed on my
peoples thru good times, bad times, drives ins
and finger licking good times.

Protect us O! Lord from the Devil! KFC!
Posted by: The Rev Dr Shipman   2004-07-05 5:18:31 PM  

#10  #4 Fred has pale yellow, Dan has bright yellow, Steve Y has green, I have salmon.

Jeeze Louise! Now we have the Rainbow Coalition.
Just kidding...just kidding...put down that pickle...
Posted by: Alaska Paul   2004-07-05 5:03:24 PM  

#9  I think Dr Steve would like to purge salmonella...
Posted by: .com   2004-07-05 4:38:19 PM  

#8  Let's get together and purge salmon.
Posted by: Shipman   2004-07-05 4:36:37 PM  

#7  naw, .com not an editor... it would interfere with his hit duties. :)
Posted by: Shipman   2004-07-05 4:33:02 PM  

#6  Heh, fess-ups are good for the soul, Phil. I saw the broken HTML, but I'm not an editor (and don't wanna be), so I can't do anything about it. Must be that fancy-schmancy TypePad stuff! RB works fine when you use page 2.
Posted by: .com   2004-07-05 4:30:07 PM  

#5  I don't know if this'll go through, but it looks like I screwed up a link in a comment in another post; are any of the editors online right now?

(I feel stupid right now; it was another dumb mistake... my second like this in the past three months)
Posted by: Phil Fraering   2004-07-05 4:26:15 PM  

#4  Fred has pale yellow, Dan has bright yellow, Steve Y has green, I have salmon.
Posted by: Steve White   2004-07-05 4:11:06 PM  

#3  (hmmph. Where'd my cookies go?)

ANYWAY, Fred or Dan (I'm not sure about the color scheme; maybe we need a link to a style guide from the front page?) wrote:

But why would anybody burn down a national treasure?

Well, it seems obvious enough to me why the current generation of leaders of islamic militants would want to burn down a library full of old books of import to Moslems: in their opinion, believers don't need to know the Suras or the Hadiths, or the history of their faith, all they need to know is the subset of the Suras and Hadiths the Mullahs have told them to memorize.

(And given that these are Kasmiris, who don't speak Arabic as a native tongue... translations and discussions of the Koran, and of the ancient dialect of arabic the Koran is written in, would be especially important).
Posted by: Phil Fraering   2004-07-05 3:17:00 PM  

#2  Society for the Victory of Islam

yar! and we be the New Friggin' Crusaders and Corsairs!
Posted by: Frank G   2004-07-05 2:11:50 PM  

#1  Farooq is also a top leader of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, a political separatist grouping in Kashmir. Farooq, a moderate, has been targeted in recent months by suspected armed Islamic groups.

Interesting group of coexisting terms....
Posted by: Alaska Paul   2004-07-05 2:06:03 PM  

00:00