Destruction of the libraries of Timbuktu

[Jack]

Channel 4 News and AP have just reported the destruction of the ancient libraries of Timbuktu by the islamic rebels in Mali. An eight hundred year-old source of scholarship is gone.

Without literature we are diminished. Without knowledge we are nothing.

[Richard]

First, Alexandria, now Timbuktu. Where will it end. How anyone can tolerate the complete lack of respect for someone else's culture that these jihaddis (and those of the past of other religious dogma) exhibit, is beyond my ability to understand. I know they are not the only people in Mali with firearms. The destruction of learning is a disease that the species cannot recover from.