Simon Maghakyan
International organizations, Western governments, and mainstream media are vociferously outraged–and rightfully so–over the recent destruction of majestic Sufi Muslim shrines by Islamist extremists in Timbuktu, Mali, mirroring the reaction to the Taliban’s 2001 demolition of two beautiful Buddha statues in Bamiyan, Afghanistan.
The violators of cultural rights in both instances are anti-Western, al-Qaeda-linked groups, and that alone seems to have merited the strong Western condemnation.
Otherwise, why has the West maintained its overwhelming silence regarding the complete destruction of the world’s largest medieval Armenian cemetery by Azerbaijan, a major energy supplier to, and arms purchaser from, the West?
