The library, housing a unique and rare collection of manuscripts never found anywhere else in the  sub-Saharan Africa, was sponsored by the South African people as part of former  President Thabo  Mbeki’s cultural initiative under Nepad.

From the outset, we had been apprehensive at the French invasion of Mali, which did not take into consideration a political option that would have attempted to secure the sensitive heritage sites hitherto under rebel control.

This news paints a worst-case scenario of the military campaign.

As part of the Muslim community, as may be the case with the rest of the world, we count this  development as yet another great loss coming after the looting of priceless historical artefacts from museums and sites in Baghdad following the invasion of US-led forces in  Iraq.

We consider knowledge and its repositories as sacred. As such, we condemn any group(s) of people responsible for this criminal act against this cultural and academic heritage that points to the remarkable pre-colonial scholarship of the African continent.

We call upon the nations involved in the military operations in northern Mali to execute their roles with responsibility to restore the region to stability without exacerbating a humanitarian crisis.