Book Burning in Islam Philologist Mila Vitiva told which books Muslims burned. In the Middle Ages, Muslims destroyed heretical works during conquests. In the 12th and 13th centuries, Muslim armies burned Buddhist texts in the area of the Indo-Gangetic Plain, destroyed hundreds of Buddhist monasteries and shrines, and killed many monks. Before that, they destroyed the Zoroastrian shrines of Persia, and also killed hundreds of thousands of Zoroastrians. All who did not accept Islam in Central Asia. This episode of the Islamic genocide is excluded from most history textbooks so as not to angry the Arab oil sheikhs. In the XII century, Sultan Saladin wanted to make Al-Azhar University (Cairo, Egypt) a place of training for Sunnis, whereas Shiites used to study there. It was decided to destroy the huge library containing Shiite works. Some books were burned, others were thrown into the Nile, and still others were heaped and covered with sand. From 120 thousand to 2 million publications were lost. In the modern world, such cases are considered in court. For example, Leila Ba'albaki, a Lebanese writer who published a collection of short stories The Ship of Tenderness for the Moon in 1963, was accused of insulting public morality. In this book, the writer considered different versions of the identity of an Arab woman, there were several erotic scenes in the text. The authorities considered it obscene. Lebanese special forces visited all bookstores to confiscate the remaining copies of the collection. However, the court acquitted the writer and returned the circulation to her. The trilogy of the famous Saudi writer Turki al-Hamad, "Ghosts in Deserted Lanes", published in 1998, was banned in Saudi Arabia, its entire print run was confiscated. In it, the author criticizes the religious and political foundations of the state: here there are pictures of the Saudis violating religious precepts, reflections on the contradictory nature of religion and state policy. In 2015, Islamic State militants blew up the central library of the city of Mosul in Iraq, destroying 10,000 books. Sergei Trofimov, candidate of sociological sciences, associate professor of Moscow State University: "The majority supported the authorities, considered such methods not only acceptable, but also correct. Only a few thinkers tried to resist the destruction of books, or at least regretted their loss. Physical destruction of rare texts permanently removed them from the heritage, and not only in the case of public burning. But in some cases, in the presence of a dissenting minority, these destroyed and condemned books could acquire heroic or romantic overtones, attracting attention to themselves. " In any case, the systematic burning of books of "all the wrong ideas" could not affect the development of literature and philosophical thought in general, no matter how much the Islamic mullahs wanted it.