Why ISIS Just Beheaded History - The Daily Beast

Destruction of Bamyan Buddha statues by the Taliban (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

ISIS isn’t original in smashing the past to prop up the present. It’s been the practice of totalitarians throughout the ages.

 

A video released by ISIS on Thursday shows members of the terrorist organization and self-proclaimed state destroying important artifacts at Mosul’s museum in Iraq and Assyrian statues at the nearby archeological site of Nineveh. The footage shows men using drills and sledgehammers to destroy first the artifacts in the museum and then three large Assyrian 7^th-century BCE statues of bearded winged figures. These statues adorned the gates of the ancient city of Nineveh, mentioned in the Bible in conjunction with the prophet Jonah.


A spokesperson for ISIS says at the beginning of the video that “the prophet Mohammed commanded us to shatter and destroy these statues.” According to the MEMRI translation, he added, “This is what his companions did later on when they conquered lands. Since Allah commanded us to shatter and destroy these statues, idols, and remains, it is easy for us to obey and we do not care [what people think], even if this costs billions of dollars.”

It is difficult not to be reminded of the early days of the Taliban, when they very publicly blew up the two great 6th-century CE statues of Buddha carved into the cliffs of the Bamyan valley in Afghanistan in 2001.

Just as the world was aware years in advance that the Buddhas were in danger from the Taliban, artifacts in the Mosul museum have been on international conservation watch lists for months, since ISIS had threatened to destroy the collection after occupying Mosul last summer. It is possible that, as with the destruction of the Buddhas, ISIS deliberately targeted these artifacts not merely because they were pre-Islamic and therefore “idols,” but especially because they were so highly esteemed by those abroad. The videos of book burning and exploding pilgrimage centers are further evidence that the members of ISIS are cultural trolls.

It is important to recognize that while the two most recent examples emerge from a common background, the public and highly publicized destruction of long-standing symbols of earlier cultural symbols is not at all unique to modern militant Islam. When Christianity became the dominant religion in the Roman empire after the conversion of the emperor Constantine, pagan temples began to be looted and destroyed. Roman emperors after him instituted strict anti-pagan laws.

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Why ISIS Just Beheaded History - The Daily Beast

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