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The Sack of Mosul
ISIS isn’t satisfied with destroying modern-day Iraq. They also intend to destroy its history.
The terror group uploaded a video Thursday of men smashing statues, pulling artifacts from walls and attacking Mosul antiquities with sledgehammers and power tools. To justify their violence, ISIS classified all these representations of man and beast as idols. Some of the irreplaceable works date back to the 7th century B.C.
Here is video of the iconoclasts in action, provided by Tunisian news agency Al-jarida.
http://youtu.be/O0GBkdb-Nwk
“The Prophet ordered us to get rid of statues and relics, and his companions did the same when they conquered countries after him,” an unidentified man said in the video.
The smashed articles appeared to come from an antiquities museum in Mosul, the northern city which was overrun by Islamic State last June, a former employee at the museum told Reuters.
The militants shoved stone statues off their plinths, shattering them on the floor, and one man applied an electric drill to a large winged bull. The video showed a large exhibition room strewn with dismembered statues, and Islamic songs played in the background.
Lamia al-Gailani, an Iraqi archaeologist and associate fellow at the London-based Institute of Archaeology, said the militants had wreaked untold damage. “It’s not only Iraq’s heritage: it’s the whole world’s,” she said.
“They are priceless, unique. It’s unbelievable. I don’t want to be Iraqi any more,” she said, comparing the episode to the dynamiting of the Bamiyan Buddhas by the Afghan Taliban in 2001.
As well as Assyrian statues of winged bulls from the Mesopotamian cities of Nineveh and Nimrud, Gailani said the Islamic State hardliners appeared to have destroyed statues from Hatra, a Hellenistic-Parthian city in northern Iraq dating back around 2,000 years.
Axel Plathe, the director of UNESCO’s Iraq office, said ISIS’ continuing crimes were an attempt “to destroy the identity of an entire people.”
Statuary isn’t the Islamists’ only target in Mosul. Last week, ISIS sacked the city’s library and burned more than 100,000 historic manuscripts and documents. Many residents tried to prevent the destruction, only to see their invaluable collection set ablaze. Afterwards, terrorists blew up the building.
What strikes me about these fanatics is how incredibly insecure they are about their beliefs. They claim to be the most faithful among us, yet still believe their god is so frail that he’s offended by hunks of stone and leaves of paper.
If you truly believe in a divine Creator, it seems the best way to emulate Him is to create. Instead, like the enemy they represent, ISIS seeks only to destroy.
Published in General
We aren’t nuking them why?
With sarcasm: because of the antiquities. duh.
But really. This just gives me knots in my stomach.
We’d need enhanced radiation weapons (aka, neutron bombs).
The left does not want the U.S. to have such weapons.
Because they’ll stop doing this as soon as our Prez gives them jobs at the DMV.
These creatures are the lowest form of parasite.
If tomorrow’s weather in Mosul isn’t 10,000 degrees and sunny, then King Prawn’s crane climbing has been in vain.
Barbarians.
The destruction of history, of art, is something even the most liberal college professor should decry. If the brutality towards human beings won’t move them, maybe this will . . .
You wish.
Unfortunately, this has been going on for centuries, and not just by Jihadists. The Parthenon’s metopes were defaced not by muslims, but by Christians around 500AD. Then the Ottomans used the Parthenon as a munition depot and it blew up in the 17th century. There is a reason old ruins are ruins. It isn’t just time.
They want to initiate an apocalyptic battle with civilization. This is another attempt to stoke our outrage. I can remember Dick Gregory saying that the Vietnam war would be shut down in a day if the army drafted poodles instead of American sons. Destroying ancient works of art is like drafting poodles.
When ISIS starts barbecuing dogs instead of their captives, I will know that they really want a fight from us.
We should give it to them. Really. It doesn’t matter that they want it. It is necessary. The longer we wait, the worse it will be. If we do it now, it will only be apocalyptic for them.
Two of my favorite epigrams:
More rubble less trouble.
Time to turn some sand into glass.
I’m with Marion. This is Iconoclasm, and I don’t care about their old junk. It would be enough to save Europe’s works from their hands. Which I don’t think is likely.
But remember, the GOP are the cultural terrorists for insisting that Big Bird take less federal funds.
I’m glad the UN is so active on this important issue.
Jon,
This is why I emphasize the term Jihadist. Nothing could be more classically Jihadist than this behavior. They murder & mutilate human beings and they murder & mutilate human culture. They have declared war on humanity itself. There is no mutual coexistence with these creatures. We must return the compliment and declare war on them. We will have plenty of Muslim allies in this. Even Erdogan knows that if a few of these little demons were let loose in one of his hotels in Turkey, like what happened in Mumbai, his lucrative tourist economy would crash. If he did nothing his presidency would end.
Regards,
Jim
I haven’t read all the comments, but what I find disturbing is that people want to bear arms and nukes to defend relics. But not the human beings that are being destroyed?
Our horror is more justly placed in the quote above when the lost value of human life, not relics, is mourned and defended.
I am not saying the antiquities have no value, or that they deserve no defense or protection, just that living, breathing, humans have ultimate value, and deserve our first and strongest response.
that this may well be true demonstrates the utter depravity of this era.
I weep.
The Jayvee Squad seems to be doing a pretty bang-up job of luring the West, in one form or another, into its apocalyptic future dance, hoping for it to take place at a time and place more or less designated by their absolutely insane belief system.
Captain ChickPants has the appropriate response. Veto a pipeline. Lecture people on how they’re wrong about, well, everything. Cultivate a very thin skin. Pretend to be a man.
There’s nothing quite like showing your back to someone who’s quite willing to put an ax into it. It seems like this is a horrible strategy for long-term survival, though. Did no one tell Barry?
Jules – It’s loving humanity without all the messy humans.
How long before some sympathizer in the West goes after the Elgin marbles?
And look what they did at MoMA . . .
What? ISIS never went to MoMA . . .?
For a second I thought Obama changed his mind, and did a groundbreaking ceremony for Keystone XL.
darn.
Give this woman a grant! Maybe she could go to art school.
This trash is considered sculpture? Art?
OMG, our township intentionally covered up the ‘sculpture’ that was shipped from diverse neighborhoods spanning the county.
Years ago they used to call that place a dump. Now its better known as The Museum of Decaying Sculpture. covered in earth. of course.
“The Prophet ordered us to get rid of statues and relics, and his companions did the same when they conquered countries after him,” an unidentified man said in the video.”
At least one of them is admitting that The Prophet and his companions were going around conquering countries. And destroying their stuff.
I keep hearing them say the the Crusades – which I always thought were a response to the Prophet and his companions who were going around conquering other countries and breaking their stuff – instead were the evil brutal West aggressively trying to wipe out all the peaceful Muslim settlers.
Bruce,
Now you are doing revisionist revisionist history.
Excellent!
Regards,
Jim
Well they like the art, they’re not too sure about the people.