http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/18/isis-beheads-archaeologist-syria
How tragic! What a terrible loss to the world.
ISIS uses rape as a religious right. Killing an old man and hanging his head on a Roman column is par for the course.
But sometimes I remember what people said about Mussolini - he got the trains to run on time…
Mussolini also bulldozed through tbe middle of the ancient Roman forum to build his triumphal road.
Actually, I got on my soapbox about ISIS and the sexual slave trade (aka “human trafficking”) in another thread regarding Kayla Mueller. Rape has been used as a systematic weapon of war since wars began. The history of its use is horrific. ISIS is endlessly twisting Islam to suit their needs. The beheading of an elderly “infidel archeologist” is another bizarre twist.
I do realize some of this is the other ancient “rule” of “follow the money.” He refused to disclose the location of valuable artifacts that ISIS wanted to destroy or sell on the black market to fund their activities.
This is one of the most disturbing news items I’ve read over the past few days. So sad.
So sick. ISIS must be stopped. These people are truly inhumane.
There is something really interesting about ISIS., and I think it is telling…that there has been absolutely nothing out of the UN about this, as a crisis or whatnot, as far as I can tell neither the security council nor the assembly has made any effort to come to a unified response to it. Among other things, the sites that ISIS is destroying are world heritage sites. Unless it was buried on page 65, the UN seems to be amazingly quiet on it. I am not surprised, I once held out some hope for the UN, but it seems like these days what some have been saying for a long time is true, it is worthless, and that it often seems more sympathetic to groups like ISIS or terrorist groups then it does its fundamental charter, which is supposed to be about preventing the kind of thing we see with ISIS.
I similar thing happened years ago in Peru when the Shining Path killed an elderly woman antiquities expert. It seems that being a death cult is more important than their own history and culture.
One of the major differences between a civilized society and a barbaric one is in the way the society treats history… preserving it for the future generations or pillaging the artifacts and destroying whatever does not fit the current ideology. The professor who refused to lead the barbarians to the historic sites is a real hero.
ISIS is really not much different than Nazis. If ISIS had the opportunity to kill 6M Jews and/or $6M Christians, do you think they would hesitate? No.
@mom2collegekids I was thinking the exact same thing this morning. Among other people, they are trying to annihilate are the Yazdi, an ancient people who are Zoroastrians. It reminds me of the Ottoman muslim government’s efforts to wipe out the Armenian christians between 1915 and 1923. Future German Nazi’s were in Turkey at the time and adopted the Ottoman’s mass deportation and group massacre techniques to use against the Jews, gypsies and whomever else’s they decided were not fit to live.
Daesh’s destruction of historic sites and artifacts has precedent in the KSA.
http://time.com/3584585/saudi-arabia-bulldozes-over-its-heritage/
Also see http://theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/saudi_destruction_of_muslim_historical_sites1 .
If religious conservatives consider historic sites of their own religion to be problematic, they presumably consider those of other religions even worse.
@ucbalumnus thanks. Very interesting articles. I guess we just “followed the money” - the Saudis. It is disturbing the Wahhabi doctrine is being exported, and used to destroy archeological sites and more importantly used to “theologically” justify the sexual exploitation, rape and torture of captive women and girls.
All of this is so disturbing.