Terrorizing History: The Islamic State Is a Novice at an ‘Art’ Mastered By the Saudis
By Natasha Shahid
13 Mar 2015
Hilton Hotel in Mecca, erected where Abu Bakr, the first Caliph of Islam's house once stood
Mosul Museum, also known as the Nineveh Museum, is believed to be the second most important museum in Iraq, after Baghdad’s National Museum. Both museums are home to numerous relics from the culturally rich Mesopotamian civilization that existed long before Christianity and Islam.
Mesopotamia was a part of the “cradle of civilization” and the Fertile Crescent. One of the first civilizations to practice agriculture and give birth to the world’s oldest decipherable writing script. An ancient culture that dates back 5,000 years – two-and-a-half lifetimes of Christianity and over three of Islam. Anything that the Mosul Museum held or still holds is far older than our common belief systems. So, when on 26 January, the dreaded Islamic State (IS), or ISIS, threw a long and terrible shadow over the modern, vulnerable home of 5,000 years of history, civilization and art, it sent a chill down everybody’s spines.
Assyrian relief dating back to the seventh century BC: a glimpse of what the ISIS is robbing us of
The Islamic State is a novice at an "art" mastered by the Saudis
The Destruction
“Little, it seems, has been spared,” is British journalist Alice Fordham’s demoralizing reflection in her piece on the National Public Radio’s official website (www.npr.org). Fordham reminisces about a personal visit to Mosul and recounts seeing just a few of the many artefacts housed in the museum: reliefs of the winged Assyrian deity, the lamassu, and a stone tablet listing the entrées at a feast held by the Neo-Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal II. The video released by the IS shows them destroying yet more – sculptures of what look like Assyrian kings and gods and winged-bull deities carved from stone – out in the open, in the city of Nineveh itself.
Following this mass destruction, some media bodies – including CNN and the Los Angeles Times –expressed the belief that the demolished artefacts were copies of the originals. The claim is a credible one and not only to optimists: many museums are, in fact, cautious enough to display mere replicas or castings to protect the original relics from a variety of damage. However, these museums tend to store the originals on the premises even if they are not displayed for public viewing. This may be why Fordham believes that the relics destroyed by the IS’s “history jihadists” were, unfortunately, original pieces dating back to the Neo-Assyrian period (post-1000 BC) – a part of ancient history now lost forever
Coming generations, and indeed the vast majority of the current generation, will be deprived of a source of primary information about a key period in the history of human civilization. While the layperson might not believe that the supper menu of a king who lived over 2,500 years ago could be of any interest, a cultural historian is likely to be devastated at the loss of that one tablet. The massacre at Mosul Museum was a huge blow to students of history.
The home of Khadija, the first wife of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), before it was destroyed by the Sauds to make way for public lavatories
The Method (to the Madness)
Anybody aware of the workings of the IS should not be even remotely appalled at their having taken a sledgehammer to the Mosul Museum. Those who are ignorant of this are advised to watch the video that claims to show the destruction and listen to the voice-over in the background, which says: “God create[d] us to worship him. Him, only, not some stones. Our Prophet (PBUH) ordered us to remove all these statues as his followers did when they conquered nations. These ruins behind me are idols and statues that people used to worship in the past instead of Allah.” In destroying ancient statues, the IS believe they are fulfilling a religious obligation.
Even though their action may appear horrendous to a majority of the world’s population – Muslim or otherwise – it cannot be denied that what they state is true. The Prophet’s (PBUH) destruction of the 360 idols placed in the Kaa’ba is not unknown nor is the declaration that followed: “There is no God but Allah. He has no associate.”
It seems legitimate, but are the two incidents really similar?
A still from ISIS's Mosul Museum video: thousands of years of history turned into rubble
The Farce
When the Taliban destroyed the 2,500-year-old Bamiyan Buddha statues in March 2001, they, like the IS now, claimed they were “destroying the statues in accordance with Islamic law” and that the international community need not interfere in what was an “internal matter.” Mullah Omar believed he was ordering the destruction of idols when he had his men blow up the Gandharan sculptures – but what place does idol worship have in Buddhism, a nontheistic religion?
Like the Taliban, the IS have landed headfirst on a false conclusion: not all sculptures and art forms are produced in order to be worshiped. Not all are idols. What purpose did the now-destroyed sculptures of Assyrian gods and kings serve? Even historians and archaeologists may not have a satisfactory answer.
Thus, the claim that the statues in the Mosul Museum were “idols” that the Mesopotamians “worshipped” is not based on fact. Even if they were worshipped some 2,500 years ago, what does it matter now? Sculptures made in the name of a dead religion are no longer the property of that religion – they are the property of art. And art, like language, is a medium of human expression, a way of immortalizing life as we know it. To kill art, then, is to kill life – not that the IS have shown any respect for the latter either.
The Holy Lie
We would be dangerously naïve if we readily accepted the claims of the likes of the IS as the truth. As most people know, the Mosul Museum is not the first instance of world heritage that the IS has destroyed. They have demolished numerous Sufi shrines and might also be “credited” for the destruction of Khalid bin Walid’s tomb in Homs, which was bombed by Wahhabi terrorists (al-Qaeda, the mother of the IS) in July 2013 – all in perfect synchronicity with Saudi Salafi practices, which do not get a nod from many Islamic schools of jurisprudence. They have time and again burned books looted from the library at the University of Mosul, the Central Library of Mosul, and various Sunni mosques and 265-year-old churches. Children’s books, volumes of poetry and ancient manuscripts from the time of the Ottomans – all reduced to ashes.
Which of the Quran’s verses or the Prophet’s (PBUH) sayings has the IS quoted to support this destruction? None – because there aren’t any.
The truth is that the IS is less concerned with enacting and spreading what it perceives as Islamic practices than maintaining its own superiority (much as Saudi Arabia has done for about a century). The Saudi abhorrence of antiquities and conservation of culture is not grounded in Islam – it is highly unlikely that anyone should “worship” Abu Bakr’s house in Mecca any more than they would worship the Hilton that sits on the site today – nor is the IS’s demolition of thousand-year-old artefacts.
While this might sound like a cliché, it is fairly close to the truth: the IS, like the Saudis, want to make sure that their brand of Islam gains currency the world over so that they can assume the position of the holiest of holies, not unlike the popes of medieval Europe. Moreover, they have adopted the right method to achieve this end.
The route to gaining the upper hand in the Islamic world is simple: create a unique brand of what is un-Islamic and slap it on the face of everybody and everything that does not meet your approval. Then, systematically demolish every sign of them and claim that you are doing so in the name of Islam – which may or may not be the case. Target achieved: you are now holier than the rest and you will die as a martyr. The rest? They will live as Kafirs and die as Kafirs.
What Next? Sifting Fact from Farce
For those with a soft corner for world heritage, history or art, the bad news is that there is little one can do to halt the carnage of civilization being conducted not only by the IS, but also around the world. The Nazis did it. The Saudis are doing it. The IS is still a novice in the game. And while UNESCO sits and squeals its outrage, the best one can do is not to throw tantrums on Facebook, but to gain the capacity to tell the truth from the lie and take constructive measures to stop what one can.
Many in our own society follow a diluted version of the IS’s ideology: those who denounce the presence of art inside people’s homes, let alone on display in public spaces. Their claims might seem harmless and even worth ignoring, but it is the everyday art-and-culture “jihadists” that build up to form cancers such as the IS. It seems that the threat of idol worship is so deeply ingrained in us that we have not been able to shrug it off, even now when idol worship is all but extinct in the Middle East. Sculptures are not idols; paintings are not hung on walls to be worshipped – and those who think so must be condemned.
Want to bring about a change? Don’t let this culture thrive. Or else, we must all suffer the consequences.
Related Articles:
http://www.newageislam.com/islamic-history/medina--saudis-take-a-bulldozer-to-islam-s-history/d/9120
Natasha Shahid explores the ideological and political rationale for the Islamic State’s destruction of artefacts in Mosul
Source: http://www.thefridaytimes.com/tft/terrorizing-history/
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