Daily Times

The Islamic State (IS) has destroyed the two millennium old Baalshamim temple in the historic Syrian city of Palmyra, an incredibly well preserved oasis town home to many World Heritage sites. The destruction of the temple continues the trend of IS’s attack on history. Though it may seem misplaced to focus outrage on the flattening of monuments while IS, which has control over vast swathes of war-torn Syria and Iraq, conducts genocidal acts regularly, the anti-historical nature of the group needs to be condemned. History and culture assume greater importance for a country torn by war. In them lies hope for the future, an identity to cherish after the brutality of war has long gone. Palymra is just the latest site to fall prey to the group’s hateful practices. Before this there was Mosul, Nimrud and Hatra. The tragedy of the area under IS’s occupation is that it is so full of rich and diverse historical sites that bear the marks of a region with a vibrant past. Alas, what remained preserved for thousands of years as a locus of pride for the region is now being obliterated.

The barbarity displayed by the IS and other organizations of its ilk might appear to be mindless savagery but it is in fact the logical conclusion of literalist and puritanical readings of the scripture, which seeks to respond to an ever evolving world by imposing on it a rigid recreation of an imagined, perfect golden era of the past. Therefore, the actions and words of a bygone era are appropriated by the extremists with zealotry but without any appreciation of context. The IS thus revels in destruction of history and reveals an ideology that would see it erase from existence any sign of culture or religious practice in the world that predates or coexists in time with the group’s extremely flawed conception of Islam. For one, when idols were destroyed during the nascent Islamic period, it was because they were actively worshipped by the erstwhile persecutors of early Muslims in places that were designated as holy for the latter (e.g. the Ka’aba). In the present case, the museums and temples only had scholarly and cultural value and no antagonistic group of worshippers existed. And what to make of the beheading by IS of 82-year-old Khaled al-Asaad, the Syrian archeologist who had looked after Palmyra’s UNESCO World Heritage ruins for four decades? The deliberate refusal to treat Islamic teachings as enlightened, liberatory and tolerant of pre-Islamic history is the poison pill groups like IS and earlier the Afghan Taliban (the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas) are forcing down the throat of humanity, at the cost of plurality and rationalism. *