Slaughter and Despoiling

"I think we are worried about almost all the heritage sites in Syria. Nothing is safe."
"[ISIL's] view on culture and heritage is just the opposite of what UNESCO stands for."
Irina Bokova, director general, UNESCO

Hadrian’s Gate, Palmyra   Known as the ‘Venice of the Sands’, the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra – located at the edge of an oasis of date palms and gardens – was a wealthy caravan centre from the 1st to the 3rd centuries CE, sometimes independent and at other times under the control of Rome

Photograph: Fernando Arias/Getty Images/Flickr RF

Islamic State's view on the sacredness of life is just the opposite of what any member of any society stands for without the permission given by Islamist scholarly interpretation. Clerical counsel goes a long way to justifying the removal of infidels from life for their presence represents an unacceptable affront to the sacred nature of Islam. For which jihad is an imperative, to do battle with non-believers.

Any vestige of paganism, of any religion purporting to represent itself as the avenue to the sacred precincts of god, any human beings, regardless of gender, age, social status or wealth represents yet another sacrifice to the precepts of Islam's demands on its faithful. Jihadis fighting under the black psychopathic banner of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant have God coaching them; they can do no wrong.

If it instills fear in the hearts of non-Muslims to view the creative ways in which people can be persuaded to have their spirits leave their bodies, all the better. Fear and loathing representing the terror that Islamic State perpetuates are the fuel that propels their duty to Islam. If the atrocities committed against human beings don't persuade that Islamist jihadists are mad henchmen of an evil ideology, how can the carnage they practise on archaeological sites be viewed as the ultimate assault on civilization?

The destruction in Syria of the Saint Elian Monastery by the town of Qaryatain has followed the very public beheading of the 81-year-old archaeologist who had dedicated his life-work to preserving the ancient Semitic ruins of Neolithic-built Palmyra. The ruins had survived for thousands of years, but then Islamist jihadis arrived to administer Islamist justice to eradicate evidence that anything of value preceded it.

Another series of photographs on ISIL social media sites celebrated bulldozers destroying the Saint Elian Monastery. According to a Christian clergyman in Damascus, the jihadis destroyed a church located within the monastery dating to the 4th Century. And quaintly, a Qaryatain resident who found haven in Damascus pleaded with the United Nations to protect Christians, apart from the focus on ancient sites in Syria.

Government shelling of the area had pre-damaged the monastery over the past two weeks. The Islamic State jihadists simply finished off the job in a more demolition-specialist manner, according to the director of the Christian Assyrian Human Rights Network. "Daesh continued the destruction of the monastery", Osama Edward stated, of a clerical residence founded in 432.

The barbarians didn't live in the past exclusively, for those who ply their trade at the present time are quite capable of outdoing those of the past, from the Syrian regime's brutal deadly assaults on its own Sunni Syrian population, to the Sunni Islamist jihadis targeting the Shia Alawite regime; two birds of a feather, each outdoing the other in violent atrocities.

Their maleficent viciousness is what is creating the epidemic of migrants, refugees fleeing from their native lands to try to find haven and solace and hope for the future in Europe. Leaving European countries with manifold, civilizational problems of their own, to solve the dilemma of having to yield to the desperate search for humanitarian aid of a people who will transform their cultures completely.