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Carefully Calculated and Yet Mindless Destruction
In light of their complete disdain for human life and welfare, it is hardly a surprise when drooling, savage fanatics destroy significant remnants of the history of the human race in their greedy, obsessive drive to re-make the world in the image of their exclusive fantasy. And though I am not shaken by the same horrified rage that grips me when I read of the deliberately horrific murders - primarily of their own countrymen and countrywomen - proudly displayed by these calculating monsters and the less prominently displayed institutionalized rape that has become part of their "culture," I am deeply saddened at the reports of the campaign of destruction of important cultural artifacts currently being carried out in Syria and Iraq by ISIS.
As if it weren't bad enough that in 2001 the Taliban blew up two huge, irreplaceable statues of Gandaharan Buddhas dating back to 507 and 554:
Before and after
nor that ISIS blew up religious sites such as the one traditionally considered to be the tomb of the prophet Jonah, but now ISIS is destroying irreplaceable museum collections and entire archaeological sites with dynamite, bulldozers, power tools and sledgehammers. A few images as a memorial to what has been lost:
In the Mosul archaeological museum
In the Assyrian city of Nimrud, and now:
Today there are reports that they are destroying the 1st century BCE site at Hatras:
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