What ISIS Just Did in Iraq Shows That It Truly is an Enemy of Human Civilization

ISIS has now gone from posting harrowing videos of executions to demonstrating how it can obliterate priceless works of art — wiping cultural memory clean and prepping the terrain for a more systematic form of indoctrination.

Jihadists in the Islamic State are shown in the video entering the Ninevah Museum in Mosul, which is home to invaluable ancient manuscripts and pieces of art.

The ISIS soldiers take sledgehammers and power drills to statues, and topple several of them onto the floor. The jihadists condemn the statues for ‘idolatry,’ according to the Daily Mail, as they proceed to obliterate important and famous artifacts — many of them over 3,000 years old.

One of the most infamous acts was the damage done to an Assyrian winged-bull that dates back before 9,000 BC [sic].

The Guardian reports on the comments of Irina Bokova, the head of the UN’s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), made earlier this month. She warned about, “one of the most devastating acts of destruction of library collections in human history.”

She also said, “This destruction marks a new phase in the cultural cleansing perpetrated in regions controlled by armed extremists in Iraq. It adds to the systematic destruction of heritage and the persecution of minorities that seeks to wipe out the cultural diversity that is the soul of the Iraqi people.”

Al-Arabiya reports that ISIS also burned the 1,800-year-old Christian church of Mary the Virgin and released a photo of it on Saturday:

The Huffington Post reported as early as September, 2014 that the Islamic State has been on a rampage of burning Christian churches:

The militant group [ISIS] reportedly blew up a 7th century Christian site known as the Green Church in Tikrit, Iraq on Wednesday. The site belonged to the Assyrian Church of the East and was restored by the Saddam Hussein regime in 2000, according to RT News.A source on the ground told Iraqi news that the militants used “improvised explosive devices” planted in the surrounding area. The entire church was reportedly destroyed in the blast.

A video shows the destruction done to the “Green Church,” which is a “symbol of the Christian roots in Iraq”:

Much like when the Stalinists destroyed Russian churches and erased disfavored people from the history pages, and when the Nazis seized Jewish art pieces and banned them from being shown to the public, the Islamic State is undertaking its own war against humanity and freedom of expression.

The question is: Will the world recognize this for what it is — an assault upon human civilization itself? Or will it continue to look the other way, in the hopes that some nation will finally show the leadership to put an end to it?

© Assyrian International News Agency.

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