The Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, Daesh) has reportedly seized Palmyra, an ancient city known for some of the best preserved Roman ruins outside of Rome. Syrians and outsiders fear that the Islamic State will destroy the site. After all, they have already bulldozed Nimrud, smashed artifacts in the Mosul museum, and destroyed Nineveh.
The irony of the Islamic State’s action is how inconsistent they are with Islamic history. After all, the Umayyad Caliphate, based in Damascus, reigned supreme over all these sites in the decades after the Prophet Muhammad’s death. Likewise, these sites—and many others—also survived the Abbasid dynasty which the Islamic Empire from Baghdad between 750 – 1258 AD.
Likewise, the great Buddhas in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, survived centuries of Islamic rule in Afghanistan until the Taliban decided to dynamite them in 2001.
And Sufi shrines in Timbuktu, which I had the good fortune to visit 13 years ago, and elsewhere in northern Mali had survived centuries until Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb terrorists took out their destructive impulse upon them.
The chief responsibility for the destruction of this heritage, of course, rests on the Islamic State. And those individuals who partook in the looting and destruction should certainly face justice whenever it can be delivered, whether next month or decades from now.
But, it is worth considering why it is that such a reactionary if not ignorant interpretation of Islamic law has taken hold among the followers of groups like the Taliban, the Islamic State, and Al Qaeda affiliates. The one commonality they all have is decades of exposure to Saudi-funded mosques and madrasas.
Theologically, Muslims believe that the Quran is the literal word of God and eternal—it has always existed but God only chose to reveal it to man in the seventh century, when the Angel Jibril (Gabriel) dictated the revelation to the Prophet Muhammad. Languages evolve however; most Arabs can no more understand seventh century Arabic than Americans can understand Old English. And, of course, most Muslims are not even Arabs. The point is that most Muslims cannot read the Quran in its original language and both memorize its verses and the meanings ascribed to them by imams and mullahs. Many of these mullahs likewise may not be able to read Quranic Arabic, but have simply memorized the verses and meanings. For decades—ever since the oil boom—Saudi Arabia has focused its ‘charity’ on the promulgation of its reactionary school of Islam far beyond the central Arabian desert from which it sprang.
Once, the Saudis concentrated on destroying their own relics, believing that appreciation for ancient shrines and sites, Islamic or not, equated to idolatry. Their students have taken this backward, ignorant attitude international and the world is now paying the price. If the Islamic State destroys Palmyra, condemn the Islamic State, but don’t forget to save some credit to the incubator of the Islamic State’s iconoclasm: the public education system of Saudi Arabia and the charities which the Saudi Kingdom has long promoted.
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