Monday, March 09, 2015
The Destruction of Cultural Heritage Should be a War Crime
WSJ: It turns out that the news isn’t as bad as it first appeared. Last week, Islamic State posted a five-minute video of men destroying ancient Mesopotamian sculptures in the Mosul Museum, Iraq’s second-largest museum, with sledgehammers and power tools. Their stated reason was that these works of art promoted idolatry. It was a sickening sight—more than one person I know couldn’t bear to watch the footage—and quickly elicited public denunciations from cultural leaders such as Thomas P. Campbell, director of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Unesco Director-General Irina Bokova.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
This breaks my heart to see. I was unaware that this was happening at all! I appreciate the way that the article articulated how important this issue was to us as humans. It's really quite true that this tragedy is beyond an attack on just this one specific culture, this was an attack on humanity and even history itself. Without relics such as these, we have less representation of history. Without representation of the history of humanity, the entire reason we catalogue culture like this is brought up, and history is unquestionably critical to our survival. In terms of the solution offered by the article, I'm not sure how effective a UN enforced law would turn out. It's a tricky issue though, just because there really isn't many other viable solutions other than military intervention by other countries which becomes incredibly messy, risky, and dangerous. It really would take an all out world effort to ensure that these kinds of tragedies don't continue to happen, and it's especially difficult when so much of the western world is very detached from the issue.
I've already commented on another article like this, but I feel so attached to the issue that I thought it would be okay to divide my thoughts into two articles. The author specifically mentions the reason that these men are destroying these cultural statues is because of the theory that "art promotes idolatry". This is a general Muslim belief, and one of the reasons why there are no pictures or statues of the Prophet Muhammed. But they've twisted this rule from the Qur'an so they can destroy every living bit of their pasts. I can't help but be reminded back to 20th century China, under Mao Zedong's communist rule. Most of the precious artifacts of Tang Dynasty culture we have are actually situated in Japan. And why, we ask? Because the Japanese have actually preserved their ancient culture to the point when they imported much of ancient Chinese culture into their country. As a fervent lover of history and seeing ancient art, it scares me to think that millions of un-researched sculptures will be reduced to nothingness because of a bunch of sick, twisted idiots.
With the amount of paramount destruction that has been happening in the past few months overseas, make most people fearful, sad, outraged, and many emotions ranging big and large. I’ve enjoyed going to museums and seeing a part of history, and how those cultures progressed over time. What is happening with the Islamic State, is completely taking historical significance out of the equation, and those years of history that made up the culture they once were. How a group could become as rebellious as they are, and create as much destruction as they have is sickening. Do they not ever think about the consequences of their actions? To think that more and more people are joining their cause, and what have others done to really counteract them. I just hope that in due time, this type of action stops, but that’s wishful thinking without a force to be able to back up those thoughts, then you just have the sole few martyrs trying to prove a point.
Post a Comment