Persecution
The latest news from Iraq is that the forces of ISIS have ordered that all Christians in Mosul must either convert to Islam, pay the jizya tax, a punitive tax levied on non-Muslims, or be killed. Fortunately, so far at least, Christians have been allowed to leave, though those attempting to do so are robbed of all their possessions, leaving them to walk in the summer heat to nearby Christian villages. This, alas, is probably only postponing their eventual expulsion from all the areas controlled by ISIS.
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| Zealous idiots queue up to smash the statue of an Assyrian ruler from Tel Ajajah, Syria. |
Meanwhile pictures have emerged on social meda of Sunni fanatics destroying "idols", among which are the tomb of Ibn al-Athir, a compatriot of Saladin. The domed tomb was demolished and the park that surrounded it was dug up - persumably flowers and grass are un-Islamic! An Assyrian statue from Tel Ajaja, in the part of Syria under ISIS control, was smashed to pieces, idiots queueing up to strike a few hammer blows and thus ensure the favour of Allah. Meanwhile even in southern Iraq, which so far has escaped the depredations of ISIS, Islamic idiots are active.
Back in the 1920s someone thought it would be a good idea to put a facsimile of the Lion of Babylon, a black, basalt statue erected by the Hittites in the heart of Babylon, in the middle of Basra. Over the weekend of July 19 persons unknown destroyed this "idol" with explosives. We just have to hope that the original in Babylon is somehow spared such a fate, but the prospects are not good.
All this vandalism in the name of religion is depressingly familiar to us in Britain, for in many places cathedrals have vacant niches on their front where Protestant and Puritan zealots smashed the statues that once stood in them. (I suppose that the Protestants do have the excuse that in their time such statues were actually being "worshipped", unlike the statue of the Assyrian king in Syria.)
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| Angels adorn the ceiling of Blythburgh church. Originally they were brightly painted, but the few which survive have lost their colours. |
A few years ago we were in Suffolk and in the town of Blythburgh we visited the parish church, which had a wonderful "angel ceiling" - statues of angels with outspread wings are pinned horizontally to the ceiling, the idea being that you look upwards and see the heavenly host praising God. This aroused the ire of a local Puritan gentleman who destroyed as many as he could reach and shot at those he could not.
Elsewhere in Europe there are other examples of similar vandalism, for example, the beautiful Jesse Tree over the doorway of Munster church is disfigured by the heads being knocked off everyone of the figures. The stark, severe interior of the cathedral in Geneva which was taken over by the adherents of John Calvin tells its own story of summary destruction of generations of art.
It is at this point that those of my readers who espouse no religion may be feeling just ever so slightly smug. Allow me, therefore, to burst your bubble. I have recently been reading an abridged version of George Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia", in which he recounts his experiences as a volunteer on the Communist side in the Spanish Civil War. (It is ironic to think that he was in a very similar position to those Muslim youth of today who sneak away to wage jihad in Afghanistan or Syria.)
He describes his first impressions of Barcelona:
Practically every building of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red flags or with the red and black flags of the Anarchists; every wall was scrawled with the hammer and sickle and with the initials of the revoutionary parties; almost every church had been gutted and its images burnt. Churches here and there were being systematically demolished by gangs of workmen.
Later on in the fighting around Huasca he is lightly wounded and while he convalesces, he has opportunity to explore the countryside. He comes across a village graveyard:
On perhaps one grave in four or five there was a small cross or perfunctory reference to Heaven (sic); this had usually been chipped off by some industrious atheist with a chisel.
The problem is not Christians or Muslims - or even Atheists - but humans. From the drunken idiots who vandalise bus shelters or spray graffiti on walls to the religious idiots who hammer piously at wood or stone statues, ideology may be the excuse, but the real problem is the atavistic human pleasure in destroying things. Some people are artists and geniuses and create beauty and worth; others are talentless and brainless and, filled with envy for the beauty they can neither create nor appreciate, destroy whatever they can get their hands on.
The same can be said about the oft-repeated slur that more wars have been caused by Christianity than anything else. Christianity has certainly been responsible for some wars, but at least Christianity has also been responsible for attempts at mercy, from the "Truce of God" to the Red Cross. Other religions have been equally destructive but without the mitigating mercy.
The greatest cause of human suffering, however, has had no religious motivation, from the massacres of the Mongols to the inhuman starvation of the Ukraine by the thoroughly atheist Stalin, to the wars fought for no other reason than a desire for conquest and a thirst for loot. Men have always been willing to kill other men if they thought it would make them richer or more powerful.
I believe it was the British climber Mallory who, when asked why he wanted to climb Mt Everest, replied "Because it is there". In similar fashion, cretins destroy whatever they can - including their fellow human beings - simply because they can.
© Kendall K. Down 2014
