In one moment,
a mob of barbarians
can destroy a country's history,
can erase the work of lifetimes of scholars,
can inflict a wound on humanity that it will still be suffering 1,000 years later -
long after the religion and philosophy and cause of the barbarians is forgotten.
This evil was to be repeated in Mao's ignorant
"Cultural Revolution"
in the 20th century, when again
much of poor battered China's heritage was lost.
John Derbyshire
defends the West hoarding the treasures of the rest of the world
- because the West is safe.
In reply to someone saying items in British museums
were looted by foreigners
from China:
"Well, we should be thankful that it was.
If it had
stayed in China, it would have been smashed up by Red Guards
during the Cultural
Revolution"
The pagan and scientist
Hypatia
was martyred by Christians at Alexandria in 415 AD.
It has been claimed by many that the final destruction of the library was
by the Muslim conquest of Alexandria
in 641 AD,
but
apparently
(see discussion)
the following story is legend:
The story goes that
when asked what to do with the library after the capture of Alexandria,
Caliph Umar
(advisor to and father-in-law of
The Prophet Muhammad)
replied:
"If the books are in accordance with the
book of Allah,
we may do without them,
for the book of Allah more than suffices.
If they are not in accordance, then there is no need to preserve them."
The words may be legend,
but did the Muslims carry out the final destruction anyway?
It is apparently not known.
Bernard Lewis:
"There is good evidence that the library itself was destroyed
long before the Arabs arrived in Egypt."
The Spaniards in Mexico in the 1500s
spitefully destroyed every item of
Mayan literature
they could find
because it disagreed with their own superstitions.
"We found a great number of books ...
and since they contained nothing but superstitions and falsehoods of the Devil we burned them
all."
- Catholic Bishop Diego De Landa
after burning books of Mayan history and science, 1562.
Their violence and cruelty
seems somewhat at odds with the values of their founder
St. Francis of Assisi,
but maybe not.
The Franciscans were also
strong supporters of
the genocide of the
Catholic Nazi state in Croatia
in the mid-20th century,
and participated in the killing.
The Irish Times,
August 29, 1914,
on the burning of the library of Louvain.
Among the priceless artifacts destroyed forever by the Germans was
Rongorongo text E
from Easter Island.
Disturbed Englishman
Noah Bunn
burnt the beautiful old
headquarters of the Jesuits
in Dublin, 2007, destroying forever their library.
A disturbed middle-aged homeless man
burnt the
Catholic
St.Catherine's Church on Meath St, Dublin, in Jan 2012.
This is one of the oldest Catholic churches in Dublin, with parish records dating from
May 1740.
It moved to Meath St in 1782.
The current building is from 1858.
(Not to be confused with the far more ancient Protestant
St.Catherine's Church
on nearby Thomas St, Dublin.)
The deliberate destruction of heritage
for religious, political and commercial reasons
has been commonplace throughout history.
That is why so little heritage survives today.
For example, most of medieval Dublin was demolished for commercial reasons
in the age of prosperity that began
after the Restoration of 1660.
Medieval Dublin had mostly vanished
by the end of the Regency in 1820.
The heroes of Flight 93
- Ordinary people called upon to defend civilization
from vile, fascist barbarians.
They may have saved one of the world's great libraries, the
Library of Congress
(which was right behind the Islamists' target,
the U.S. Capitol).
The Taliban
systematically destroyed every book and artwork
in Afghanistan
that they deemed "un-Islamic",
including all books with pictures,
and all statues in the country.
The Northern Alliance also burned thousands of books in the Kabul Public Library.
In early 2001, in the last months of their evil, barbaric regime,
the
Taliban
destroyed
the ancient Bamiyan Buddhas.
This is all these fascists will be remembered for
in a thousand years time,
when everything else about their
ignorant movement is forgotten.
Japan offered to remove or cover the Bamiyan Buddhas
but the Taliban savage
Abdul Salam Zaeef
rebuffed them,
criticising them for not converting to Islam.
Comment above:
"think what the Taliban and their ilk ... would do to the religious art of Europe if ever these barbarians got a chance."
Zaeef spent time in Guantanamo
but is now free and back in Afghanistan.
The anti-war side
attacked America for this,
delighted that it
distracted attention from America's victory in the invasion.
They furiously blamed America for a crime against humanity.
An Iraqi Tragedy
by Daniel Pipes, April 22, 2003,
is an early voice pointing out that the Iraqis did it, not the Americans.
The National Museum - which suffered from theft not arson
- lost about 5 percent of its holdings.
The National Library - which suffered from arson
- lost about 95 percent of its rare books,
60 percent of the archival collections, and 25 percent of the book collection.
The monumental 6th century AD
Buddhas of Bamiyan,
Afghanistan
(built before Islam was invented).
Destroyed by the ignorant, illiterate religious maniacs,
the Taliban, in 2001.
Later that year, after they helped attack America, the Taliban regime was destroyed
and thousands of Taliban maniacs killed by the
U.S. military.
Image from here.
During the
rebellion
in the Islamic tyranny of the
Maldives
in Feb 2012, a mob of Islamic fascists invaded the
National Museum.
They
destroyed forever these ancient coral stone Buddhist statues on Tue 7 Feb 2012.
About 35 exhibits — mostly
images of Buddha and Hindu gods
— were destroyed.
Some of the artifacts dated to the 6th century AD.
The Thoddoo head
(c.600 AD)
was destroyed.
99 percent of the Maldives’ pre-Islamic artifacts (pre-12th century)
were destroyed.
Photo from
here
in
maldivesculture.com,
which has pictures of the destroyed artifacts.
"They have effectively erased all evidence of our Buddhist past"
said a museum official.
Their tourist industry will soon be gone.
Islam causes poverty.
Al-Aziz Uthman,
Sultan of Egypt,
and son of the Muslim leader Saladin,
tried to destroy the Pyramids in 1196.
This Muslim religious fanatic
started by attacking the
Pyramid of Menkaure
which he mutilated but did not manage to demolish.
He eventually gave up because the task was too big.
The Sphinx of Egypt has a missing nose.
It was written in the 1400s that the Sphinx was
mutilated in 1378 by a local
Muslim fanatic.
Incredibly, a new destruction of Egyptian history has begun
during the deeply unpleasant
Egyptian revolution of 2011 that makes one
despair for the future of Egypt.
During the sordid
Egyptian revolution of
Jan 2011, barbarians attack the
Egyptian Museum.
Above they smash
a model boat from Asyut
dating from approximately 2000 BC,
See
more attacks
on Ancient Egyptian sites round the country,
in this most disgusting of revolutions.
And more.
Egyptians burn their own history, Dec 2011.
The
Institut d'Égypte
(Institute of Egypt)
in Cairo
was founded in 1798 and was burnt by Egyptian protesters on 17 December 2011.
Photos from here.
See tribute
by Daniel Pipes, 27 Dec 2011:
"I treasured this little-known gem for its library .. its symbol as the capstone of Orientalist learning in Egypt, its evocation of a different and better era, and the quietude it offered in a city with few such oases."
Jihad Watch
calls the burning a
"self-inflicted Islamic-inspired lobotomy ..
a massive setback for the human enterprise and a victory for the forces of ignorance and darkness."
Pipes asks if the Islamist barbarians will burn the
Egyptian Museum
next.
Maybe soon all that will survive of the
Tutankhamun artifacts
will be the replicas.
Since 1995.
