Iconoclasm rampant

Iconoclasm is the destruction of religious icons or monuments and other imagery for political or religious purposes – and it is not new. In recent history, the Puritans of the Commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell, which was in power from 1649 to 1660, wreaked all manner of destruction on churches, monasteries and other places of religious significance with which they had ideological differences. The Islamic State (IS) of their day. A medieval Taliban. That wanton destruction is now being seen in Syria, a country that is a vast repository of the history of the Graeco-Roman world and the later architecture of the medieval world that succeeded it. The destruction of the Temple of Bel at Palmyra is just the latest and most high-profile of it acts committed by IS in its drive to purify the lands it controls of all trace of divergent thought, expression and ideology.

The Temple of Bel joins a long list of destruction. The great castles of Aleppo and Krak de Chevalier have both been extensively damaged in the fighting. According to Cheikhmous Ali of the Association for Protection of Syrian Archaeology, over 900 monuments and archaeological sites have been completely destroyed or partially damaged over the last four years of war — and it is not only IS that is in the wrecking business. There is money to be made from the black market sale of antiquities, and criminal gangs have long traded in such artefacts. For IS, this is a revenue stream to add to its ‘taxation’ of local populations and to the profits from the sale of oil from wells and refineries it controls.

There is agreement across a range of analysts of the conflict that this destruction is not going to stop as long as IS maintains a hold, and there is little chance of it being dislodged in the foreseeable future as that would take a popular uprising — the climate for which does not exist at this time. The Temple of Bel, the Buddhas of Bamiyan and religious figures along the road to the Swat valley, gone forever. Iconoclasm knows no forgiveness or tolerance and hovers just beneath the surface of Pakistan today.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 6^th, 2015.

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