ISIS Publicly Smashes Syrian Artifacts

[Purveyor]

Source: CNN

(CNN)ISIS militants reportedly smashed cultural treasures from the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, including an artifact dating back to the second century, according to a statement from the group and Syrian state media.

A man smuggling at least six ancient statues through Aleppo province was captured by jihadis and transferred to a self-proclaimed Islamic court in the ISIS-controlled city of Manbij, a Thursday release on the group's social media sites read.

Militants shattered the relics with sledgehammers and lashed the smuggler in a public square packed with onlookers after the court ruled the centuries-old objects violated ISIS' radical interpretation of Islam.
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In Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage site dating back 2,000 years, ISIS allegedly destroyed the Allat God statue on Thursday, a significant ancient object depicting a lion catching a deer between its feet.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/02/world/isis-syrian-artifacts/

[merrily]

1. FUCK.

[Turbineguy]

2. If you have no future

you don't need a past.

[forsaken mortal]

3. I just don't get it

Islamic civilizations have existed that area for a very long time and only now is it deemed by ISIS that these artifacts/ruins somehow are an abomination to Islam. Previous Islamic states obviously didn't see it that way, so why this sudden and tragic shift in thought? I can't watch anymore ISIS videos, seeing the one where they murdered the Jordanian prisoner was the first and last for me.

[Beauregard]

4. Here's why.

ISIS, like Al Qaeda, is dedicated to the Wahhabi version of Islam, which has zero tolerance for "idolatry." All shrines, pictures of people or animals, and memorials are absolutely forbidden, because they run the risk of worshipping an object, rather than God himself. The Saudis are Wahhabis. When they came to power in Arabia in the 1920s, the first thing they did was to destroy all the shrines to Muhammad's relatives.

This is not a "sudden shift" of thought. This fundamentalist sect has existed for 300 years, since the time of its founder, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703–1792). Wahhabi Muslims have been destroying "idols" all that time. Their main enemy has always been mainstream Islam, which is much more liberal on this issue than the Wahhabis.

[christx30]

5. ISIS isn't the first Islamic group to destroy

artifacts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamiyan
1,700 year old statues, destroyed in seconds by the Taliban in March of 2001.

[awoke_in_2003]

6. Start snatching all the antiquities you can find...

and place them in the middle of nowhere. Tell these clowns where they are, then nail the ever living hell out of them. Sorry, these "people" are unredeemable.