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Islamic State militants beheaded Khaled al-Asaad, 82, a renowned antiquities scholar in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra and hung his mutilated body on a column in a main square of the historic site because he apparently refused to reveal where valuable artifacts had been moved for safekeeping.
Before the city's capture by Isis, Syrian officials said they moved hundreds of ancient statues to safe locations out of concern they would be destroyed by the militants. Isis was likely to be looking for portable, easily saleable items that are not registered.
Unesco warned last month that looting had been taking place on an "industrial scale". Isis advertises its destruction of sites such as Nimrud in Iraq but says little about the way plundered antiquities help finance its activities. Stolen artefacts make up a significant stream of the group's estimated multi-million dollar revenues, along with oil sales and straightforward taxation and extortion.
Asaad had worked over the past few decades with US, French, German and Swiss archaeological missions on excavations and research in Palmyra's famed 2,000-year-old ruins. "He was a fixture, you can't write about Palmyra's history or anything to do with Palmyrian work without mentioning Khaled Asaad. It's like you can't talk about Egyptology without talking about Howard Carter."
Archaeological experts say Isis took over the already existing practice of illegal excavation and looting, which until 2014 was carried out by various armed groups, or individuals, or the Syrian regime. Isis initially levied 20% taxes on those it "licensed" to excavate but later began to hire its own own archaeologists, digging teams and machinery.
"Their systematic campaign seeks to take us back into pre-history. But they will not succeed."
(Score: 5, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Thursday August 20 2015, @01:56PM
Ooops - apologies. I realize that many of you don't know what Daesh is. This article should aid in your understanding -
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2014/10/09/words-matter-isis-war-use-daesh/V85GYEuasEEJgrUun0dMUP/story.html [bostonglobe.com]
PLEASE, stop referring to those animals as "ISIS" or "ISIL" or any other name that lends any degree of dignity or humanity to them. They are animals, lower than dogs or swine. Daesh. Not MY name for them, but the name assigned by more moderate Muslims. Pretentious animals, claiming to know the will of God.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2015, @07:20PM
Well, if that be true, then the rest of Islam should cooperate with the world community in putting their mad dogs down.
Implying that the Muslim people support (or at least don't oppose) them...
Daesh. Not MY name for them, but the name assigned by more moderate Muslims.
Implying that moderate Muslims condemn them...
So which position do you think is the true one? I expect it is the latter, so why did you say the former?
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Friday August 21 2015, @12:54AM
I don't think there's too much doubt that Saudi Arabia and Qatar are among the biggest funders of ISIS.
I don't think the average Muslim person in either of those countries would be particularly happy about what ISIS does, but since when do repressive governments like Saudi Arabia care what their subjects think?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @11:20AM
The truth is, huge numbers of Muslims in the world are very like the ISIS or prefer an interpretation of Islam that would result in ISIS like behaviour.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ani-zonneveld/isis-muslim-world-similar_b_7998418.html [huffingtonpost.com]
Many of them would want to treat their enemies similar to how the ISIS treat their enemies. They just disagree on who their enemies are. Go look what the head of Al-Azhar (one of the top religious leaders of the Sunni Islam world) says: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/122176/Egypt/Politics-/AlAzhar-head-says-IS-murderers-deserve-to-be-kille.aspx [ahram.org.eg]
Ahmed El-Tayeb said: "The Quran mandates that the perpetrators of this cowardly act, which goes against God's word, deserve to be killed, or crucified, or have their legs and arms amputated."
Many Muslims believe they should follow the examples of their religious leaders in history and a number of those leaders did very similar things to what the ISIS did: http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2015/08/why-did-the-isis-caliph-rape-american-kayla-mueller [firstthings.com]
In contrast it doesn't take much studying of Buddhism for you to realize that the Buddhists in Sri Lanka and Myanmar who are killing others are definitely not following the ideals of Buddhism or the example of the various Buddhas. Yes Buddhism allows military folk to kill however it's not something that's encouraged it's more like a lesser evil. Whereas many Muslims do not consider stuff like the forced marriage/enslavement of women captives as a lesser evil. In fact very many like the idea of fighting and killing people and dying as a Syahid.
And thus no surprise that Islam with such popular interpretations tends to result in more violence nad evil than say Buddhism or the worship of the FSM.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @03:05AM
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It is OK to call any people "animals", since it is literally true. But they are also obviously, plainly, uncontroversially "human" in every sense of the word.
Most people who claim to be members of the Islamic State obviously think of their actions as basic survival; they also think of it as a struggle for their personal freedom, and many (although probably not most) think of it as a fight for their political freedom. While you think they are "lower than swine" (in what sense?), they regard the west as a worthy adversary, and these kinds of mentalities must be factoring into why they are still winning and the west got its knickers in a bunch. IS manages to maintain a semi-functioning state, while at war with all of their neighbors, the USA, and its allies, all the while the surrounding regimes are coming apart at the seams. These people have to know quite a bit more about humanity and freedom than you give them credit for. And the sum of all of their atrocities so far is nothing compared with what, mmm, say, USA does every year for the last 40+ years.
~ Anonymous 0x9932FE2729B1D963
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