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posted by takyon on Thursday August 20 2015, @01:35PM   Printer-friendly
from the unsafe dept.

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."


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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @11:20AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @11:20AM (#225788)

    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.

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