One of the very sad effects of the war with ISIS is the destruction of some very ancient sites by ISIS. It does make one wonder why anyone would want to destroy their history and in the broader sense our history? There are plenty of ancient ruins which represent things we feel were evil, but we don’t go out of our way to destroy them. Take the pyramids in the Western Hemisphere. They were used to sacrifice people and cut their hearts out and sometimes chop off their heads. We could easily say they should be destroyed for the barbaric beliefs of their builders and the ceremonies they carried out. If we started to do this type of thing, where would it end? Should we pull down the Roman Coliseum, because Christians were sacrificed there? Where does one stop with this kind of thing? If we decided to pull down or blow up every relic of history we thought was used for evil purposes, would there be anything left? If ISIS has their way, I think they would destroy everything.

Palmyra is an ancient city in Syria. The city happened to contain the Temple of Bel which was an ancient structure over 2,000 years old. The Syrian state-antiquities chief Maamoun Abdulkarim said it was, "the most important temple in Syria and of the most important in the whole Middle East." It was a very large and well preserved structure. The United Nation verified the temple had been destroyed along with columns which were near the temple. Destroying ancient structures is like ripping the heart out of us. The attack on the temple was well planned to reduce it to dust and the explosion was said to be very large. If ISIS was trying to hurt Syrians and indeed others around the world, they found a way to do it. ISIS is stealing the heritage of the human race. One has to wonder how no one in ISIS can see how wrong this is.

ISIS has also been concentrating on houses or worship along with historical sites. As of the writing of this article ISIS is credited with the destruction of 28 religious historical buildings. Looting also seems to be high on ISIS’s list. While they destroy ancient temples and such they have no problem removing artifacts and selling them to finance their movement. If they truly felt they were destroying ancient structures because they were evil, why wouldn’t they also destroy the artifacts? ISIS is said to believe the reason to destroy these structures is to promote monotheism. I wonder how they explain destroying ancient temples which no longer have any religious significance to anyone since these religions died out long ago. One of their targets is also mosques and Muslim shrines. In case you are wonder what I am talking about, these Muslim mosques and shrines are Shiite. ISIS is based on the Sunni branch of Islam.

Iraq has lost building to ISIS such as the Al-Arba’een Mosque in Tikrit. The mosque had forty ancient tombs inside it. ISIS blew it up without a second thought. When ISIS got into Mosul they decided to destroy the Khudr Mosque which was built in the 12th century. Next they blew up tombs and shrines. These people seem never to get enough of destruction and moved on to the mosque of the prophet Jonan and then the tomb of Prophet Jirjis, both of which were blown to smithereens. ISIS is an equal opportunity destroyer and decided to move on and destroy churches and religious buildings such as the monastery called Dair Mar Elia (Saint Elijah). The building was over 1,400 years old. They also destroyed Virgin Mary Church and the 7th century Al-Tahera church. This was one of the oldest churches in Mosul. Next to be destroyed was a 10th century Chaldean Catholic church, St. Markourkas Church. Mosul lost a lot of it history and many more structures than just the ones I have mentioned.

ISIS didn’t stop with just destroying buildings, but also stole books and papers from libraries. We are talking about countries which are very ancient, so one can only imagine what some of the ancient papers and books contained in the libraries were worth. It was said that some of the works which were either stolen or destroyed dated as far back as 5,000 B.C.

What is even harder to understand is what is happening in Saudi Arabia. There is a systematic destruction of sites associated with early Islam. It is said to be happening mostly in the Hejaz region of western Saudi Arabia near the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. Mosques, burial sites, and historical structures associated with the founding personalities of early Islamic history including Muhammad are being destroyed. It is said this is being done as part of the continued expansion of the Masjid al-Haram at Mecca and the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina and their auxiliary service facilities, because the amount of people performing the pilgrimage keeps increasing. One has to wonder if this will invoke the wrath of ISIS on Saudi Arabia.

One of the most incredible places destroyed was the palace of Ashurnasirpal II in Nimrud. The palace was well preserved and contained incredible statuary of animals with human heads. The engineering was fantastic and the palace gave us an insight into how this ancient royal lived. Now that it is gone, we can only cry for its loss. We have been robbed, but it is lucky for us we have the technology to have preserved what it looked like. Possibly in some distant future someone or some country will decide to reconstruct exact replicas of these places and while they won’t be originals they will still be there to show future generations our ancient history.