On Thursday the terrorist group ISIS released a YouTube video showing the destruction of priceless artifacts in Mosul, Iraq, at the extremests’ hands. Some of the artifacts, which were housed at a museum and a nearby archeological site, were nearly 2,500 years old, and served as precious records of the Parthian Empire. YouTube has since removed the video, but the Huffington Post has the details:
“Oh Muslims, these artifacts that are behind me were idols and gods worshipped by people who lived centuries ago instead of Allah,” a bearded man tells the camera as he stands in front of the partially demolished winged-bull.
“The so-called Assyrians and Akkadians and others looked to gods for war, agriculture and rain to whom they offered sacrifices,” he added, referring to groups that that left their mark on Mesopotamia for more than 5,000 years in what is now Iraq, eastern Syria and southern Turkey.
“Our prophet ordered us to remove all these statues as his followers did when they conquered nations,” the man in the video adds.
ISIS has already destroyed innumerable works of art and literature and obliterated several holy sites, including the tomb said to be the burial place of the prophet Jonah. This devastation is an integral part of the group’s plan to establish a new caliphate free of all religions except ISIS’s own fundamentalist interpretation of Islam.
