- MENU
- HOME
- SEARCH
- WORLD
- MAIN
- AFRICA
- ASIA
- BALKANS
- EUROPE
- LATIN AMERICA
- MIDDLE EAST
- United Kingdom
- United States
- Argentina
- Australia
- Austria
- Benelux
- Brazil
- Canada
- China
- France
- Germany
- Greece
- Hungary
- India
- Indonesia
- Ireland
- Israel
- Italy
- Japan
- Korea
- Mexico
- New Zealand
- Pakistan
- Philippines
- Poland
- Russia
- South Africa
- Spain
- Taiwan
- Turkey
- USA
- BUSINESS
- WEALTH
- STOCKS
- TECH
- HEALTH
- LIFESTYLE
- ENTERTAINMENT
- SPORTS
- iHaveNet.com: World
By Victor Davis Hanson
In the Arabic media, there are reports that Muslim clerics -- energized by the sudden emergence of
Don't dismiss such insanity so easily. Mali Islamists are currently destroying the centuries-old mausoleums of Sufi-Muslim saints in the city of Timbuktu, the historic site of early Islamic scholarship and jurisprudence. But perhaps the most recent regrettable Islamist attack on the past was the Taliban's 2001 dynamiting and shelling of the huge twin 6th-century A.D. statues of Buddha carved into a cliff at Bamiyan in
Ideologically driven and historically ignorant violence is not just an Islamist monopoly. Sometimes postmodern, politically correct Westerners can be every bit as zealous -- and as potentially destructive of the past -- as premodern Islamists. One of the joys of visiting
Environmental zealots in the
Again, don't laugh. A petition circulated by an environmental group is forcing the city of
What do these contemporary wars against the past have in common? One shared trait is the power of ideological zealotry, whether religious or environmental, to trump all questions of practicality, historical preservation and reverence for prior generations. The zealot's version of purity, and only his version, matters.
Modern affluence and leisure also explain both the ability and desire to destroy monuments of the past. Twenty-first-century technology allows premodern Islamists to have the weaponry, and the leisure time, for such destruction. If the statutes at Bamiyan are pagan, then so are the explosives that the Taliban used to obliterate them. And it is only because water so easily flows from
A general historical ignorance among the public at large plays a role, too. Just as fundamentalist madrassas pound dogma into the heads of students without any historical appreciation of the richness and variety of all religions in the early
Beware of the wages of professed purity, whether religious or environmental -- whether it targets a mausoleum in Timbuktu or a stone arched bridge in
WORLD | AFRICA | ASIA | EUROPE | LATIN AMERICA | MIDDLE EAST | UNITED STATES | ECONOMICS | EDUCATION | ENVIRONMENT | FOREIGN POLICY | POLITICS
Blowing Up History