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October 6, 2006
Iraq: Muslims Out to Destroy All Traces of Pre-Islamic History
Upon resigning as director of the Iraq's State Board of Antiquities and Heritage (SBAH) in August, Donny George said that Muslims are out to destroy all traces of Iraq's pre-Islamic heritage.
``They are only interested in Islamic sites and not Iraq's earlier heritage,'' said Dr. George, reported the September issue of the Art Newspaper, a London monthly on the art world. (The story is now in a pay-to-access archive: http://www.theartnewspaper.com/)
This is particularly disturbing because Iraq, home to the so-called Fertile Crescent, is considered the Mother of Civilization. The oldest known permanent settlements, dating to about 10,000 years ago, have been found in the Tigris and Euphrates Valley, and over the centuries the region has been a centre of civilizations that were among the most advanced of their time.
Dr. George, who is an Iraqi Christian, has been replaced by a devout Muslim, Haider Farhan, a member of the militant Shia Islamic party, al Sadr. Farhan has no relevant museum or culture experience for the post.
``The SBAH has come under the increasing influence of al Sadr,'' said Dr. George. ``I can no longer work with these people [the al Sadr] party members who have come in with the new ministry. They have no knowledge of archeology, no knowledge of antiquities, nothing.''
Dr George said that the National Museum in Bagdad has been sealed with concrete to protect it from Islamists who want to destroy or loot the works inside, many of which they find offensive and against the tenets of Islam. He added that Islamic terror has driven all foreign archeologists from the country.
In 634, the Muslim empire founded by the Arabian warlord, Mohammad, seized the Fertile Crescent from Persian Empire. Those people of the Christian majority who survived the slaughter were offered to embrace Islam, or pay the onerous jizyah tax and accept other social attributes that basically made them outcasts and cow dung.
In about 762, the Abbasid dynasty took over rule of Dar al-Islam, (the Muslim world), and moved the capital to the newly-founded city of Baghdad. There are many myths among Muslims and western dhimmis about the historical Bagdad's House of Wisdom, and the city being a ``great center of learning, science and culture.''
Evidence to prove this boast, however, is scant and questionable, or grossly exagerrated. As best it's only possible to say that under the influence of Persia, the Muslims rulers did keep a palace library and works were translated from Greek and Persian into Arabic. But given Islam's strictures against none-Koranic learning, it's highly unlikely that such `heathen' learning went much further than the palace walls, or at best were only used in Islam-sanctioned projects, such as the construction of mosques.
The so-called House of Wisdom was primarily known for its interest in mathematics, and so such knowledge probably was necessary to build places of worship to the Islamic god, Allah, and nothing more. Had the `achievements' of Islam's so-called `Golden Age' run deep, they would have persisted even after Baghdad was destroyed by the Mongols in 1258.
The fact that the sacking of Baghdad meant an end to this `Golden Age' is strong indication that such `achievements' didn't run deep in Muslim society.
Professor Serge Trifkovic writes about the so-called `Golden Age':
``...the best Moslems, whether judged by intellectual or political achievement, are usually the least Moslem.
``The Moslem mainstream of this time, on the other hand, emphasized rigid Koranic orthodoxy and deployed Greek philosophy and science solely to buttress its authority. But when the thinkers went too far in their free inquiry into the secrets of nature, paying little attention to the authority of the Koran, they aroused suspicion of the rulers both in North Africa and Spain, as well as in the East. Persecution, exile, and death were frequent punishments suffered by the philosophers of Islam whose writings did not conform to the canon.
``The problem with turning this list of intellectual achievements into a convincing Islamic golden age is that whatever flourished, did so not by reason of Islam but in spite of Islam. Moslems overran societies (Persian, Greek, Egyptian, Byzantine, Syrian, Jewish) that possessed intellectual sophistication in their own right and failed to completely destroy their cultures. To give it the credit for what the remnants of these cultures achieved is like crediting the Red Army for the survival of Chopin in Warsaw in 1970! Islam per se never encouraged science, in the sense of disinterested enquiry, because the only knowledge it accepts is religious knowledge.''
(adapted by Robert Locke from Dr. Serge Trifkovic's book, The Sword of the Prophet: A Politically-Incorrect Guide to Islam)
see: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=4626
Posted by Jean de la Valette at October 6, 2006 4:44 PM
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