Yesterday, the Boston Globe featured a column by James Carroll, one that discussed the damage done to religious places during war — usually by design. He uses the attacks on the Askariya Mosque in Iraq, then branches out into other incidents, including the famous Taliban destruction of the giant Buddha statues in Afghanistan.
I know it’s a short column, but there are a few other incidents that, I think, bear some relevance on the matter.
- For example, during World War II, the Nazis occupied the area surrounding (and, according to some accounts, within) the Monte Cassino monastery in Italy. The historic site commanded a very strategic location, so the Allies had no choice but to level it.
- In Jerusalem today, Palestinians occupying the Temple Mount are digging underneath, trying to unearth and destroy all traces of the Jewish Temples that were twice built there and twice destroyed. Israeli archaeologists have recovered countless artifacts from the dump where the Palestinians are disposing them.
- Also in the Palestinian territories, Hamas has held press conferences and displayed its military ordnance in mosques.
- In 2002, Palestinian Muslims fled into the Church of the Nativity (a Christian church) to escape the Israeli Army (Jewish, of course) and occupied the building for weeks until negotiations finally won most of them free passage out of the region.
- In Iraq, mosques have been used as fighting positions and ammo dumps.
Hmm… I think I sense a trend. Setting aside the first example, all the above — and several of Carroll’s points — all revolve around the same thing: militant Muslims tend to have little or no respect for the sanctity of religious places. They freely express their contempt for the holy places of others, and use their own for militant operations.
I’m sure that I’m reading too much into this, of course. After all, Islam is a religion of peace.
