Burning In America Essay

Most of the world recognizes Daesh, (more commonly, but inappropriately referred to as ISIS; Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), because of their extreme beliefs, and brutality expressed towards anyone who has differing views from themselves. Daesh has roughly 10,000 fighters, and aims to completely eliminate religions that aren’t their own (Greenfield, 2016). Unfortunately, we have failed to realize that some of Daesh’s actions are more dangerous than they appear. An uninformed American might view a video of Daesh’s members knocking over a statue in the Mosul Museum and feel little concern. “It’s just a statue, right? At least they weren’t hurting a person this time. At least this isn’t happening in America”, one might think. Daesh has been destroying ancient artifacts in archaeological sites, museums, shrines, and holy places (Harmansah, 2016). One thousand eight hundred
Now, think of what America’s reaction would be if that flag was the only one in existence, and its burning was publicized on social media. The artifacts that are being destroyed aren’t meaningless items. The Allat God statue, a statue of Athena at Palmyra, Iamassu in Nimrud, and countless other sentimental and irreplaceable artifacts have been transformed into rubble. These objects represent someone’s past, beliefs, and culture. The destruction of these artifacts is meant to humiliate people within these communities; it is very personal. Islamic law states that if an idol is not being worshiped, it does not need to be destroyed (PBS, 2015), yet Daesh is still demolishing them. Daesh also makes sure to destroy the artifacts as violently as possible in order to make it as painful to watch as possible. The Mosul Museum had over 170 genuine artifacts (PBS, 2015), which tells us that the physical damage done by Daesh at this museum must have caused a plethora of emotional damage to the communities those artifacts were cherished