Modern Mongols of Iraq

Dubai eye
Marx said history repeats itself first as tragedy and then as farce. In its long history, Iraq, the cradle of civilisation, has seen enough of both. It is said that when the Mongols ransacked Baghdad, the seat of Islamic caliphate and a great centre of learning and civilisation, the city’s fabled rivers turned dark.
It was not just the blood of Baghdad’s residents butchered en masse by the invaders that had changed the colour of water. The books from the city’s libraries were thrown into the river Tigris in such quantities that the river ran black with the ink from the books. The world will never truly know the extent of what knowledge was lost forever when those books were thrown into the river or burned.
Established by Caliph Al Mansur in 762, Baghdad had not just been the capital of the Islamic world but the civilisational centre of the known world. The libraries of Baghdad were unrivalled in their diversity. The House of Wisdom (Dar Al Hikma) attracted scholars, scientists, mathematicians, and linguists from around the world.
The Mongols entered Baghdad on February 10th, 1258 and a full week of pillage and unprecedented destruction and savagery followed. The invaders showed no mercy or discretion, destroying mosques, hospitals, libraries, and palaces. It is estimated that between 200,000 and 1,000,000 people were butchered in just one week.
The fabled city of Arabian Nights and Scheherazade was left completely depopulated and uninhabitable. It would take centuries for Baghdad to rise again. Scholar Ibn Kathir notes that the Mongols killed so many people that for days blood ran down Baghdad’s streets like rainwater.
After wiping out entire towns and villages, the hordes of Hulagu Khan, the grandson of Genghiz Khan, would famously assemble pyramids of human skulls as a warning that the Mongols were passing through.
What the Mongols and later the Crusaders, both old and new, visited on this ancient land destroying its rich civilisation and heritage has been a colossal and continuous tragedy. But what the self-styled Islamic State is inflicting on the region all in the name of Islam and Muslims is even worse. A farce that gets more outrageous and tragic with each passing day.
As if the casual brutality and spine-chilling beheadings and burning alive of victims on camera was not enough, the IS are now on an iconoclastic mission, rampaging across Iraq and obliterating what even the Mongols couldn’t manage to destroy.
After vandalising the Mosul Museum, known for its treasure troves of Muslim and pre-Islam history, the IS gangs bulldozed the ancient Assyrian site of Nimrud, Iraq’s answer to pharaoh and a contemporary of Prophet Abraham who is revered by all three great monotheistic faiths. Nimrud’s tales of hubris and his fall feature in the Quran and biblical accounts.
Iraq’s rare archaeological sites– declared World Heritage by Unesco and prized by anthropologists, historians and scholars as shared human inheritance that have been around for more than 3,000 years – are being casually erased from the face of earth. Online videos show IS militants demolishing ancient statues and other rare artefacts with sledgehammers.
At the Mosul Library, they burnt piles and piles of priceless manuscripts and books, just as the Mongols had done 900 years ago. But the Mongols were motivated by their mindless hatred of Islam, culture and civilisation. What drives the histrionics of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis)? Clearly, they see all human history, achievements and civilisation that preceded Islam as un-Islamic and hence unfit to exist in times and lands ruled by Islam and its followers.
One saw the same twisted, nihilistic mindset at work under the Taliban in Afghanistan. In 2001, months before 9/11 and the US invasion of Afghanistan, the Bamiyan Buddhas, the tallest standing statues in the world, were demolished on the orders of Mullah Omar.
The 5th century sculptures, again a part of Unesco World Heritage, were carved by Greek artists out of mountains that guard over the valley which was part of the fabled Silk Route. For thousands of years, pilgrims, traders and invaders, including Alexander’s army, passed through the valley on their way to India. It is part of the region known for its celebrated Gandhara art and rich Buddhist cultural heritage.
It took the Taliban nearly a month of heavy artillery fire and eventually dynamite to bring down the Bamiyan Buddhas as a mystified world looked on in helpless horror. Iconoclastic acts have occurred throughout history but Bamiyan proved so defining and monumental in its impact that it drew fierce protests from around the world, including from across Muslim lands.
But was it merely the ‘un-Islamic’ nature of the Buddhist icons, decreed by Mullah Omar as ‘the gods of infidels,’ that led to their destruction or was there more to the Taliban madness than met the eye? It seems politics, rather than religion, was responsible for the Bamiyan tragedy.
It is argued that punitive western sanctions on Afghanistan demanding the scalp of Osama bin Laden may have contributed to the mindless vandalism. Bin Laden was wanted at the time in connection with the bombings of US embassies in Africa in 1998. The sanctions increased the severity of an already dire famine that the country was battling at the time. As the Taliban ambassador at large Rahmatullah Hashimi told Ray Suarez on NPR in 2001: “If the world is destroying our future with economic sanctions, why do they worry about our past? You're destroying our children. Is the life of our people any less important (than these statues?)”
Twisted logic but it offered enough insight into the Taliban mindset. What’s the difference then between this annihilation of Afghanistan’s heritage and the destruction visited on the country by the Russian and western invasions? Or for that matter how is what the Taliban did in Afghanistan then and Isis is doing today in Iraq any different from what happened to the historical 16th century Babri mosque at Ayodhya in India in 1992 at the hands of a Hindu mob?
While Islam does frown on idols and idol worship, it doesn’t command or give the believers a licence to go on an iconoclastic rampage, destroying revered icons and places of worship of the rest of humanity. The Prophet (pbuh) did remove idols placed in Kaaba as it was the first house of God built by Abraham in Mecca, according to the Quran. However, he also repeatedly asked his followers, as does the Quran, to respect others’ beliefs and their icons.
Throughout history, Muslim rulers have followed the example of second caliph Omar, who travelled all the way from Medina to Jerusalem to receive the keys of the holy city from Patriarch Sophronius, in protecting Jews, Christians and other minorities when they were being persecuted elsewhere.
This is why what is going on in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere at the hands of the self-anointed defenders of the faith is not just incredibly appalling and outrageous, it is a travesty of Islam and its teachings.
This article first appeared in the Straits Times, Singapore.
The writer is a Middle East based columnist. Email: aijaz.syed@hotmail.com