ISIS Damages Bel, Syria’s “Most Important Temple,” Rights Group Says

At CNN, Don Melvin and Schams Elwazer report that the Temple of Bel, one of the most historically important temples in the Middle East, has sustained damage due to an explosion inside its walls. ISIS has destroyed several other ancient sites and antiquities during its violent campaign across Iraq and Syria because it considers pre-Islamic holy objects to be sacrilegious. “It seeks to destroy diversity and enforce narrow uniformity. Evidence of a tolerant, diverse past is anathema,” wrote Sturt Manning, chairman of Cornell University’s Department of Classics. “What it fears is memory and knowledge, which it cannot destroy.”

Read at CNN

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