Peter Frankopan
  • Home
  • About Peter
  • The Earth Transformed
  • The Silk Roads
  • The New Silk Roads
  • Silk Roads - Illustrated
    • The First Crusade
  • I've Been Thinking.....
  • Academic work
  • Press & Media
  • Public Events
  • Contact
Welcome

Peter's blog

I blog from time to time about things that catch my eye and particularly about links between the past and present.

Peter's Blog

civilisation under attack

6/30/2015

0 Comments

 
I am watching a harrowing programme on BB4 about the destruction of antiquities and ancient sites across territories taken by Da'esh/Islamic State.

It is heart-breaking seeing magnificent works of art being smashed with glee - and being dismissed as idols and works that deserve to be lost. The attacks are attacks on humankind's inventiveness, on our species' creativity and on the love of beauty that defines all that is good about us.

The destruction of the past will make the future look very different. Works many centuries - and millennia old - have been lost forever.

What I suspect the programme will not discuss (we're only half way through), is how this has all come to pass. My sadness at the images we were being shown turned to anger when we saw how - for all his many flaws (and worse) -  Saddam Hussein had been a champion of museums and how he had invested lavishly in preserving, restoring and maintaining sites that celebrated the majestic history of Mesopotamia from antiquity to the 20th century.

I am not one of those people who thinks that we create terrorists, or that our tolerance is responsible for radicalizing the young who are heading to join Islamic state/Da'esh.

But in this case, we must also reflect on our own role in this, for we really do need to atone for our sins. This destruction is the price to pay for our spectacular failures in the Middle East as a whole, of our embarrassing inability to understand the people and history of this region, of our idiocy in looking to support regime change (in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Egypt and Tunisia).

The rage anger of those who are committing these acts of cultural barbarism - which go hand in hand with persecution and genocide of Yazidis and others - comes as a reaction to our actions in deliberately adn systematically dismantling a country to suit (what we thought were) our own ends.

I've written about this in my new book; but watching the programme this evening fills me with such despair that I could never capture in writing.
0 Comments

    Author

    I'm trying out micro-blogging -short bits of things I think are interesting every now and again. I'm on twitter too if you prefer doses of 140 characters

    Archives

    October 2018
    January 2017
    September 2016
    August 2016
    May 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    March 2015
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    July 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013

    Categories

    All
    Byzantine
    Byzantine Empire
    Byzantine Empire
    Cats
    China
    Constantinople
    Crusades
    David Bowie
    Dolce & Gabbana
    Downton Abbey
    Emperor
    Fashion
    First Crusade
    Football
    Istanbul
    Medieval
    Middle Ages
    Mongols
    Nomads
    Pilgrimage
    Putin
    Stylite
    Titles
    V&A
    X Factor
    Zoolander

    RSS Feed