New dark ages as Islamic State wreaks destruction in Mosul

Three thousand years ago the centre of the most powerful empire on earth was in modern-day Iraq. Today the remnants are being destroyed by a nihilistic cult. So much for the progress of civilisation. These are the new dark ages.

Today the city reportedly coming under the sledgehammer of the Islamic State demolition crew is known as Nimrud, named after a hunter mentioned in the book of Genesis. In Assyrian times, when its influence spread across an area including today’s Iran, Egypt and Turkey, it was known as Kalhu. In the Bible it’s referred to as Calah or Kalakh.

History means nothing to the zealots of the Islamic State who see the present day as Year Zero. They believe that anything pre-Islamic should be leveled, and also destroy mosques and other Islamic buildings used by Sufis and other more outward-looking Muslims.

Wahhabi clerics, who have huge influence in Saudi Arabia and whose puritanism inspires the jihadis of IS, see idolatry in old mosques but not in the modern worship of consumerism and luxury goods.

According to the Gulf Institute in Washington, up to 95 per cent of Mecca’s millennium-old buildings have been demolished to make way for five-star hotels, apartments and shopping malls.

IS is also making money from the sale of ancient artefacts found on the historic sites in their territory across Iraq and Syria.

Today thousands of visitors to the British Museum will see the magnificent winged bulls taken from Nimrud at the end of the 19th century. But Iraqis who live there are cowering in terror as their history is being annihilated.

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