Yeah...there is an argument for that all right!!--LOL!!
The burning of libraries
"The greatest library of the ancient world, the Library of Alexandria, which had been collecting works since 330 BC, was destroyed by the Muslims in 641 AD. When asked what to do with the library after the capture of Alexandria, Caliph Umar [advisor to and father-in-law of The Prophet Muhammad] replied: "If the books are in accordance with the book of Allah, we may do without them, for the book of Allah more than suffices. If they are not in accordance, then there is no need to preserve them." It took six months to destroy the library, losing forever much of the scholarship of the ancient world. It was the most evil act of vandalism in history.
A "daughter library" of 40,000 scrolls had already been deliberately burnt by the Christian Archbishop Theophilus in 391 AD. See the martyrdom of Hypatia.
The Chinese Emperor Shih Huang-ti ordered the burning of all books in China in 213 BC except those dealing with agriculture, medicine and fortune telling.
This evil was to be repeated in Mao's ignorant "Cultural Revolution" in the 20th century, when again much of poor battered China's heritage was lost.
John Derbyshire defends the West hoarding the treasures of the rest of the world - because the West is safe. In reply to someone saying items in British museums were looted by foreigners from China: "Well, we should be thankful that it was. If it had stayed in China, it would have been smashed up by Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution"
The Spaniards in Mexico in 1520 spitefully destroyed every item of Mayan literature because it disagreed with their own superstitions. Leading this great crime by the Catholic Church against humanity were the Franciscans. - "We found a great number of books ... and since they contained nothing but superstitions and falsehoods of the Devil we burned them all." Their violence and cruelty seems somewhat at odds with the values of their founder St. Francis of Assisi, but maybe not. The Franciscans were also strong supporters of the genocide of the Catholic Nazi state in Croatia in the mid-20th century, and participated in the killing.
The Germans burnt the ancient library of the University of Louvain in 1914.
The Nazis burnt the ancient archives of Angevin Naples in 1943.
The Serbs burnt many of Bosnia's libraries and destroyed much of its heritage in the 1990s. See the Bosnian Manuscript Ingathering Project.
The Italian Mafia bombed the Uffizi art gallery in Florence in 1993.
The burning of research labs by primitive environmental fascists, enemies of science and reason, enemies of the Enlightenment.
The destruction of archaeological remains by ignorant Native Americans, believers in "souls" and "spirits". Copied here.
Mireille Breitwieser deliberately destroyed a huge collection of priceless works of art in 2001.
IRA attacks on libraries
In the last months of their evil, barbaric regime, the Taliban destroyed the ancient Bamiyan Buddhas, with, it turned out, the help of Osama bin Laden's fascist Al-Qa'ida network. The Taliban also destroyed much more of Afghanistan's cultural past. This is all these fascists will be remembered for in a thousand years time, when everything else about their ignorant movement is forgotten.
The heroes of Flight 93 - Ordinary people called upon to defend civilization from vile, fascist barbarians. They may have saved the Library of Congress.
Iraqis burnt their own National Library and looted their own National Museum on liberation in 2003.
The anti-war, anti-America people were delighted with this, since it distracted attention from the fact that they had just lost the war. They furiously blamed America for a crime against humanity.
An Iraqi Tragedy by Daniel Pipes (or via here or here) is an early voice pointing out that the Iraqis did it, not the Americans.
Since then, thankfully, it has turned out that there was some looting, and some irreplaceable losses, but most of the material was already in safe-keeping.
About 90 percent of the National Museum survives.
About 90 percent of the National Library survives.
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The Vatican, always at the cutting edge of human thought, declared in 1992 that the earth may go round the sun. Then in 1996 (also reported here) these pioneers of human knowledge declared that life on earth may have evolved." ;-) |
