The extremist group known as Islamic state gained great repercussion in the media due to the cruelty employed in their actions. Invasions, kidnappings, torture, beheadings and depredations of historical monuments are part of some of the actions of terrorists.
Dissidents from the fundamentalist organization Al Qaeda, IS strikes fear even in its forerunners.
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Historical context
O Islam emerged around the year 612 in the Middle East more precisely in the Arabian peninsula region. Religion was created by the prophet Mohammed after this (according to Islamic belief), he received a visit from the angel Gabriel, guiding him to create a doctrine based on monotheism.
Mohammed received several visits from the angel who revealed to him teachings that would give rise to the holy book of Muslims: the Koran. According to this book, the Arab population should abandon religious rituals and dedicate themselves to the worship of Allah.
Muhammad was born in Mecca, a city on the Arabian peninsula famous for having developed into a bustling trade route. Inhabited by groups organized into tribes and clans, the region, despite having populations that followed polytheism, also concentrated practitioners of Judaism and Christianity.
The city of Mecca was famous for concentrating several temples in honor of local gods, this intense religiosity impregnated in the region attracted worshipers from different locations, which boosted a lucrative business.
The prophet publicly condemned the pilgrimage of idolaters to Mecca and the trade in images linked to the deities of polytheism. Mohammed's insistence on preaching the existence of a single God incited the anger of local merchants, which led him and his followers to flee to a nearby town.
The place chosen by Mohammed to take refuge was the city of Medina. This flight, known as the Hegira, marks the beginning of the Muslim calendar in the year 622.
In Medina, Mohammed founds the first Islamic community in which he proclaims himself a political and religious leader. The religion created by the prophet is a mixture of Jewish, Christian beliefs and sacred rituals of some Arab tribes. The Islamic doctrine was responsible for the union of different peoples that inhabited the Arabian peninsula.
In the year 628, the founder of Islam decided to make a pilgrimage back to his hometown: Mecca. The objective was to spread the new religion and conquer the Kaaba temple, the most important of the religious temples.
According to tradition, inside the Kaaba was concentrated the black stone, object of worship of idolatrous pilgrims. According to legend, the prayers performed inside the temple caused all the religious's sin to be transferred to the stone, hence the reason for its being black.
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When Mohammed and his followers reconquered the city of Mecca, he started a campaign to convert as many people as possible to Islam. In this attack, the prophet destroyed several temples and sacred objects of the polytheists.
Mohammed died in the year 632, and since then the religion has been expanding thanks to the solid religious base left by its founder. Islam is present in more than eighty countries, but several branches emerged due to disagreements after the death of the prophet.
The leader of the Islamic State terrorist group is based on a radical islam that seeks to put into practice a government marked by theocracy. Among all the barbarities committed by the group, the destruction of historic monuments, many considered historical heritage of humanity, has been causing indignation.
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the extremists, calls on his followers to repeat Mohammed's action and destroy all monuments considered symbols of polytheism. Following this reasoning, IS has already destroyed several monuments in Iraq and Syria, regions where the concentration of this group is greater.
Find out about the history of the monuments destroyed by the Islamic State.
Assyrian city of Nimrud
The city of Nimrud was built in a region known as the cradle of civilizations. Located on the banks of the Tigris River and north of Mesopotamia (now Iraq), the city was founded in the 12th century BC. C was once the capital of the Assyrian empire.
Nimrud became the Islamic State's route of action, the group's religious fundamentalism led them to destroy numerous monuments in the region, considered by them an offense to monotheism.
A UNESCO considered the invasion of Nimrud and the destruction of its monuments a war crime. Statues, walls with ancient Assyrian inscriptions and even a castle were destroyed by the fundamentalists. The action goes beyond vandalism, it consists of a crime against the history of humanity.
Around the year 1840, archaeologists discovered ruins of the ancient city founded by the Assyrians, a true historical treasure that has been excavated and studied ever since. With the invasion of IS, this treasure is threatened, and most of the ruins have already been destroyed by them.
city of hatra
Wherever it goes, the Islamic State leaves a trail of destruction. The image above speaks for itself, the extremists want to erase from the memory of humanity everything that they consider offensive to their god. Built during the Parthian Empire, the city of Hatra was the first capital of the Arab kingdom.
Located close to Mosul, a city taken over by IS, Hatra has already withstood attacks from the Roman Empire thanks to the strong walls built around it, but it is succumbing to the cruelty of the extremists.
With pickaxes, sledgehammers and machine guns in hand, men invaded the ruins of Hatra and destroyed sculptures built into the city's thick walls and turned statues dating back to 2300 to dust years to. W.
Mosul
Since June 2014, terrorists have started destroying monuments in Iraq's second largest city: Mosul. The invasion of museums and libraries caused incalculable historical damage.
One of the destroyed assets was the statue of Lamasu, an Assyrian deity represented by a winged bull, still reproduced today on the currency of Iraq. Thousands of books that reproduced the history of the ancient civilizations that lived there were burned. The balance of destruction can include a Christian church and a university theater.
Palmyra
Located in Syria, the 2000-year-old city was invaded and taken over by terrorists. The concentration of beautiful ruins and archaeological sites has already made the city an important center for tourism, this before the beginning of civil war in Syria in 2011.
Considered a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the city was an important cultural center in ancient times. During the expansionism of the Roman Empire, Palmyra managed to resist its onslaughts.
After the invasion, the Islamic State already destroyed the 2,000-year-old Arc de Triomphe and two other monuments built by ancient civilizations. Even an archaeologist responsible for conducting studies in the region of archaeological sites was beheaded by the group.
The jihadists' ruthlessness goes beyond the killings of those they consider their enemies, the Islamic State. undertakes a veritable war of terror by trying to erase from human history everything they believe heretical.
In the name of a religion distorted by the group, the history of the first civilizations runs the risk of being erased from our memory once and for all.
Lorena Castro Alves
Graduated in History and Pedagogy