IS Systematically Destroying Historic Sites

[abaris]

I suspect this isn't too different from the mentality behind the final solution; "shit the world is after us, we've got a few weeks left, what can we do to make an impact?"

That's exactly the wrong conclusion. First, their goal is to become martyrs for their cause, second, they want to reach the muslim world at large. And for that goal they need the West to engage in yet another Gung Ho operation with as much collateral damage as possible.

[Metis]

I suspect this isn't too different from the mentality behind the final solution; "shit the world is after us, we've got a few weeks left, what can we do to make an impact?"

That's exactly the wrong conclusion. First, their goal is to become martyrs for their cause, second, they want to reach the muslim world at large. And for that goal they need the West to engage in yet another Gung Ho operation with as much collateral damage as possible.

Reaching out to muslims? Are you sure? I mean batty as they might be they're not all IS-minded in Theology, and I'm sure a good many of them are aware that one of the few things Iraq has (or had) to flog to the world were the ancient ruins in tourist traps.

They've just killed what could have been a lucrative source of money for the Islamic world. It's fairly evident a good few Iraqi's and Muslims elsewhere are keenly aware of that.

[Spooky]

I honestly wish I were surprised.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I suspect this isn't too different from the mentality behind the final solution; "shit the world is after us, we've got a few weeks left, what can we do to make an impact?"

I don't think that ISIS thinks its number is up. They still control large swathes of Syria and Iraq, the latter of which contain rich oilfields which can finance a powerful armed force, and fuel its machinery. Boko Haram just pledged alliance with them, opening up the possibility of co-ordinated attacks and perhaps even campaigns -- a nightmare scenario of playing whack-a-mole, it seems to me. With the fading of Al Qaeda, the center of gravity for violent Muslim extremism has shifted to them.

I think they are doing this as a direct assault on the intellectual discipline of history. I think they regard education as suspicious, at the least, if not haram, and educating people about pre-Islamic history in particular would be seen as distracting intellectual interest from the Almighty.

Also, not to be pedantic, but that was not the mentality behind the "final solution", which Hitler foreshadowed long before WWII, and had almost completed by the autumn of 1944.

[Mr Greene]

It is becoming well known that archaeology is directly contradicting the claims of monotheism. eg.

The Israelites were commanded to do the same thing in the First Commandment in Exodus 34:12-16

This never happened, Exodus (and all the books of the OT at least upto the Return from Babylon circa. ~450BCE) are fictional as proven by the archaeology done at the Sumerian cities such as this one being bulldozed.

[robvalue]

I think ISIS are trying to stop aliens investigating us by making us seem too stupid to be worth bothering with.

Destroy all evidence of civilisation!