Islamic State group ransacks libraries
BAGHDAD — When Islamic State group militants invaded the Central Library of Mosul last month, they were on a mission to destroy a familiar enemy: other people’s ideas.
Residents say the extremists smashed the locks that had protected the biggest repository of learning in the northern Iraq town, and loaded around 2,000 books — including children’s stories, poetry, philosophy and tomes on sports, health, culture and science — into six pickup trucks. They left only Islamic texts. The rest? “These books promote infidelity and call for disobeying Allah. So they will be burned,” a militant told residents, according to one man living nearby who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared retaliation.
Since the Islamic State group seized a third of Iraq and neighboring Syria, they have sought to purge society of everything that doesn’t conform to their violent interpretation of Islam. They already have destroyed many archaeological relics, deeming them pagan, and even Islamic sites considered idolatrous. Increasingly books are in the firing line.
Mosul, the biggest city in the Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate, boasts a relatively educated, diverse population that seeks to preserve its heritage sites and libraries. In the chaos that followed the U.S.-led invasion of 2003, residents near the Central Library hid some of its centuries-old manuscripts in their homes to prevent their theft or destruction by looters.
But this time, the Islamic State has made the penalty for such actions death. Presumed destroyed are the Central Library’s collection of Iraqi newspapers dating to the early 20th century, maps and books from the Ottoman Empire and collections contributed by dozens of Mosul’s establishment families.
Days after the Central Library’s ransacking, militants broke into University of Mosul’s library. They made a bonfire out of hundreds of books on science and culture, destroying them in front of students.
A University of Mosul history professor, who spoke on condition he not be named, said the extremists started wrecking the collections of other public libraries last month. He reported particularly heavy damage to the archives of a Sunni Muslim library, the library of the 265year-old Latin Church and Monastery of the Dominican Fathers and the Mosul Museum Library with works dating back to 5000 B.C.
The professor said Islamic State militants appeared determined to “change the face of this city ... by erasing its iconic buildings and history.”
An Iraqi lawmaker, Hakim al-Zamili, said Islamic State “considers culture, civilization and science as their fierce enemies.”