Islamists destroy heritage sites. But it was surely the Christians who put them up to it!

Linsay Hilsum of Channel Four has an article in today’s Irish Times, under the eye-catching headline “Heritage of Islam faces threat from within.” In it, she chronicles how Libya and Mali have fallen under the control of militant Islamists since the fall of Ghadaffi (who could have foreseen it?) and that these Islamists have begun smashing up “idolatrous” Sufi tombs and other heritage sites.

Two things stand out about the article. One is the direct and unsubtle comparison between Muslim puritans and Christian ones:

“I don’t suppose the men in the bulldozer had heard of William Dowsing. He was a Christian, not a Muslim, English, not Libyan, and he lived in the 17th century, not the 21st.

But as “commissioner for the destruction of monuments of idolatry and superstition” he was similarly determined to obliterate objects venerated by a different sect of his own religion.”

She goes on to quote a report where Dowsing gloats about having destroyed some “angells” in a church in England during the Puritan revolution.

It’s interesting how politically correct media pundits are afraid to simply criticize militant Islam and leave it at that. “It’s not just Muslims,” they want to say, “we Christians have been just as bad!” However, the zealous Mr Dowsing lived almost four hundred years ago, and even his most fanatical modern-day Protestant heirs, however they might disapprove of “graven images”, generally leave Christians who differ with them on that point in peace.

The other striking thing about the article is how it falls over itself to stress that Islam is the primary victim of militant Islamism. This has the effect of drawing that magical media barrier between nice, moderate, mainstream Islam and its barbarous offspring, jihadism – just in case anyone should confuse the two:

 “The fear today is that much more of the priceless Islamic heritage of the Sahara will be destroyed before the governments in Mali and Libya install law and order, and stop the latter-day Dowsings from doing their worst.”

No doubt Islamism has made the lives of countless Muslims a misery. But Ms Hilsum might have also spared a mention for the Christians and Christian churches that have fallen victim to the “Arab Spring.”