All of the historians worried that the Islamic State (ISIS) is destroying ancient artifacts can relax. It turns out that the ISIS is selling them.
The ISIS has justified destroying ancient statues and artifacts because they are idolatrous and are reprehensible to Islam, but it seems that blasphemy does not enter the picture when money is involved.
The Washington Post’s Loveday Morris reported that ISIS-controlled territory includes more than 4,500 ancient sites.
“They steal everything that they can sell, and what they can’t sell, they destroy,” Qais Hussein Rasheed, Iraq’s deputy minister for antiquities and heritage,” told the newspaper.
Videos of the ISIS destroying ancient statues were misleading, Morris reported, because they actually were only replicas of the originals that are safely stored in Baghdad.
If they had value, the ISIS would not destroy them, and the sale of anything that fetches a good price is more evidence that like most if not all terrorist regimes, their religion is money.
The Islamic State is so well-organized that it grants licenses for excavating ancient stress, Morris reported.
Profiting from excavations is increasingly important for the ISIS because of loss of revenues from oil fields that have been bombed the U.S.-led strike force.
Below, at 1:00, is a news report with a video of ISIS destroying statues, probably replicas.