This is just the most recent tragedy in the program by Daesh to damage important non-Muslim religious artifacts whenever they can.
A week after reports of destruction by Islamic State militants in the ancient city of Palmyra in Syria, fighters severely damaged the Temple of Baal there, one of the oldest and culturally significant in the region, according to activists.[...]Consecrated in A.D. 32 to the Semitic god Baal, the temple was a source of pride for Syrians and stood not far from where the other building, the Temple of Baalshamin, was destroyed.
As I understand it, Daesh feel that this somehow demonstrates that Islam is superior to all pagan religions, including those that existed before Islam. This is not only poorly reasoned, it is counterproductive. It actually harms Islam and therefore all Muslims.
The revelations given the Prophet Muhammed that are the basis of the Koran were recorded in the 7th Century. But this did not take place in a vacuum: it followed seven hundred years of Christianity, and hundreds and thousands of years of other religions, some polytheistic, some monotheistic. The world in which this took place was filled with religions of all kinds, some relatively new, some ancient, and some that were known only by traces: physical ruins being the most salient, but there were also also cultural traces in language, mythology and folktales, and in contemporary religions.
In order to understand fully the significance of any text, sacred or profane, it is important to understand the context in which it was written and its intended and historical audience. This is basic. Language cannot be understood at all without context, and the more that is known about the context of a text, the more fully it can be understood.
The ruins of earlier religions are among the most critical of elements of the context for the creation of the Koran, because they are tangible. You can see them, you can walk among them, you can also see some of the context in which they were created.
This by no means takes away from Islam. These earlier religions are a fact. They existed, and they existed before the Koran was created. People living in Koranic times could see them or know about them, and that was part of the mental universe that the earliest readers of the Koran—and its creators—lived in when Islam began.
So, by destroying religious artifacts such as the giant Buddhas or famous ruins in Palmyra, these self-proclaimed protectors and advocates of Islam are preventing Muslims from understanding the context in which their most sacred texts were created, and therefore, they are interfering with Islam itself.
Now, it is true that almost everything I just wrote about Islam could also be written about any other religion, due to the enormous importance to all religions—to the very concept of religion—of the region Daesh is currently operating within. For example, a short distance north of the Turkish border is a small hill known as Göbekli Tepe. This hill is the site of temples so old that they predate not only writing but agriculture, wheels, and the use of metals! Those ruins, which I'm quite sure the current Daesh forces would not hesitate to obliterate, provide the most fundamental knowledge about what religion means to human beings. They are also a critical key to understanding the larger context of specific religions, including Islam. (However, it is unlikely that they were known to the creators of the Koran, since they went out of use and were ritualistically buried in the early Neolithic.)
Anyway, as painful as it is to stand by and learn of the destruction of these critically important ruins, it is much more painful to realize that the destruction harms the destroyers as much as it does everyone else, but they have become so indoctrinated that they do not realize it.
It's just so very sad.