If you haven't had the chance yet, I highly suggest checking out a New York Times article entitled " A Jewel in Syria where 'Ruins have been Ruined' by ISIS." This piece is chock-full of truly haunting photographs of the destruction wrought by ISIS in Palmyra, Syria, where a year of Islamic state rule has recently come to an end. Sometimes, no matter how often you hear about an upsetting event, a visual presentation is all you need to put things in perspective.
Of course, the main source of one's anger should be directed at the massive number of deaths the Islamic Sate has engineered. Unfortunately, this is not the case for me. It seems that every other day I hear about some tragic death on the news. So now I am desensitized to reports of these deaths. I try to empathize, but I can't. These days, unless somebody you know dies, it's difficult to find the space in your heart to care. We need to ask: What kind of world do we live in when I feel a sense of triumph in finding something to get upset about?
But there is a unique element to ISIS' atrocities that gives me a fresh sense of outrage. Every time I see ancient artifacts in a museum, I am completely floored. It blows my mind that I am connected in some sense to a person from behind a pane of glass and thousands of years. When I hold something even less than a century old, I feel the incessant tug of history that is expressed through faded pages.
ISIS has harshly destroyed the only surviving testaments of people long forgotten by history. Especially wrenching for me is to see that they have destroyed the tombs of celebrated religious icons and poets. By engaging in these acts, ISIS desecrates sites that are celebrations of life, and promotes death. Instead of embracing what makes mankind great, ISIS brings out the worst in humanity.
What adds to my distress is the fact that I don't think ISIS recruits are crazy. They are simply acting consistently with their ideology. To simply resort to 'nuking' ISIS to oblivion in a Trumpian fashion is fighting the battle the wrong way. Extremists like ISIS look at the world in a fundamentally twisted, yet coherent way.
With the right amount of charisma, an extremist message can spread like wildfire, especially among disenchanted youths who feel like there is something wrong with the world. When someone comes along with a twisted narrative about what exactly is wrong with the world, the message is easily swallowed up.
It doesn't help to draw a sharp line in the sand between our Western 'progressive' society versus those uncultured barbarians. This just heightens animosity on our home soil with Muslims who feel no connection to ISIS, and any generalizations others draw will just spawn hateful feelings. We have to acknowledge that the founders of the United States believed in the same God that members of ISIS do.
We have to dig deep and bring to light the ways that our beliefs interact with our actions, and search for what really separates us from them. Feeling frustrated at the world is a universal phenomenon, and it is imperative for us pass along to future generations how to respond in a healthy way. Our response should be based on the same intuitions that compel us to house ancient works of art in museums instead of mowing them to the ground in a righteous fit.
