But destroying shrines is not an invention of ISIS, or even of Islam. God instructed the Israelites entering the Promised Land to "destroy all graven images and the high places" of the Canaanite indigenous population. The Protestant Reformation railed against the lavish adornment of Catholic cathedrals and churches. In politics it was the same: the French Revolutionary Jacobins stripped the power of the Catholic Church and seized its property. They finished the job with a symbolic war -cutting the heads off the saints adorning cathedral entrances, some of which can still be seen.
Nothing new here
Today's proposal to dismantle Mohammed's tomb is not the first. It has been considered several times throughout history. In the early 1800s, for example, a Saudi army conquered Medina and discussed dismantling the tomb, a plan that was greeted by outrage throughout the mainstream Muslim world. The tomb of Mohammed's first wife, Khadijah, actually was demolished, along with those of direct relations of Mohammed. In this regard, as in others, ISIS fits well within Islam's history of internal conflict - even as the immense majority of Muslims are indifferent or outraged.
The irony in this competitive fundamentalism is that the Saudis and the Islamic State are reading from the same book: that of Wahhabism, an 18th century Muslim thinker's ideology whose goal was to purify Islam by returning to the supposed golden age of the early decades after Mohammed's death. The Islamic State's leadership considers even the Wahhabist Saudis to be insufficiently purist, an accusation the Saudis must take seriously. From the staging of political history, it's an old story: extremists outflanked by even more extremist groups. This is what ISIS did to al-Qaeda, and what it ultimately intends to do to the Saudis. As for the fate of Islamic State: revolutions ultimately devour their children.
(AP photo)
