Cultural Glimpse

Visiting monasteries of Mosul in the year 2000

We were in the hotel room, getting ready to go visit the Mayan ruins in Mexico when I saw on CNN that ISIS had blown up St. Elijah’s Monastery in northern Iraq. I watched the destruction of this Christian monastery that dates back to the fourth century.

I remembered my visit to Iraq in the year 2000, when I was lucky enough to visit the sites that have become the targets of extremists in recent years. I wondered if, despite all this, the civilization of my birth country will survive so that perhaps, one day, our children and others are able to see that land’s beauty, the way people came from all over the world to visit the Mayan ruins.

Before we left our hotel room, I saw a segment about the Syrian refugees. The ongoing destruction of Iraq and the refugee crisis will continue to replay daily, holding up mirrors for us to see what we have turned our world into. We call nonviolent acts “crimes” and prosecute people. We prosecute people who committed a crime twenty years ago, or who never committed a crime but who need to be locked up in order to maintain the “Justice System” and so that the prison institutions have a greater number of residents.

But what about those who created the real, honest-to-goodness destruction? They destroyed countries and millions of lives. Because of these destroyers’ political status, we give them a pass, and then we call ourselves a democracy, a democracy which the rest of the world should adopt. If we don’t become politically fit, we will continue to grow fat with maya, illusions, and the fatter we get, the harder it will be for us to get our world back into shape.