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October 7, 2007
Collateral Damage and a 2000 Year Old Culture
Nathaniel Deutsch, professor of religion at Swarthmore College, told the story in yesterday's New York Times.
The United States didn’t set out to eradicate the Mandeans, one of the oldest, smallest and least understood of the many minorities in Iraq. This extinction in the making has simply been another unfortunate and entirely unintended consequence of our invasion of Iraq — though that will be of little comfort to the Mandeans, whose 2,000-year-old culture is in grave danger of disappearing from the face of the earth.
Please read the whole piece. It is more than a little depressing. There is some small hope. Even that requires action from a government, ours, that has shown little no sensitivity to these kinds of issues.
If all Iraqi Mandeans are granted privileged status and allowed to enter the United States in significant numbers, it may just be enough to save them and their ancient culture from destruction. If not, after 2,000 years of history, of persecution and tenacious survival, the last Gnostics will finally disappear, victims of an extinction inadvertently set into motion by our nation’s negligence in Iraq.
Both Iyov and Jim West jumped all over this before I even saw it.
Posted by Duane Smith at October 7, 2007 3:29 PM | Read more on Current Events |
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Comments
It's interesting to read this after having a discussion with someone who was, shall we say, intimately affected by the USSR's communist "appreciation" for history and lives.
So cheers to the American government and its similar "appreciation" for history and lives.
Posted by: Glen Gordon at October 8, 2007 9:24 PM
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