Philip Kennicott has an excellent essay in the Washington Post discussing the destruction of the Askariya shrine in Samarra, Iraq.
Kennicott compares the destruction of the Askariya shrine to the destruction of the World Trade Center, and, for me, the comparison really hit home.
In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, New Yorkers were horrified by the fact that the simple, certain form of their skyline had been altered. That couldn’t happen. Now imagine that same wound to the orderliness of the world magnified by an overlay of religious disbelief.
According to Seyyed Hossein Nasr, professor of Islamic Studies at George Washington University:
“To see this before your eyes is like the world crumbling before you,” he says. In part, that’s because it was in Samarra that the last imam, the “Mahdi,” disappeared, leaving the world to await both his return and the restitution of justice and order that will come with it.</blockquote
The destruction of the World Trade Center had an added component of grief for those of use that grew up in its shadow. Many New Yorkers complained about the boxiness of the architecture or the way it had cut off the tip of Manhattan from the surrounding neighborhoods. But, the Twin Towers dominated the skyline and whenever they came into view it was reassuring to know that you were back in New York where everything is bigger, and faster, and edgier. It’s hard to express what it meant to round a bend on the Jersey Turnpike and see that gaping hole in the skyline. And not too many people have tried to articulate their feelings of rage and loss over the buildings because of the much greater loss of life. To complain about an architectual travesty is to somehow trivialize the dead.
I think I have just a touch of the feeling of bewilderment about the WTC that Shi’a Muslims are feeling about the destruction of the Askariya shrine. Something terrible has been done and nothing can make it undone.
After 9/11 there was an outbreak of anti-Muslim violence in this country. Thankfully, it didn’t last long and was only sporadic in nature. But, it does not surprise me that the Shi’a in Iraq have reacted with violence against Sunnis. It’s a natural reaction to the feeling of powerlessness and the mixture of shock, sadness, fear, and rage that people go through when a part of one’s world is suddenly and senselessly destroyed.
It isn’t just the “simple, certain form of their skyline” they have lost. It is the simple, certain form of life itself.
