ISIS destroys sacred texts in ancient Christian monastery
The sacred texts that contain the history of the Christian community in Iraq were found burnt on the floor of the fourth-century monastery near Mosul after it was recaptured from the Islamic State.
The terror group burned books about Christian theology, demolished the sculptures and scraped off the inscriptions written in Syriac at the Mar Behnam monastery, Reuters reported.
According to tradition, the monastery was built by an Assyrian king as penance for killing two of his children after they converted to Christianity. The jihadis tried to remove any mention of Behnam, the king's son.
"Their fundamental goal was to destroy Christian history and civilization in the Nineveh plains," said Duraid Elias, commander of a Christian militia known as the Babylon Brigades.
When ISIS seized the Nineveh plains in 2014, the Christians were forced to pay a tax, convert to Islam or die. Many fled towards the Kurdish region including the monks of Mar Behnam who escaped with nothing but the clothes on their backs.
Elias said that the monastery had been converted into a headquarters for the Hisba, the morality police that enforces the strict rules of Islam as interpreted by ISIS.
The monks' bedrooms were used as places to hold transgressors while another part of the complex was used to store satellite dishes that were confiscated from residents.
The commander said that they fought alongside the Iraqi army to retake the village of Khidir Ilyas where the monastery is located. But the regular troops have cleared out, leaving the Christian militia in control of the area.
Elias said that his forces had demolished three to four homes that are believed to belong to ISIS militants.
"There are others. We are going one by one: for every Christian house they blew up, we blow up a house next to it," he said.
Mar Behnam was not the first monastery ransacked by ISIS. Last January, it was reported that St. Elijah monastery in Mosul has been razed by the terror group. The 1,400-year-old monastery was believed to be destroyed between August and September 2014.