ISIS Destroys Iraq’s University of Mosul

The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) allegedly destroyed Mosul University’s Faculty of Agriculture buildings. They captured the city in June 2014.

“ISIS militants have exploded buildings of the University of Agriculture campuses – Alil town Southern Mosul, that was previously used by ISIS as a military camp,” Kurdish official Saeed Mamuzini told Rudaw.

The terrorists also attacked the Shabak Kurdish village where they “arrested 7 civilians and took them to an unknown place.” They confiscated everyone’s cellphones in the village. Mamuzini also said the sadists “gunned down some ISIS members who have tried to escape.”

Mosul is Iraq’s second largest city, under ISIS control since June 10, 2014. In every city they capture, the terrorists purge anything they deem to defy Islam, including books and buildings. In December 2014, ISIS raided the Central Library of Mosul to destroy all non-Islamic books.

‘These books promote infidelity and call for disobeying Allah,” announced a militant to the residents. “So they will be burned.”

The library was “the biggest repository of learning the northern Iraqi town.” The terrorists destroyed “Iraq newspapers dating to the early 20th century, maps and books from the Ottoman Empire, and book collections contributed by about 100 of Mosul’s establishment families.”

After that raid, the ISIS militants targeted the library at the University of Mosul. They burned science and culture textbooks in front of the students. From the Boston Globe:

A University of Mosul history professor, who spoke on condition he not be named because of his fear of the Islamic State, said the extremists started wrecking the collections of other public libraries last month.

He reported particularly heavy damage to the archives of a Sunni Muslim library, the library of the 265-year-old Latin Church and Monastery of the Dominican Fathers, and the Mosul Museum Library with works dating back to 5000 BC.

Citing reports by the locals who live near these libraries, the professor added that the militants used to come during the night and carry the materials in refrigerated trucks with Syria-registered license plates.

Militants also targeted the public library, which was home to over 8,000 rare books and manuscripts. Elderly residents begged the men not to burn the building. From Yahoo:

The former assistant director of the library Qusai All Faraj said that the Mosul Public Library was established in 1921, the same year that saw the birth of the modern Iraq. Among its lost collections were manuscripts from the eighteenth century, Syriac books printed in Iraq’s first printing house in the nineteenth century, books from the Ottoman era, Iraqi newspapers from the early twentieth century and some old antiques like an astrolabe and sand glass used by ancient Arabs. The library had hosted the personal libraries of more than 100 notable families from Mosul over the last century.

“900 years ago, the books of the Arab philosopher Averroes were collected before his eyes and burned,” said activist and blogger Rayan al-Hadidi. “One of his students started crying while witnessing the burning. Averroes told him… the ideas have wings… but I cry today over our situation.”