Abdulrahman Al-Rashed: The Voice of Reason

Al-Rashed, voice of reason

Abdulrahman Al-Rashed, the general manager of Al-Arabiya television based in Dubai, speaking to his fellow Arabs expresses the opinion, 'Let them steal our artifacts—we do not deserve them', Asharq Al- Awsat Thursday, 12 Mar, 2015

The destruction of priceless historical treasures in Iraq by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) proves that we do not deserve these treasures that fill our museums and lie buried beneath our sands. We in the Arab world live surrounded by a great heritage, and yet fail to understand its value both to ourselves and the rest of the world [...] In order to protect the artifacts of our ancient ancestors and those who built these civilizations, we must lend them to those who know their value and can maintain them until the day comes when we mature and can bear this historical responsibility. Only then will we have the right to ask for them back. [...] Our duty is to smuggle these relics to other countries, where they can be preserved, looked after, and studied at the world’s most prominent museums.

Al-Rashed goes on to point out that the Arab nations have a long history of ignorance regarding the importance and preservation of monuments and historical treasures, citing as examples the affair over the Tut mask beard and Saddam Hussein and Nasser's dam which "almost buried a whole city of relics when he decided to build the Aswan dam, and would have succeeded had foreign countries not worked to get the relics to safety". For him, Western scientists and traders saved Arab history, because they:

transferred and smuggled relics from Egypt, Iraq, Yemen and other countries. They are now preserved in the museums of France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Turkey and other countries. Although many demand the return of what was stolen, some of us know that the smuggling of these relics was a good move because, frankly, we do not deserve them. We have not yet reached a mature phase of awareness regarding the importance of ancient artifacts. We lack the ability to preserve them, and the developed scientific means to maintain, look after and study them. Imagine if Muslim extremists came to possess great treasures such as the statue of Nefertiti, which was smuggled to Germany at the beginning of the last century, or the statue of Queen Hatshepsut, or the head of Djedefre, or the towering obelisks, or the other thousands of Egyptian relics abroad. Imagine if Babylonian artifacts, which narrate Iraqi history and are currently on show in Britain, had stayed in Iraq. We all know they would have ended up just like the monuments that ISIS so ecstatically reduced to rubble. Fortunately for us, some four million Arabic and Islamic manuscripts are stored in Western museums and universities. Otherwise, they would have been destroyed by the madmen of ISIS, or eaten by the mice that run rampant in abandoned storehouses in Arab museums.

I think it is unlikely that the anti-collecting fanatics will be listening to this voice of reason.