As a member of a polytheistic religion, I am vividly aware of the importance of our mutual cultural heritage. As a person of Greek descent, heritage was something that was instilled in me from childhood. And as World Heritage day happens to also fall on the anniversary of my father’s birth, it has additional meaning to me on a personal level because it emphasizes to me how I am intrinsically connected with the rest of humanity.

That makes what people like Da’esh and other religious extremists of their ilk are doing so heinous. They are deliberately and systematically either perverting or completely destroying our common heritage of art and history — both physical artifacts and the ideals upon which our societies are built upon.

It is happening in the Fertile Crescent with the destruction of Babylonian and Assyrian artifacts, and it is happening in the US with the move towards a society ruled by Evangelical Christian ideals instead of our ideals of Constitutional SECULAR law…..

I call on all of us to reject this extremism in any way that we can and to fight it with the various tools at our disposal.