Ethical Relativism Analysis

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One of the most disturbing scenes in the Monuments Men is where Colonel Wegner supervises the destruction of art works plundered by the Nazis. These treasures were intended for Hitler’s Fuehrer Museum in Austria but as the Allies close in on Germany in 1945, Hitler decided that, if he cannot have these masterpieces, no one else will have them. So Wegner and his squad set fire to crate after crate of arts. The Nazi destruction of stolen art was an act of gratuitous violence against Europe’s cultural heritage, undertaken in service to a demented ideology—the slaughter of Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, the mentally ill, and all those who fell under the category of lebensunwertes leben. Similarly, gratuitous destruction of ancient cultural centers…show more content…
That is, whether an action is right or wrong depends on the moral norms of the society in which it is practiced. The same action may be morally right in one society but be morally wrong in another. Fundamentally, for the ethical relativist like ISIS, there are no universal moral standards and the only moral standards against which its practices can be judged are its own. The purpose of the focus on destroying historical sites partly comes from ISIS’s adherence to the Wahhabi doctrine, a puritan interpretation of Islam. Wahhabism rejects idolatry and therefore disapproves of visits to religious-historical sites. For the Wahhabi extremists, ‘idolatry’ translates to ‘all statutes are forbidden’. This is how ISIS justifies the destruction of ancient statues even though no one worshipped those statutes. The destruction of ancient tombs can also be explained by Wahhabi doctrine which rejects veneration of graves of Muslim prophets and leaders for fear they may become sites for worship. Like ISIS, the Saudi rulers are ethical relativists who subscribe to the Wahhabi doctrine of Islam. According to the UK-based Islamic Heritage Research Foundation, over 98% of Saudi Arabia’s historical and religious sites have been destroyed since 1985. A prime example of such destruction is the expansion of the Grand Mosque in Mecca. Although Saudi officials argue that the expansion is…show more content…
For example, the treatment of the Jews in Nazi society is morally reprehensible regardless of the moral beliefs of the Nazi society. Similarly, cultural destruction is wrong regardless of the beliefs of the Wahhabi sect. ISIS’s campaign of destruction rises far beyond the level of vandalism. It is the attempt to annihilate a culture and as such it is a crime against humanity. Artifacts and historic sites are more than pretty objects lined up in a museum or tourist sites to visit on a vacation. They are at once a record of our shared past, a way of understanding ourselves and each other, and the product of the best in us. Nothing is more important than a human life, but the destruction of art and artifacts represents an attack on history, identity and civilization.When you destroy a country’s heritage, you are inevitably destroying its people’s identity. ISIS is aiming for tabula rasas, people with no history and identity, a clean slate, ready and hungry for meaning and purpose. ISIS, is no doubt, hoping to provide such meaning and purpose with their propaganda disguised as religion. We must take preservation of our cultural history seriously and do our part to ensure protection of our heritage

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