Desecration

Desecration is defined as basically physically depriving a sacred object of its sacred character, or intentionally causing malicious damage to a sacred object, which can be any number of things, from burial sites, artifacts, remains, monuments, and religious text, for a few examples. Desecration is considered by most to be another type of sacrilege, which is the word of the day, in this series of articles. Desecration is generally considered to be such by the religion in which the unholy act was performed against, for example, if an old Christian church was burned to the ground, Islamics would not necessarily call that an act of desecration, and the same applies vice versa. However, some examples of desecration are so extreme, that they are recognized for what they are, world wide.

One example of extreme desecration, is during “The Red Terror” is Spain, where anticlericals were photographed shooting at a large statue of Christ. The Red Terror was actually comprised of several extreme acts of desecration and Christian sacrilege during the Spanish Civil War. Mainly, the Catholic churches were those who suffered the most damage. Barcelona was home to almost sixty churches, and all but the Cathedral were either burned down, pillaged, or severely damaged. All Catholic churches were closed in the Republican zone, and leftists desecrated the churches all over Spain on a massive scale, –all but Protestant churches were fair game. On the historical night of July 19th, 1936, fifty churches were burned to the ground.

Another act of massive desecration that was actually recurrent was in 1955. A house located in Shiraz, Iran where the Báb, who was the founder of the Babi religion “Babism”, and one of the three main figures in the Bahá’í Faith, declared his mission unto the world. The house was first damaged severely in 1942 in an attack by enemies of the Bahá’í Faith. In 1955, it was completely destroyed, but was restored for the first time. Then, in 1979 it was destroyed once more by Iranian revolutionaries. In 1981, the site became a public road, and square, though recently, a mosque dedicated to the “Promised One” was built next to the site.