A Sad Day

I spent a pleasant hour on Monday in Roxbury’s Eliot Square trying to find the best view of the new mosque being built along Columbus Avenue in order to photograph its crescent-topped dome for a blog post. Although it was chilly, I was enjoying being outdoors partly because Eliot Square is so lovely, with a nice collection of 19th-century brick and brownstone commercial blocks, not to mention its crown jewel, Roxbury’s First Church (1803-04), which is Boston’s oldest wood frame church.

Eliot Square offers sweeping views of Roxbury Crossing, Brigham Circle, and Mission Hill. Looking past the dome of the new mosque, one can see the patinated dome of the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral on Ruggles Street and, farther off, the twin spires and octagonal cupola of the “Mission Church” (Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help).

It is a sad irony that in the same week that I found myself admiring some of Boston’s most significant religious architecture, one of Islam’s holiest and most beautiful shrines was blown up in an act of horrific sectarian violence.

On Wednesday morning, explosives were detonated inside the Al-Askariya Shrine (مرقد الامامين علي الهادي والحسن العسكري) in the town of Samarra north of Baghdad, completely destroying the mosque’s famous golden dome. Constructed in the 10th century and referred to as the “Golden Mosque,” the shrine contains the tombs of two 9th-century imams, Ali al-Hadi and his son Hassan al-Askari. The golden dome was added in 1905.

Since the U.S. led invasion in 2003, Samarra has come to symbolize the challenges and frustrations experienced by the U.S. military in Iraq. Military offensives in response to insurgent attacks produce a temporary lull only to be followed by a new wave of deadly insurgent activity. The attack on the Golden Mosque is but the most recent act in a long series of sectarian violence in what is regarded as one of Iraq’s four holiest cities.

Samarra was the scene of severe fighting between American forces and the Iraqi insurgency back in October 2004. During the fighting, Iraqi forces stormed the Golden Mosque and captured about two dozen insurgents who had barricaded themselves inside. At the time, it was decided that only Iraqi forces should participate in the siege in order to forestall local anger at the presence of U.S. troops within the revered Shi’a shrine. In spite of the fighting, the mosque escaped unharmed.

Wednesday’s bombing has spurred a wave of sectarian reprisals. Already 130 have been killed, including about four dozen who were dragged from their cars and shot after participating in a joint Sunni and Shi’a protest against the attack. Many are saying that the destruction of the Golden Mosque, more than any other act of violence thus far, signals that Iraq is on the brink of civil war. The Bush administration and the U.S. State Department, on the other hand, are downplaying the prospect of civil war, as they are apt to do.

Although I shudder at the tragic loss of life that can result from acts of terrorism, it is the wanton destruction of monuments, especially those that are considered holy or sacred, that often leaves me despondent. Architecture possesses not simply physical and aesthetic qualities that we need and admire. It also possesses symbolic value, represents human ingenuity, creativity, artistic achievement, our love of beauty, our attempts to understand the divine, our ability to shape our environment, and our collective cultural inheritance. For me, it is the destruction of architecture, more than anything else, that symbolizes our descent into chaos.