The denial of a people’s heritage has a long and ignoble history. Dictators, from Biblical times to the most recent, have justified their crimes by destroying the legacy of the peoples they conquer and having their disciplined storytellers create a chronicle of their heroic deeds.

While this was true of Egyptian Pharaohs and Crusader conquerors, it is just as true today in a world where terrorist groups are re-writing the history of their faith as a narrative to justify their irredentism.