The dark ages v. civilization

Writing in Ynet news last December, Guy Bechor describes an under-reported event:

Last Saturday, violent groups of Islamic-Salafi radicals burned the famous scientific institute established by Napoleon in Egypt after its first encounter with the West. Some historians consider it the start of modern times in the Middle East.

The site, L’Institut d’Egypte, held some 200,000 original and rare books, exhibits, maps, archeological findings and studies from Egypt and the entire Middle East, based on the work of generations of western researchers. Most of the artifacts were lost forever, burned or looted.

In the West, it is easy to assume to that every values knowledge and civilization and the benefits thereof. It is not so.