Notre Dame prof says artifact purchases like Hobby Lobby's fund terrorism
Candida Moss wasn't surprised to learn the owners of the Hobby Lobby store chain will pay a $3 million federal fine and forfeit thousands of ancient Iraqi religious artifacts the government says were intentionally mislabeled and smuggled from the Middle East.
Moss, a University of Notre Dame professor since 2008, had been expecting it.
"If nobody was willing to acquire items without proper paperwork, there would not be a black market," Moss said in a telephone interview. That black market helps fund terrorist groups, she said.
Moss left Notre Dame this month to join the theology department at the University of Birmingham in her native England.
Moss for several years has closely followed and written about Steve Green, the billionaire founder of the Hobby Lobby chain, and his amassing of one of the world's largest collections of religious artifacts. He's building a $400 million Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., set to open in November, with more than 40,000 artifacts from the family's collection.
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