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Taliban vow buddhist statue destruction { March 10 2001 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.tibet.ca/wtnarchive/2001/3/11_5.htmlhttp://www.tibet.ca/wtnarchive/2001/3/11_5.html
Voices in Muslim World Decry Taliban Vow to Destroy Statues (WP)
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Washington Post Foreign Service
March 10, 2001
ISTANBUL, March 9 -- The fate of two ancient Buddhist monuments carved into a cliff in Afghanistan has galvanized the Muslim world against one of its own as no other event since Iraq's invasion of Kuwait more than a decade ago.
The announcement by Afghanistan's ruling Taliban Islamic militia that it is demolishing two standing Buddha statues -- one believed to be the tallest in the world -- because they are "un-Islamic idols" has provoked outrage from Muslims around the globe and highlighted the deep schisms in a religion struggling to reconcile ancient tradition and beliefs with modern law and social norms.
"These are not idols, but statues from the third century," said Asghar Ali Engineer, a Muslim intellectual in the Indian metropolis of Bombay. "They say they are doing this in the name of Islam, but I don't know what Islam they are talking about."
For most Islamic nations and organizations, the Taliban's announcement last week that it would destroy every statue in Afghanistan, including the standing Buddhas near the central Afghan town of Bamian, only compounds the problems of a religion battling an image that Western people frequently associate with terrorism, veiled women and stonings in public squares.
Muslim nations stretching from Turkey to Malaysia and across the Middle East have voiced criticism more pointed than the predictable outrage from Western nations and the predominantly Buddhist countries of the Far East -- and more telling. Analysts say the reaction to destruction of relics that were carved centuries before the birth of Islam speaks volumes about the varied nature of a religion that is often painted by the West as monolithic.
"Muslims are portrayed as more militant than other religions, more close-minded," said John L. Esposito, director of Georgetown University's Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. "When they see the Taliban committing this act, it takes on symbolic significance. Many Muslims are saying, 'We have to speak out and make clear to the world that this isn't Islam.' "
Today, nearly one of every five people on Earth is Muslim, according to international population reports. And among the 55 nations that make up the Organization of the Islamic Conference, few are not in the midst of impassioned debate over what Islam should be in the 21st century.
After centuries of male interpretation of Islam's holy book, the Koran, women in some of the Middle East's most conservative countries are challenging traditional assumptions about their role in Islamic society.
In Iran, the debate over Islam's role in the country's theocratic government and in society is not only being waged between reformers and conservatives but among conservatives themselves, the more moderate of whom have labeled their faction "new religious thinking."
In Turkey, which is seeking to become the first country with a majority Muslim population to join the European Union, a secular government is in a continuous struggle to balance traditional Muslim customs with the aspirations of a nation in the throes of urbanization and modernization. Last week, after back yards and roadsides throughout Istanbul turned crimson with the blood of thousands of sheep and cattle slaughtered for the annual Muslim Feast of Sacrifice, the daily newspaper Milliyet ran a gruesome front-page photograph of the carnage alongside a major highway with the headline: "This Is the Road to the EU, Turned Into a Bloodbath."
"The Koran hasn't changed," said Huseyin Hatemi, an Istanbul attorney andprofessor of Islamic law. "The beliefs among people have changed its
interpretation."
It is just such a question of interpretation that has turned the spotlight on the Taliban. The movement's religious leaders hold that Islamic prohibitions against depicting the human form require that all statues be destroyed.
"Islam is against keeping statues," Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, said. "Hence the order to destroy them."
Although Taliban officials have issued daily statements during the past week claiming to be in the process of blasting away the 175- and 120-foot Buddhas at Bamian -- including one today that said the job had been completed -- no independent witnesses have been permitted access to the site to confirm the assertions.
Beyond Afghanistan's borders, religious scholars and groups are divided on whether it is acceptable to destroy the statues under the principles of Islam. While some radical Islamic groups have strongly endorsed the Taliban action on religious grounds, others have said the Koran urges Muslims to accept and respect other faiths.
In India's capital, New Delhi, Shahi Imam, a Muslim leader, said the destruction is "totally against Islamic principles. Islam doesn't allow you to hurt the hearts of those belonging to other religions."
Abdul Sameed Walizad, 35, an Afghan native who drives a taxi in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, said: "In Egypt, people respect the Pharaoh's grave because they are logical. The Taliban are not logical. They have no respect for our country's treasures."
To be sure, history is replete with examples of the destruction of culturally significant sites in the name of religion. In the 16th century,Spanish conquistadors in the New World attempted to wipe out the indigenous Mayas' religion by tearing down their temples and using the stones to build churches. The Chinese Communist government demolished more than 6,000 Tibetan Buddhist monasteries before and during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution. And Hindu extremists demolished a 16th-century mosque in the northern Indian town of Ayodhya in 1992.
But the Taliban, a religious militia that gradually seized control of Afghanistan during the 1990s, established itself as the pariah of the Islamic world, in the view of many Muslims and non-Muslims, before issuing its decree against statues.
Women's groups and human rights activists have decried the militia's oppression of women, mandating head-to-toe veils, forcing women to give up their jobs and barring all but very young girls from school. The Taliban also has banned television and music and requires men to wear beards or face imprisonment. The Sunni Muslim militia has been accused of massacres of civilian members of Shiite Muslim groups, most recently 170 civilians found dead in the town of Yakaolang not far from Bamian.
"The destruction of the statues is a horrible thing," said Patricia Gossman, who monitors Afghanistan for Human Rights Watch, but the international community has not spent nearly "as much effort on other human rights concerns as the statues."
The Taliban's harsh rule and idiosyncratic religious doctrines stem partly from the fact that it adheres to the ultra-conservative Wahhabi strain of Sunni Islam (most Muslims are Sunnis) and partly from the similarly conservative culture of the Pashtun ethnic group from which its leaders come, scholars say. "What the Taliban do has a lot to do with tribal culture," said Georgetown's Esposito. "The Islam they know is tribal Islam. They don't demonstrate a terrific knowledge of Islamic theology or history or text."
Although only Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates officially recognize the Taliban as Afghanistan's legitimate government, many Muslim countries -- some of which condone some aspects of the Taliban's view of Islam -- had been reluctant to openly criticize them before their announced assault on the ancient relics. A notable exception has been Iran, a majority Shiite state that has longstanding enmity toward the Taliban and supports the last group of Afghan militias fighting its rule.
But other nations near Afghanistan have raised concerns over the export of the Taliban's form of Islam. One of the few areas of cooperation between the feuding former Soviet republics in Central Asia has been the effort to stem the spread of Taliban-backed Islamic fundamentalism. Pakistan, in particular, has been buffeted by the Taliban's stormy rule, both because of geographic proximity and political and cultural ties. In such a climate, feelings about the radical state next door are varied and complex. As Mohammed Waseem, a history professor at Pakistan's Quaid-i-Azam University,put it: "There is a tug of war going on, but no one has won it yet."
Given their close relations, Pakistani officials say they have tried to
persuade the Taliban not to destroy the Buddhas. At the same time, they
express sympathy for Afghanistan's plight and say they can understand why the Taliban would lash out at a world that has isolated them and punished them with sanctions. Likewise, even the Taliban's critics suggest that the destruction of the statues is a response not so different from American suburban teenagers who are shunned by their peers and eventually open fire on schoolmates.
"These kinds of stunts are meant to be sensational," said Salam Marayati, who heads the Muslim Public Affairs Council in Los Angeles. "They are indecent and idiotic."
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