Swiss documentary on Afghanistan: Pakistani, Saudi engineers helped destroy Buddhas

In 30 years or so -- when present demographic trends will transform Europe into Eurabia -- what will be the fate of the repositories of the crown jewels of western civilization -- the museums of art that house some of mankind's most magnificent achievements? Just think of what lies there, ready to be destroyed by the Moslem vandal. The Louvre, the Pitti, the Prado - I shudder to think of what might happen them. And most importantly, the great visual art in these museums to a very important extent illustrate the Christian story - ample provocation for the zealous Moslem to rise up and destroy. How will we feel to see a bonfire of these masterpieces burning up our centuries of achievement...?
That art doesnt belong only to France or Italy or Spain -- it belongs to the world. How can we save it from the real likelihood that it will go the way of the Buddha statues of Afghanistan?

The destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas was nodifferent from the 1350-year destruction of non-Muslim (and by the "pure" Wahhabis, even of Muslim) sites. The Greco-Bactrian culture of Central Asia, the Hindu and Buddhist temples in Hindustan and in the East Indies (now Indonesia), the monuments of pre-Islamic Persian civilization, the Orthodox and Catholic churches of the Balkans, Greece, Rumania, Bulgaria, and Hungary, the art work of every kind, destroyed by Muslims, or at least vandalied not quite to the point of total destruction, as in the case of Hagia Sophia, where crucifixes were ripped off walls, and paintings defaced, and statues destroyed, all have to be remembered.

So why was it that the Bamiyan Buddhas managed to survive? They managed to survive because they were so huge, and so hard to attack. But modern technology, the technology of destruction, has been exploited by Muslims to the fullest, and it was this ability to use that technology that allowed, at long last, the unfinished business of the Bamiyan Buddhas to be finished.

The crocodile tears that flowed so copiously afterwards for the sake of Western news outlets, and nowhere more copiously and crocodilily than in Saudi Arabia, were taken by some to be real. There is no end to Infidel ignorance. Just open Qaradawi, the most widely read Sunni cleric now on the planet. What does Qaradawi say about statuary? And what Hadith does he quote? And who do you think said, and for all time, that he wouldn't enter a house that had a dog or a statue inside, leading Muslims who consider that man the Perfect Man, uswa hasana, al-insan al-kamil, to believe that they must either deface or, ideally, completely destroy, all examples of statuary. If it was bad enough for Muhammad, it is bad enough for me.

Nothing else needs to be known. Was it known, was it reported, did any story that appeared anywhere in the major newpapers of the West explain that the Saudi expression of disapproval was completely phony, and that statuary is banned in Islam because of what Muhammad supposedly said some 1350 years ago?

Why can't newspapers fulfill their most elementary duties? Why do they report, but almost never explain, when they report on anything involving Muslims or Islam. Why are we left, so unsatisfied, so confused, so in the dark, when the explanations are quite easy and readily available?

Why?

Hugh: even in the worst days of Communist tyranny, exactly how many journalists had bothered to read Karl Marx or research the history of the Marxist movement? How many had any idea of Fascism and Nazism? And these were movements arisen among European, discussed in languages commonly known, accessible to anyone who would take the trouble.

In this, the Saudis are to the Taliban like a man-eating tiger to a nasty little wildcat. They are more murderous, more deliberate, and more thorough. They have destroyed the old city of Mecca stone by stone, to the unspeakable distress of devout Muslims everywhere - I spoke myself with a lady who went on the Haj and was driven around by a Shia taxi driver pointing out to them where all the historical buildings, famous in stories she had learned as a child, used to stand. No matter what we think of Muhammed and his cult, this brute assault on history is a crime for which the Wahhabi fanatics who misrule that miserable countries (when the time can be spared from wine, women and roulette tables) should be taken before a court of justice.

Hugh you forgot to mention the Hindu-Buddhist Gareco-Bactrian culture of Kaffiristanis.
In 15 years of Taliban rule the 60000 strong Afghan Hindu-Sikh community has shrunk down to 1200!

Paolo

I wouldn't latch on to the Wahabi factor readily - to Muslims, they serve as a convinient object of triangulation, particularly for those who want to project themselves as peaceful alternatives to both "extremists among Muslims" e.g. Wahabis, Taliban, on one end, and "Islamophobes" such as us on the other. But Wahabism, as a movement, started only in the 1700's. Much of the destruction of infidel heritege that Hugh alludes to above, be it the Sophia Haglia, Temple Mount, et al happened prior to that. For instance, to take the example of India, none of the destruction of Indian temples and other artefacts took place under Wahabis - in fact, Mohammed Abdul al Wahab started his movement at the same time that the Moghul empire in India was disintegrating. All the destruction that had taken place in India at the hands of Muslims had happened earlier than that. For that, we needn't thank Mohammed Abdul al Wahab; we just need to thank Mohammed.

I'm the last person to encourage or rejoice in the destruction of historical sites. I once had a car sticker from English heritage which said "The past is not a renewable resource"

But part of me thinks that the Wahabi's destruction of the ancient sites of Mecca may in the future, that future when Islam is either reformed, in so far as it is reformable, or diminished by whatever means, make it harder psychologically for any revival of the worship of Mohammed the worst of men. By destroying their own heritage, on a scale that would'nt have occured to the Long Parliament, they may actually be doing us a favour.

Paolo--you have a point. But of course there were many who did see things correctly, and right away. And published books. But were not listened to. There was John Spargo's "Bolshevism" written in 1919 (and in French, Mark Aldanov -- i.e., Mark Landau's "Lenine" which might, had it been read then, removed all allusions). There were books on Mussolini in the late 1920s, by American journalists (I have one, but can't find it in at the moment), and I have a similar work, also now unlocatable, from 1930, that predicted everything that the Japanese would do -- correctly.

But in the 1920s and 1930s the resources available to journalists and their number, was smaller, the ability to move about quickly less developed, the ability to disseminate information (think of how little was known to Jews in Western and Eastern Europe about what was going on inside Germany)much more limited. We have, after all, the Internet, and satellite channels.

How many of the correspondents in Iraq explained early on the Sunni-Shi'a split, which appears to have just struck everyone in the last six months, but has existed, and had all kinds of consequences, for 1350 years? How many, writing their anguished reports on Darfur, connect the behavior of the Arab Muslims attacking black non-Arab Muslims with the Al-Anfal campaign against the Kurds in Iraq, or the riots in Tizi-Ouzou by Berbers over the past two decades, unahppy with the Arab cultural and linguistic imperialism that had been described by many, including the Berber writer, or Franco-Berber writer, Kateb Yacine?

In Italy, at least in the old days, journalism was of much higher standing as a profession. One joined a guild. One had to know things. One had to display a knowledge of the world, and of what one wrote about. The kind of thing that is routinely exhibited today, by say Tom Friedman, the repeated display of idiocy after idiocy, shows that someone of that mental formation would never have appeared in the Corriere, or for that matter in any other Itallian newspaper, including the one whose title one hopes never changes -- Il resto del carlino.

But I take your point. Nothing new under the sun. Swimming through cross-currents of idiocy, as we strike out for the other, safer shore.

I have always kept a smoldering hatred for the mindlessly feral who destroyed Bamiyan. There is room in that black corner of my heart for some Paks and Saudis, too.

Some day, some day.

Will sit silent until they begin to bring down the Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, ... etc, etc

Interesting to hear the views about the destruction of statues, icons, frescoes etc from the point of view of that elusive and probably mythological creature the "moderate" muslim.

If you look into the middle ages you will find that the so-called "Vandals", along with most of the other "barbarians" were only amateurs in the thoroughness of their destruction compared with the fanatical and supposedly god driven but really loot and slave driven hordes of Islam who slimed across north africa.