While Islamic hate for idols is a well documented phenomenon—permeating both the whole of Islamic doctrine and history—the “Arab Spring” has given greater rise to this hate, as it has to all uniquely Islamic phenomena.
Soon after Muslim Brotherhood leader Muhammad Morsi became president of Egypt, calls to demolish the Great Pyramids—long seen as the ultimate in idol effrontery to Islamic sensibilities—began. When I reported this, and documented the long paper-trail of Muslims, beginning with their prophet, destroying the antiquities of their pagan ancestors, the apologists, including at Huffington Post and New York Times cried “hoax,” to lull the world back to sleep.
Yet the cries to destroy Egypt’s Pharonic—that is, pagan—past continue. According to a Watan report, Sheikh Yusif al-Badri, a popular preacher, said that “Allah created people to worship him, but demons misled them to worship other creatures in his place.”
Accordingly, Sheikh al-Badri called for “the demolition of monuments [e.g., pyramids] and all idols and statues in Egypt,” characterizing it as “a religious duty, lest they create sedition, and cause people to return to worshiping idols instead of Allah.” Likewise, he pointed to the fact that “the noble prophet [Muhammad] ordered the destruction of idols and statues [when he conquered Mecca] lest they be glorified for worship instead of Allah.”
The report continues by quoting various other Islamic figures, including from the Muslim Brotherhood, who all agree that any idol that has the potential to awe Muslims “instead of Allah” must be destroyed, though some argue that the antiquities of Egypt do not inspire Muslims to worship them and help the nation’s economy, and thus should be spared.
Even so, the Watan report concludes by saying that, according to Egypt’s Minister of Antiquities “some of the statues have already been destroyed by those belonging to the political Islamists parties.”
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Which is the correct
A) Napoleon's troops shot the nose off the Sphinx in 1798:
for fun
because they were racist hooligans
both of the above
B) British troops shot the nose off the Sphinx:
for fun
because they were racist hooligans
both of the above
C) German troops shot the nose off the Sphinx during World War II.
for fun
because they were racist hooligans
both of the above
D) The Mamelukes shot the nose off the Sphinx.
F) Arab conquerors knocked the nose off the Sphinx in 693.
G) The Sphinx nose, after being stolen by Maimonedes, has been hidden in Israel, and was smuggled out to Temple Beth Abraham in Beverly Hills, where rich jews from all over the USA go and visit it once a year and do the hora.
H) An Islamic cleric, Sa'im al-dahr, had the nose knocked off the Sphinx in 1378.
The massive creature gazes with large and almost scary eyes eastward toward the equinox. While the face is intact, the nose is missing. A large gash across the face appears to have been caused by an explosive device, possibly a shell, that removed the nose. Was that an accidental strike, or was it done on purpose? :Louis Farrakhan once said he believed the damage had racial undertones, and that the nose was blown away by whites who were angry that the nose of the Sphinx was Negroid.
Napolean has been blamed, as have British and German forces during the great wars, although there is no record of this being true. Historical record notes that both Arab conquerors and Sa'im al-dahr damaged the Sphinx. Writings of Sa'im al-dahr specifically mention the nose.
The one-meter-wide nose on the face is missing. Examination of the Sphinx's face shows that long rods or chisels were hammered into the nose, one down from the bridge and one beneath the nostril, then used to pry the nose off towards the south.
The Egyptian Arab historian al-Maqrīzī, writing in the 15th century AD, attributes the loss of the nose to iconoclasm by Muhammad Sa'im al-Dahr, a Sufi Muslim from the khanqah of Sa'id al-Su'ada. In AD 1378, upon finding the Egyptian peasants making offerings to the Sphinx in the hope of increasing their harvest, Sa'im al-Dahr was so outraged that he destroyed the nose, and was hanged for vandalism. Al-Maqrīzī describes the Sphinx as the "talisman of the Nile" on which the locals believed the flood cycle depended.