| AFGHANISTAN:
Taliban orders statues destroyed, including tallest standing Buddha
Salt
Lake Tribune, Feb. 27, 2001
KABUL -- Afghanistan's hard-line Taliban rulers ordered the destruction
Monday of all statues, including a giant 175-foot fifth-century Buddha
that is said to be the world's tallest of its kind.
The order came from the Taliban's supreme leader,
Mullah Mohammed Omar, who issued an edict declaring statues, including the
ancient Buddhas, as insulting to Islam.
"Because God is one God and these statues are
there to be worshipped and that is wrong. They should be destroyed so that
they are not worshipped now or in the future," Omar said in his
edict, published by the Taliban-run Bakhtar News Agency.
It's not clear what prompted the edict from the Taliban,
but a leading Islamic scholar in neighboring Pakistan, Israr Ahmed, said
the Taliban took their direction from Islam's Prophet Mohammed.
The religious army espouses a strict brand of Islamic
law and reviles all images as contrary to the tenets of Islam.
* * * * *
This 175-foot tall,
fifth-century Buddha statue located in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, was ordered
destroyed Monday, along with all other statues, which the ruling Taliban
says are insulting Islam. (Associated Press file photo)
|
Exodus 34
12 Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of
the land whither thou goest, lest it be for a snare in the midst of thee:
13 But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down
their groves:
14 For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name [is]
Jealous, [is] a jealous God:
Leviticus 26:30
30 And I will destroy your high places, and cut down your images, and cast
your carcases upon the carcases of your idols, and my soul shall abhor
you.
Numbers 33:52
52 Then shall ye drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before
you, and destroy all their pictures, and destroy all their molten images,
and quite pluck down all their high places:
Deuteronomy 7:5
5 But thus shall ye deal with them; ye shall destroy their altars, and
break down their images, and cut down their groves, and burn their graven
images with fire.
Deuteronomy 12:3
3 And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn
their groves with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their
gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place.
2 Chronicles 31:1
1 Now when all this was finished, all Israel that were present went out to
the cities of Judah, and brake the images in pieces, and cut down the
groves, and threw down the high places and the altars out of all Judah and
Benjamin, in Ephraim also and Manasseh, until they had utterly destroyed
them all. Then all the children of Israel returned, every man to his
possession, into their own cities.
Ezekiel 30:13
13 Thus saith the Lord GOD; I will also destroy the idols, and I will
cause [their] images to cease out of Noph; and there shall be no more a
prince of the land of Egypt: and I will put a fear in the land of Egypt. |
