Bamiyan Buddhas, Redux

novy.

Posted to Religion on Tue Jul 03, 2012 at 07:08:02 AM EST (promoted from Diaries by port1080). RSS.

Many "radical Islamists" think their God endorses destroying cultural icons that affront their religious notions, for whatever trivial reasons they can come up with from time to time. In 2001, Afghanistan's Taliban government destroyed two statues of Buddha in Bamiyan because they were "graven images" that were "unIslamic". Now, fighters of another radical Islamic movement, "Ansar Dine" in Mali, have been destroying Mali's cultural heritage by desecrating tombs of Sufi saints in Timbuktu and by other acts that have been called war crimes by International Criminal Court spokesmen.

It wasn't enough when Islamic extremists were out destroying Buddhist cultural heritage, now they've moved on to destroying Islamic cultural heritage too. Which should alert anyone who cares that these particular so-called Islamists have more in common with savages than those Sufi saints whose tombs they have been violating.