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Posted on 11/05/2007 12:24:03 PM PST by LibWhacker
Despite repeated requests by Pakistani archeologists to the local authorities to protect the seated Buddha and other sites, especially after the first attack, no action was taken. In fact, militants were able to carry out their work in broad daylight
The world watched in horror when Taliban forces destroyed the monumental Buddha statues in Bamiyan, Afghanistan in 2001. Political and cultural leaders from around the globe condemned the attacks. Offers of help poured in. Everyone asked: will the world be ready next time? Alas, the answer is a resounding “no.”
In northwest Pakistan’s Swat valley, armed Islamist militants recently attacked one of the oldest and most important sculptures of Buddhist art. Dating from around the beginning of the Christian era, and carved into a 130-foot-high rock, the seated image of the Buddha was second in importance in South Asia only to the Bamiyan Buddhas.
This, moreover, was the second attack in less than a month. Murtaza Razvi has pointed out that the image that was attacked was not in a remote area. In fact, it was next to the central road that runs through the valley.
Despite repeated requests by Pakistani archeologists to the local authorities to protect the seated Buddha and other sites, especially after the first attack, no action was taken. In fact, militants were able to carry out their work — drilling holes in the rock, filling them with explosives, and detonating them — in broad daylight.
They did this not once, but twice. The first time, the image escaped heavy damage because of the militants’ incompetence. The second time, they were more successful, destroying not only the sculpture’s face, but also its shoulders and feet. As if that were not enough, there are now reports of a third attack.
In 1995, I travelled through the Swat valley to study the area’s Buddhist treasures. Carved in the cliff side or protected in small beautiful museums, these remarkable objects were the pride and joy of local Muslims, followers of the faith for more than a millennium. As a non-Muslim, Indian woman, I was able to travel through the region without any fear and received warm support from local residents. People of all stripes welcomed me, and were often willing to take me to important Buddhist sites.
Today, little over a decade later, the atmosphere is so poisoned that neither local community leaders nor the local police came forward to protect these monuments or claim them as their own. Even sadder is that while Pakistani newspapers widely condemned these attacks and criticised local officials’ indifference, there has been almost no coverage in the international press.
Can it be that after the Iraq war, and the dismaying images of looting at the National Museum in Baghdad, we have lost our capacity to be outraged? Or is it that we have become so inured to bad news surrounding the war on terror that we have no desire to know more?
There is a vast number of important Buddhist sites in Swat and other areas of northwest Pakistan. At this point, all of them are under threat of destruction, thanks to the influential voice of the Islamist leader Mullah Fazlullah, whose father-in-law, Sufi Mohammad, founded one of the extremist orders.
This order was responsible for bringing more than 10,000 jihadi fighters to Afghanistan to fight alongside Taliban soldiers against the United States in 2001. While Mohammad is believed to be languishing in a regional jail, Mullah Fazlullah operates with impunity, using the radio to spread a message of hatred and intolerance.
It is time that the world community not only registers its outrage against such destruction of cultural treasures, but also joins those Pakistanis who are desperately trying to pressure their government to preserve — for their sake and ours — their pre-Islamic cultural heritage. If the world does not act this time, we risk losing one of the most precious legacies of early Buddhist history.
Vishakha N Desai is President of the Asia Society.
This is why one should not worship idols. Idols can be destroyed.
That was the first time I had ever heard of the Taliban. Of course, they got more famous a few months later.
Pakistan has been a bad news place for a long time, and balanced on the edge of a knife. They've been more-or-less our friend for the past few years -- but I think that may be changing.
I don’t know why the world stands in awe of these savages. A couple of brave men with rifles could back down an army of them; they’re only good at sniping from the shadows, beating up on women and children, and blowing up statues. Faced with courage, they run like dogs.
Good thing there’s no statues of Jesus or Mary...
I am a Christian, but it doesn’t threaten me that Buddha’s exist. Good heavens, the Buddhists’s are generally a peaceful group. Coexistence is not possible?
How shallow, how weak, how childish, how mentally deficient to you have to be, to not understand that ancient statuary is not something to be afraid of, or to be destroyed just because of your own feelings of inadequacy?
I’m thinking the Middle-East through Asia could use a few million psychologists to help work out some massive pockets of inferiority complexes that exist.
Generally I don’t support the psychological arts all that much, but this seems to be a world class situation of small wingers and even smaller cranial matter.
Well said! I used to work for a well-known Harvard researcher -- a professor of medicine -- who told me once that if you were to do a standard, double-blind, psychological exam of all Arabs, most of the results on them would come back saying the person was a severely deranged psychopath and/or sociopath. And that was years and years before 9/11.
Most Westerners don't have a clue what they're up against, but I think (and hope and pray) they are beginning to come to terms with it.
I doubt it.You an I know,for example,that if any professor at Harvard University...medical school...law school...business school...or the faculty of arts and sciences...were to say anything like what you noted in your post he or she would be looking for work with three business days of having said it.
I believe that the push to multiculturalism has completely overlooked the fact that not all societies are capable of multiculturalism. We are supposed to embrace it, but it takes both parties embracing it. It takes all other parties present to accept that and embrace it.
The Middle-Eastern mindset is different. They see things in entirely different ways than we do. I’m not here to say they are inferior, more ignorant or anything else. The facts can stand on their own merits. I just think it is insane to drive for the intermingling of large numbers of people from the Islamic states, into our nation.
This makes no other assumption, other than to recognize this has been problematic and will continue to be so. And until the mind set changes for some groups, we need to forget about this inceasant drive to have equal protions of every race in this nation.
Frankly, I’m tired of feeling I shouldn’t say that I am proud to be of white European decent, and I don’t see the need to flood this nation with everyone but.
Every race in the world should have some place where they can exercise self-rule. Blacks have it. Hispanics have it. Asians have their nations. What’s wrong with Whites having a few where they can exercise self-rule.
Population manipulators, knock it off. I’ve had it up the here with your bull s—t!
Thanks for the comments.
ping...What a darn shame that this is happening.
It’s true, he didn’t say it publicly, that’s for sure, but to me in private. And I’m not turning him in!!! He was probably one of the few rays of light remaining at that school. By now I’m sure he’s retired.
“Faced with courage, they run like dogs.”
Dogs do run like dogs...
Yes it is a shame these things are being destroyed. But they are just things. Objects. This is a wonderful lesson on impermanence.
Can it be that after the Iraq war, and the dismaying images of looting at the National Museum in Baghdad, we have lost our capacity to be outraged? Or is it that we have become so inured to bad news surrounding the war on terror that we have no desire to know more?
I'm afraid the author, like a great number of people in the west, is still half-asleep. Islam is trying to kill or enslave us all. They have no compunctions whatsoever about who is killed or how. If there is no outrage about that then why would anybody care about some musty antiquities? I don't. Until the civilized world gets over itself, over its false sense of higher morality and compassion, and starts killing Muslims as fast as they can possibly be killed then we can expect to see icons of non-Muslim culture destroyed. More importantly, IMO, we can expect to see unabated murder and mayhem on non-Muslim people.
The Buddha wouldn't give a mouldy bowl of rice curry for a statue.
I agree. Sadly too.
Wow...that’s not a completely ignorant statement....
Aww, now. Give credit where credit is due.
Thank you.
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