The Taliban, well into the third year of rule in most of Afghanistan, have shown that they intend to extend a brand of Islamic law over their land which makes Iran’s law look permissive in comparison.
All women are forbidden to work outside the home and must wear the body-concealing chadoor. Music, television and the arts have all but disappeared. The death penalty is mandated for many actions that in most other countries would be considered innocuous — try flying a kite or going without a beard there sometime. Now, the Taliban are turning their attention to the destruction of their own heritage. Hundreds of Buddhist-era statues are going to be destroyed as an affront to the Taliban’s brand of Islam. Among these is the world’s tallest representation of a standing Buddha, at 175 feet tall. This destruction should be stopped.
This would not be the first or even the 101st time that religious art has been destroyed or damaged due to a conflicting belief. In the Book of Genesis, no sooner does Moses leave Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments than he orders the destruction of a statue of the calf-god Apsis and the slaughter of all who worshiped it. Groups of Greek vandals, angered at a god represented in statues in Athens, chipped off the penises on said statues. Emperor Constantine looted the temples of Jupiter and other traditional Roman gods and dragged their statues through the streets of Rome. Napoleon Bonaparte allowed his troops to use the famous Egyptian Sphinx for artillery practice.
The Taliban have only proffered one argument for why the statues must be destroyed. Under their strict reading of Sharia law, representations of human beings are forbidden. It is this same rationale that has imposed strict punishments on photography and forbade TV.
A second, mostly unspoken reason for the destruction, is the fact that the statues were carved in adoration and worship of the Buddha, whom the Taliban consider a “false god.” Under most fundamentalist systems, so-called “false gods” of other belief systems are mocked and treated with scorn and derision by followers of the fundamentalist sect.
We have seen this in America, where Pat Robinson has denigrated Jews, Buddhists and other belief systems that he believes deny Jesus. To the Taliban’s credit, however, they appear to be letting the small Buddhist and Hindu communities continue worshipping with little harassment, and a small Jewish synagogue in Kabul, manned by a lone rabbi, has been allowed to stay open. This does not abrogate their seeming hostility to statues the Hindus and Buddhist hold dear.
On the other hand, there are numerous arguments to be made for preserving these works of art. First and foremost is that these statues are historical artifacts, some dating back as far as the 6th century AD. Historical treasures and antiquities are, or should be, protected by international law. They are a link to the past in Afghanistan, providing a glimpse of how the country functioned before the upheavals that began in 1979, with the Soviet Union’s invasion.
Furthermore, some of these statues are human achievements in and of themselves. Two of the pieces being destroyed by Taliban weapons are Buddha statues carved into a mountainside in the 5th century. The amount of back-breaking labor involved in creating these two unique pieces in an era long before modern excavation tools, such as those used on Mount Rushmore, should by itself be a case for preservation.
Finally, Buddhists, who do not share the ban on graven images that the Taliban uphold, feel that these statues are sacred relics to them, images of devotion to their Buddha. To destroy them is to destroy something inside of every Afghan Buddhist, and those around the world.
We, unfortunately, cannot prevent the Taliban from taking this action. But they have to know, in no uncertain terms, that the world has taken note of their actions, and that they disapprove and abhor the destruction of ancient works of art. These statues belong in a museum, not on a bonfire.