Wonder: The Pyramids at Giza are under threat from destruction or 'concealment' by covering them with wax
Posted on 12/27/2011 7:06:04 AM PST by SeekAndFind
The pyramids at Giza are the most stunning sight I have ever seen.
True, their lonely eminence is threatened by Cairo's unlicensed building sprawl, with half completed houses inching their way towards them.
Surveying them at night as the calls to prayer multiplied into a thunder of sound from central Cairo already told me a few years back what was coming.
For now members of the Nour (The Light) Salafist party, which won 20 per cent of the vote in recent elections, are talking about putting an end to the 'idolatry' represented by the pyramids.
This means destruction - along the lines essayed by the Afghan Taliban who blew up the Banyam Buddhas - or 'concealment' by covering them with wax. Tourists would presumably see great blobs rather than the perfectly carved steps.
This last suggestion was made by Abdel Moneim Al-Shahat, a Nour candidate for parliament. Apart from wanting to do away with this 'rotten culture', this gentleman also wants to ban the Nobel prize winning novels of Naguib Mahfouz, one of many great Egyptian writers.
I suppose they could call in the great Bulgarian artist Christo, who specialises in putting curtains across the Grand Canyon or surrounding Pacific atolls in fetching pink cloth? But I doubt they have heard of him.
Salafism means reverting to the mores of the founding generation of Islam, for the close companions of the Prophet were called Salafi meaning 'pious founders'. Since the last adherent of ancient Egyptian religion allegedly converted (to Christianity) in the fourth century AD, the original Salafists had little to worry about the pyramids and left them alone.
But not their 21st century successors, who also want what they call 'halal' tourism, with women told to dress decorously and no alcohol, something pretty general already in conservative Egypt.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
the infowarrior
the infowarrior
Sorry for the double post. Technical hiccup...
Note to Greece: You can kiss any chance of repatriating the Elgin Marbles good bye for a while....
Salafist Islamics everywhere want humans to convert to their brand of repressive Islam or be treated as Untermenschen. Even those who accept Islam must live under social mores of the Mid-East in the year 700 AD with an anti-science, anti-intellectual mind set and women as lesser to men. The loss of the ancient Pyramids is the least of the Salafist goals.
Their islamic ancestors have lived peacefully with the pyramids for 1300 years without believing them to be an insult to their prophet. This latest generation is 1300 times crazier then all their fore-bearers combined.
Because when the Salafist win Parliament in a few years, they will be smashed to bits as tokens of idolatry and the pieces scattered across the North Sea. The British Museum will be converted into a mosque and St. Paul's Cathedral will be used as a harem by the Caliph of Britain.
The headline lies. It promises a story about covering the pyramids with wax but gives no details about the wacky idea.
It is said that Osama bin Laden became enraged when an American woman laughed at him during a polo game. I guess he got his revenge on the west, even if it cost him his life. To have reconciled himself to the modern would have cost him his peace of mind for his entire life.
And some wonder why it is repeatedly insinuated that Islam is one backward arse culture and religion.... =.=
One match on a hot Summer’s day would produce the most profound religous spectacle of the young century.
So what will UNESCO do about the willful destruction of World Historical Sites? Man will Egypt be a poor country.
In other words, use a high melting point type of wax.
Carnuba seems to hold up well on hot automobile surfaces that can fry eggs.
Any way, I'm glad the reporter mentioned the Afghanistan Buddhas.
JMHO, but nuking the Aswan High Dam isn’t a wacky idea. Just politically challenging, that’s all.
Tourism also accounts for more than half of Egypt's foreign exchange, from a country that imports over half its food. Halal Egypt may be the next North Korea, but without the "thriving" industrial and agricultural economy.
From Spengler :
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/ME10Ak01.html
Egypt is running out of food, and, more gradually, running out of money with which to buy it. The most populous country in the Arab world shows all the symptoms of national bankruptcy - the kind that produced hyperinflation in several Latin American countries during the 1970s and 1980s - with a deadly difference: Egypt imports half its wheat, and the collapse of its external credit means starvation.
Egypt’s political problems - violence against Coptic Christians, the resurgence of Islamism, and saber-rattling at Israel, for example - are not symptoms of economic failure. They have a life of their own. But even Islamists have to eat, and whatever political scenarios that the radical wing of Egyptian politic might envision will be aborted by hunger.
The Ministry of Solidarity and Social Justice is already forming “revolutionary committees” to mete out street justice to bakeries, propane dealers and street vendors who “charge more than the price prescribed by law”, the Federation of Egyptian Radio and Television reported on May 3.
According to the ministry, “Thugs are in control of bread and butane prices” and “people’s committees” are required to stop them. Posters on Egyptian news sites report sharp increases in bread prices, far in excess of the 11.5% inflation reported for April by the country’s central bank. And increases in the price of bottled propane have made the cost of the most widely used cooking fuel prohibitive.
The collapse of Egypt’s credit standing, meanwhile, has shut down trade financing for food imports, according to the chairman of the country’s Food Industry Holding Company, Dr Ahmed al-Rakaibi, chairman of the Holding Company for Food Industries. Rakaibi warned of “an acute shortage in the production of food commodities manufactured locally, as well as a decline in imports of many goods, especially poultry, meats and oils”. According to the country’s statistics agency, only a month’s supply of rice is on hand, and four months’ supply of wheat.
The country’s foreign exchange reserves have fallen by US$13 billion, or roughly a third during the first three months of the year, Reuters reported on May 5. The country lost $6 billion of official and $7 billion of unofficial reserves, and had only $24.5 billion on hand at the end of April. Capital flight probably explains most of the rapid decline. Egypt’s currency has declined by only about 6% since January, despite substantial capital flight, due to market intervention by the central bank, but the rapid drawdown of reserves is unsustainable.
Egypt imported $55 billion worth of goods in 2009, but exported only $29 billion of goods. With the jump in food and energy prices, the same volume of imports would cost considerably more. Egypt closed the 2009 trade gap with about $15 billion in tourist revenues, and about $8 billion of remittances from Egyptian workers abroad. But tourism today is running at a fraction of last year’s levels, and remittances are down by around half due to expulsion of Egyptian workers from Libya. Even without capital flight, Egypt is short perhaps $25 billion a year.
Beats the hell out of me...
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