Posted on 08/08/2005 6:39:59 PM PDT by minus_273
(CNN) -- Afghanistan's Taleban has destroyed two giant Buddhas carved into a cliff centuries ago, pictures obtained by CNN show.
United Nations officials confirmed the claims made by the Taleban, which announced last month it would destroy images deemed "offensive to Islam." But no photographs of the demolition were available until Monday.
Museums and governments around the world had hoped to save the two Buddhas, the earliest of which is thought to have been carved into the sandstone cliffs of Bamiyan in the third century A.D. At 53 meters (175 feet) and 36 meters (120 feet), the statues were the tallest standing Buddhas in the world.
Demolition of the two towering images was nearly finished Monday, Taleban Information Minister Qudratullah Jamal said.
(Excerpt) Read more at archives.cnn.com ...
Any particular reason you are posting a 4-year-old news story?
"Anti-Muslim backlash feared
Matsuura urged the international community not to take its anger at the Taleban action out on Muslim sites elsewhere.
"As inexcusable as this action is, I hope that it will not provide fanatics elsewhere with an excuse for acts of destruction targeting Muslim cultural properties," he said.
The Taleban has controlled most of Afghanistan since 1996, though few countries recognize it as the rightful Afghan government. The fundamentalist Muslim sect has imposed a strict Islamic code within its territory, but many disagree with its stern application of Islamic law.
"This could lead to great schisms between Muslims and non-Muslims," said Sheikh Malmoud Ashour, an Islamic scholar at Egypt's Al-Azhar University. "Buddhists and Hindus are now in an uproar against Muslims, and that is something we would like to avoid."
Muslim countries like Egypt, which has preserved its ancient pre-Islamic monuments as a point of pride, condemned the edict from Taleban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar that led to the statues' destruction. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak dispatched the mufti of the republic, the country's most senior Islamic authority, to plead with the Taleban to save the statues.
"They should understand that destroying those statues is not going to serve anything," said Zahi Hawas, who oversees the plateau holding the great pyramids outside Cairo. "They are not helping them but are making bad publicity about Islam -- and Islam has nothing to do with what is happening in Afghanistan."
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just sounds so familiar. They were doing it even before 9/11
INAZI!!!
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