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The
Latter-Day Kharijites of Kabul
As the world pleads for
Afghanistan's pre-Islamic cultural heritage, the Taleban drag the good name of
Islam ever deeper into disrepute.
By Muslim convert, Michael Young, March 3, 2001.
How would we react if the Egyptian government were suddenly to announce that
they were going to blow up the pyramids, bulldoze the temple of Luxor, burn the
mummies and melt down the golden artifacts in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo?... Exactly! Yet
transpose that scenario to Afghanistan and that is exactly what the Taleban are
doing today - systematically obliterating their country's pre-Islamic heritage.
Civilized Muslim states throughout history have respected the
pre-Islamic
heritage of their own countries and those they conquered. Muslim rulers allowed
freedom of religion to non-Muslims, even if their beliefs and practices were
anathema to Islam. When Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab (raa) conquered Jerusalem, he
refused the opportunity to offer salat within the walls of the Church of the
Holy Sepulcher for fear that some ignorant Muslims after him might claim the
church and convert it into a mosque because he had once prayed there. He left
the church with its icons and works of Christian religious art intact. Umar also
conquered Persia, yet a Zoroastrian community still exists to this day in
Iran. When the
Ottomans conquered Greece, they did not demolish the pagan temples of antiquity.
And even when they captured Constantinople (Istanbul) and converted the
cathedral of Saint Sophia into a mosque, they did not vandalize the Christian art on its walls, but merely covered it up so that it is still preserved today.
Egypt's sphinx may be missing its nose, but it was not any of the country's
Muslim rulers over the past fourteen centuries who were responsible for blasting
it off but invading French troops in 1798.
Afghanistan has been a Muslim country for only a slightly shorter period than
Egypt. The Taleban claim that the age-old Buddhist monuments are "an insult
to Islam". Yet until now no regime in the country's well over a thousand years of Muslim
rule has sought to damage or destroy Afghanistan's priceless, pre-Islamic
cultural heritage. Does anyone seriously think that the Muslims of Afghanistan
today are suddenly going to start worshipping Buddha statues? Not even Buddhists
themselves do that. The statues are not idols to be worshipped, as the ignorant Taleban
claim. And what of Islamic tolerance for the religious freedom of
Afghanistan's small remaining Buddhist community?
The Islamic Organization for Education, Sciences and Culture based in Morocco
has stated that Afghanistan's Buddhist statues and artifacts represent "a true universal inheritance"
that does no harm to Islam. These sentiments are echoed by the Foreign
Ministry of Qatar, current chairman of the Organisation of the Islamic
Conference which is on record as stating that the Bamiyan statues "belong
to the whole of mankind and they should be preserved".
Other voices across the Muslim world have also
condemned the Taleban's actions.
"The Taleban should focus on fighting poverty, diseases, unemployment
and bloodshed on its soil and not on destroying relics, which are a living
lesson of history," said Sheikh Youssif al-Qaradawi, a Muslim scholar based
in Qatar. "They should consider going back on their decision."
Grand Mufti Nasr Mohamed Farid Wassel of Al-Azhar, Cairo, the world's oldest university
and the foremost seat of scholarship in Islam, has been quoted as saying:
"The Taleban should have consulted with scholars before taking such a
decision. Such statues are only a recording of history…their presence
does not in the least impinge on the Islamic faith." He also pointed
out that not a single Muslim scholar had ever claimed that the presence of
thousands of Pharaonic and Roman statues and ancient relics in Egypt violate the principles of Islam.
Not only is Muslim Egypt preserving its ancient heritage, it is actually
restoring the art and icons of the country's Christian past. According to
a recent story in the Middle East Times, Cairo, St. Anthony's Monastery, Egypt's
oldest, which is named after the man who founded Christianity's monastic
tradition, re-opened on March 1 after extensive renovation work.
"The restoration work on the frescos and icons is almost finished,"
said Gaballah Ali Gaballah, the head of Egypt's supreme council for antiquities
referring to the site situated in the Al Galala mountains along the Red Sea,
some 260 km (161 miles) southeast of Cairo. Gaballah added that the icons and
frescos were some of the oldest examples of ancient Coptic Christian art with
some pieces dating back to the 6th or 7th centuries. The restoration, which has
lasted three years, covered the monastery's four churches and its
fortifications.
What the Taleban are now doing in Afghanistan is a betrayal of centuries of Islamic
civilization and tolerance. It is a crime against the history of their country,
a crime against world culture and a crime against Islam itself. The Taleban are defying
the word of God that there should be no compulsion in matters of religion. (Quran
2:256). They are potentially endangering the wholly innocent Muslim minority communities in Buddhist
countries such as Thailand and war-torn Sri Lanka. Perhaps most abominable of
all, instead of creating a favorable impression to attract non-believers to
Islam, they are reinforcing all the old stereotypes and caricatures and
attracting immense horror and revulsion to the image of Islam among non-Muslims
(CNN top story, Friday, March 2, 2001), thus undermining and reversing the solid
Dawah work of
others. As a statement from the Iranian Foreign Ministry puts its: "The
Taleban's destruction of the statues has cast doubts on the comprehensive views
offered by Islamic ideology in the world." The eyes of the world are being drawn in
disgust
and revulsion to the antics of
the Taleban in Afghanistan at this special time when they should be drawn in
admiration to the hajj in Makkah.
The Taleban have already brought so much undeserved negative publicity to
Islam through their well-documented perversion of the teachings of Islam about women. They are outcasts not just in the so-called "international
community" but within Islam. Of the dozens of Arab and Muslim countries in
the world, only three - the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan -
recognize the Taleban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. Of these,
only Pakistan, whose military intelligence service is widely credited (or
blamed) for creating the Taleban in the mid 1990's, maintains an embassy in
Kabul. And even Pakistan, which carefully preserves its own Buddhist heritage,
has called on the Taleban to halt their cultural vandalism.
"We have conveyed to them the international concern, in addition to
bilateral concern, and we have asked them to show sensitivity to international
sentiment in this matter," said Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Riaz
Mohammad Khan. "In our appeal we have said that we hope that the Afghan
government will show the spirit of tolerance joined upon by Islam."
Also in Pakistan, Dawn, the country's most widely read
English-language publication, commented:
"Pakistan has requested the Taleban government to reconsider its
decision to destroy all historic statues under its control....We sincerely hope
that the Taleban will spare the treasures... Islam is a religion of harmony and peaceful
co-existence among various communities. Buddha was an apostle of peace and
non-violence. Certainly he deserves better treatment than what he has
hitherto received at the hands of the blind zealots in Afghanistan."
The 22-member Arab League has also condemned the Taleban move as a
"savage act". The group of Arab UNESCO Member States has issued a
communiqué calling for "an international mobilization with concrete
actions, to end this unprecedented undertaking which affects invaluable
universal heritage treasures." And the Islamic Republic of
Iran, long portrayed in the Western media as a "fundamentalist
bogeyman", has offered to purchase the Buddhist statues and relics and
remove them from Afghanistan. But the Taleban have rejected all appeals
and offers made to them from within the Muslim world.
This is not
an issue of the rest of the world versus Islam represented by the Taleban. The
Taleban most definitely do not represent Islam, or at least not any
sort of Islam that many Muslims would care to be associated with. We Muslims
have been appointed by Allah (swt) as a "middle nation" Quran 2:143, not a
bunch of intolerant, extremist wreckers. We must tackle this
issue ourselves and put our own house in order. In this context, the words of the late Sheikh Muhammad
Al-Ghazaly of Al-Azhar seem particularly fitting:
Some Muslim callers preach a false and ugly version of Islam and then
complain because people do not accept it. I think that those ignorant preachers
should be imprisoned or lashed because they divert people from the way of Allah
and the truth that Muhammad, the final Messenger, declared.
In terms of their mindset, the Taleban are reminiscent of a fanatical sect from
early Islamic history, the Kharijites, who counted among their number the
murderer of Caliph Ali (raa). The Sabahah were so appalled by the judgmental
fundamentalism of this group and the damage they were doing to the spread of
Islam that over the ensuing decades, they decided that
for the greater good of Islam there was only one solution - ruthless suppression.
The Taleban have spent the last five years dragging the good name of
Islam ever deeper into disrepute. For the greater good of Islam today, now the mainstream Muslims of our
era must also take the decisive, "concrete actions" called for by the
Arab league against the "blind zealots" and "ignorant
preachers" of the Taleban and their "false and ugly version" of
Islam.
Allahu a`lam. God knows best.
© Michael Young 2001
Read other articles on Islam by Michael young here.
MichaelYoung101@yahoo.com
Suggested further reading:
No foundation in Islam for Taleban rampage on
statues
The Taleban's is not so much an austere interpretation of Islam as one that
distorts, often violates the words and spirit of the faith. Which is why Muslims
everywhere have joined the international chorus of condemnation.
By Haroon Siddiqui, The Toronto Star, March 4, 2001
Tolerance
in Islam
by Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall (the Quran translator).
Newsletter of the
Society for the preservation of Afghanistan's Cultural Heritage
The
Plight of Muslim Women in Afghanistan
Islam means the submission of humankind to the will of God,
not the submission of women to the will of men.
Taleban
Chronology 1994-1996
Analysis:
Who are the Taleban?
BBC News, 20 December, 2000
Evidence of the dreadful damage the
Taleban cause to the good name of Islam among non-Muslims
Islam Online
Muslim
Scholars Denounce Taliban Statue Destruction
March 2, 2001
BBC
Bamiyan
statues: World reaction
5 March 2001
Pressure
on Taleban urged
3 March, 2001
Fury
over Taleban statue purge
2 March, 2001
Taleban
'attack' Buddha statues
2 March, 2001
Taleban
"destroy" priceless art.
12 February 2001
The
giant Buddhas of Bamiyan
December 16, 1997
CNN
World
appeals to Taleban to stop destroying statues
March 3, 2001
World
decries Taleban plan to raze age-old Buddhas
March 2, 2001
World
begs Taliban not to 'vandalize' history
March 2, 2001
Taleban
starting to wreck age-old Buddhas
March 2, 2001
Afghans,
nations lament Taliban order to destroy all statues
February 27, 2001
ABC
Taliban
Vow to Destroy Afghanistan's Statues
February 27, 2001
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