Colleagues,
Here's the latest from the Today's News section of the Chronicle of Higher
Education (March 5, 2001).
Is there anything we can do as individuals or a society to join the
protest? I'm totally distraught over this.
Janine Henri
Scholars Join Protests of Taliban Destruction
of Pre-Islamic Art in Afghanistan
By BURTON BOLLAG
Scholars have joined the international protests
against an
announcement by the Taliban authorities of
Afghanistan that they
have begun destroying the country's pre-Islamic
statues.
Last week the Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah
Mohamed Omar,
issued an edict calling for the destruction of
all statues depicting
human beings. The militia, which controls 95
percent of
Afghanistan, sees statues as un-Islamic. The
edict, and reports that
Taliban militiamen have started destroying
artifacts in a Kabul
museum, have been met with outrage around the
world -- and
have particularly upset academics.
"This is another act in the country's tragedy,"
said Thomas E.
Gouttierre, director of the Center for
Afghanistan Studies at the
University of Nebraska at Omaha. "It shows the total
inappropriateness of an organization like the
Taliban to be in
control of a country."
There has been particular shock at claims by the
Taliban that it had
begun destroying the Buddhas of Bamiyan, a pair
of statues that
are 1,500 years old and carved into a sheer rock
face. The taller of
the two is about 175 feet.
Koïchiro Matsuura, director-general of the
United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization, issued a protest
Thursday, calling the destruction "a real
cultural disaster that will
cause irreparable harm to a heritage of
exceptional universal
value."
Abdel Haleem, director of the Center of Islamic
Studies of the
University of London's School of Oriental and
African Studies,
described the actions in Afghanistan as
"absolutely against Islamic
teachings" of respect and tolerance for other
religions.
Head Librarian
The Architecture and Planning Library
The General Libraries, P.O. Box P
The University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX 78713-8916
(512) 495-4623
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