Word: bamiyan
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...country's Taliban rulers forbid television, Afghans could see no pictures of the destruction that had people everywhere else glued to their sets. The immensity of the World Trade Center had to be described. When Afghans asked me about the Twin Towers, I compared them to Afghanistan's giant Bamiyan Buddha statues, a symbol of national heritage that the Taliban blasted to dust six months...
Afghanistan's Taliban has destroyed the two towering statues of Buddha in the Bamiyan Valley [WORLD, March 19]. The assertion of a Taliban leader that "all we are crushing are stones" is amazing. Isn't the holy city of Mecca made of stone too? How would millions of Muslim hajj pilgrims feel if a Buddhist fanatic took revenge by blowing up Mecca's "stone"? As an imperfect Buddhist bound by vows and aspirations, I can only sit calmly through my frustrations and exercise reluctant tolerance. But I do wonder if I haven't given in to a bully yet again...
...should not be necessary to remind America that when the Taleban destroyed the statues in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, they invoked an interpretation of the Qur'an that is insulting to Muslims and contrary to the fundamental tenets of Islam, which preaches tolerance for other religions: Let there be no compulsion in religion (2:256), Whoever wills, let him believe; and whoever does not will, let him disbelieve...
...announced target that has caused the most serious and concerted outcry from other nations, including some Muslim ones like Pakistan, is at Bamiyan, about 100 miles northwest of Kabul. There, in a valley, about a mile of soft-stone cliff is honeycombed with caves, many of them bearing ancient Buddhist wall paintings dating back to around the 4th to the 5th century A.D. The core of this already much defaced religious center, as it once was, consists of two gigantic standing figures of Buddha, recessed into the cliffs sometime between the 3rd and 6th centuries. The larger of them...
Unfortunately, there are no good grounds to suppose that the Taliban can be deflected from their benighted campaign. Even the Metropolitan Museum's offer to purchase and transport pieces of the two Bamiyan Buddhas to New York was rebuffed by Taliban officials. Last week a very faint ray of hope faded when Pakistan, the Taliban's closest ally, failed to dissuade them from going ahead with their plans. Pierre Lafrance, a UNESCO special envoy, was sent to talk to Taliban mullahs in Kandahar, but he found that "there was not the slightest hint of bargaining in their position. Their standard...