Taleban reject calls to save statues

Bamiyan's Buddha images are widely acknowledged as some of the finest examples of early Buddhist art

In this story: Religious edict Buddhist center RELATED STORIES, SITES

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Afghanistan's ruling Taleban militia have rejected international appeals to spare two immense 2,000 year-old images of the Buddha.

The fundamentalist Islamic group, which regards all human likenesses of divinity as un-Islamic, says the statues carved into the rock face near the central town of Bamiyan are "insulting to Islam" and should be destroyed.

The announcement comes despite a last-minute appeal from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan for a rethink.

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Governments, religious associations, and heritage groups around the world have also called on the Taleban to preserve the unique Buddhist figures carved into the rock face near the central town of Bamiyan.

Religious edict

On Monday the Taleban's spiritual leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, issued a religious edit, or fatwah, calling for all statues to be smashed including the two Buddha images that soar 38 meters (125 feet) and 53 meters (174 feet) above Bamiyan.

"Only Allah, the Almighty, deserves to be worshipped, not anyone or anything else," the decree said.

Much of Afghanistan has been ravaged by years of civil war

"All statues would be destroyed," said Taleban cultural minister Mullah Qudratullah Jamal, adding that "whatever means of destruction are needed to demolish the statues will be used."

The ruling was also directed at the remaining figures and religious artifacts left in Kabul's once famous museum.

The museum, once regarded as a treasure trove of Central Asia's pre-Islamic past, has been bombed and systematically looted during Afghanistan's years of civil war.

Museums in the southern city of Ghazni, the western city of Herat and at Farm Hadda near the main eastern town of Jalalabad have also thought to have been targeted.

Buddhist center

The Taleban want to remove any reminders of the centuries before Islam when Afghanistan was a center of Buddhist learning and pilgrimage.

The group's spiritual leaders say that Islam forbids the making of images, such as pictures and paintings of people.

The United Nations world heritage body UNESCO has denounced the action as "vandalism" and urged other Islamic nations to put pressure on the Taleban to halt the destruction.

On Thursday one of the world's premier art museums, New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, offered to buy Afghan artifacts in a desperate bid to stop the ruling Taleban from smashing priceless historic statues.

Taleban forces are continuing to fight for control of all of Afghanistan's territory

"Let us come at our own cost and let us remove what we are able to remove," said Phillippe De Montebello, director of the Metropolitan Museum, a premier repository of art and artifacts.

The statue-smashing has scandalized Buddhists, Christians and Muslims around the world who have said it is not only destroying the history of civilization but it is damaging the cause of both Afghanistan and Islam.

Even traditional foes India and Pakistan have found themselves in agreement.

India, home in exile for Tibet's Buddhist spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, said it would try to stop the destruction which one Taleban official linked to the 1992 razing by Hindu extremists of a 16th century mosque in Ayodhya in northern India.

Meanwhile Pakistan, one of the Taleban's few foreign supporters, has added its voice to the condemnation, urging the group to preserve the "world's historical, cultural and religious heritage."

Egypt, another largely Islamic nation, said the edict was contrary to Islam because it respects other cultures "even if they include rituals that are against Islamic law."

Reuters contributed to this report.

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