USA offers to buy all Afghan works of art - but offer wont be accepted by hatefilled idiots.
Mo
No pseudoseculars believed that the Muslims destroyed all the
beautiful temples and works of art of the pagan Arabs , Iranians and
Hindus . Now they can see for themselves in this generation and its
all due to the Quran preaching that 'idol worshipping is worse than
bloodshed' . These verses must be modified in the free world . Muslims
have already attacked temples in Bradford UK and will do the same to
Catholic idols of Jesus and Mary..
New York's Metropolitan Makes Afghan Art Offer
By Patrick Rizzo
Thursday March 1 5:55 PM ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The director of New York's Metropolitan Museum of
Art on Thursday begged the Taliban not to smash all the statues from
Afghanistan's rich cultural past and said the museum would purchase
the artifacts rather than see them destroyed.
``We are making this offer. 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, one of the world's premier
repositories of art and artifacts.
``Let us remove them so that they are in the context of an art museum,
where they are cultural objects, works of art and not cult images,''
he told Reuters in a telephone interview.
``Better that than having them destroyed.''
De Montebello was joining his voice to the chorus of international
appeals to the radical ruling Taliban movement that has begun smashing
the statues it regards as un-Islamic.
``All statues will be destroyed,'' Taliban Information and Culture
Minister Mullah Qudratullah Jamal told reporters on Thursday in the
capital Kabul. ``Whatever means of destruction are needed to demolish
the statues will be used.
``The work began early during the day. All of the statues are to be
smashed. This also covers the idols in Bamiyan,'' he said. Bamiyan is
the site of two monumental statues of the Buddha, hewn from a solid
cliff at around the fourth and fifth centuries A.D., that are
Afghanistan's most famous relics.
De Montebello said he had not directly contacted the Taliban, which on
Thursday rejected a last-minute U.N. appeal when its Foreign Minister
Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil told an envoy the movement would complete the
destruction of the statues.
The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press news service cited Jamal as
saying statues had been destroyed at museums in Kabul, the southern
city of Ghazni, the western city of Herat and at Farm Hadda near the
main eastern town of Jalalabad.
Russia, Germany, India and Pakistan condemned the destruction and
appealed to the Taliban to think again.
While the statues at Bamiyan probably could not be saved if the
Taliban went ahead with their plan, Montebello said that the museum
would use its own financial resources to purchase and remove smaller,
life-size statues.
``We can do nothing about what is hewn in the rock,'' he said. De
Montebello said he had not yet spoken to other museums about his
offer, but he was sure that those who could afford it would join. ``I
would suspect that the Louvre, the British Museum would, given half a
chance by the Taliban,'' he said.
``I think they would all say yes.''
International alarm was first sparked on Monday, when Taliban leader
Mullah Mohammad Omar ordered the smashing of all statues, including
the two famous Buddhas that soar 38 meters (125 feet) and 53 meters
(174 feet) above Bamiyan.
The United Nations cultural agency UNESCO denounced the Taliban for
smashing the priceless statues and called on Muslim nations to try to
halt the destruction, which has inflicted new damage to the Taliban's
already poor ties with most countries.
Heavily criticized for its restrictions on women and for its public
executions, the Taliban is recognized by only three states: Pakistan,
the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
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Outcry over Taliban statue smashing
Thursday, 1 March, 2001, 22:52 GMT
The international community has reacted with outrage to the news that
the Taleban regime has begun destroying Afghanistan's rich heritage of
ancient statues.
The Taleban say the statues -- many of them depicting Buddha -- are
false idols and offensive to Islam.
The United Nations Cultural agency, UNESCO, denounced what it called
acts of vandalism.
Its head, Koichiro Matsuura, said the destruction of the statues
including two giant Buddhas carved into the mountainside at Bamiyan
would be a loss for humanity as a whole.
He asked Islamic countries to press the Taleban to halt the
destruction.
A Taleban spokesman in the United States Sayed Rahmatullah Hashmi said
the statues were being destroyed to retaliate for the demolition of an
ancient mosque at Ayodhya in India by Hindu activists in 1992 -- but
there's been no word on this from inside Afghanistan. Hindus revere
Buddha as a reincarnation of their god Vishnu.
From the newsroom of the BBC World Service
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VHP threatens retaliation over Taliban move
The Times of India
March 1, 2001
NEW DELHI: The VHP on Thursday joined issues with the fundamentalist
Taliban regime in Afghanistan over the destruction of statues,
including the Bamiyan buddhas and threatened a "reaction" in
communally sensitive Ajmer town of Rajasthan if they do not stop
"insulting" Rajput warrior Prithviraj Chauhan's memorial in Ghazni.
"The destruction of Bamiyan statues is an insult to Budhhism," VHP
senior vice-president Acharya Giriraj Kishore told reporters here.
Alleging that the 'samadhi' of Hindu warrior Prithviraj Chauhan in
Ghazni was being "insulted" by the Taliban regime, Kishore said,
"people in his erstwhile capital of Ajmer are agitated over it and
they may react if it does not stop."
Asked what was meant by "reaction", Bajrang Dal leader