Dan,
Feeling feisty this morning, eh? Well, this should appeal to those in our Greek chorus (a.k.a. “The Fray”) who’ve been bitching about excessive Philly-centrism this week. There used to be a term for the practice of newspaper editorial writers waxing wroth on issues their local readers were unlikely to care about. It was “Afghanistanism.” Maybe another way to approach this issue is to wonder how many Americans or other Westerners knew or cared anything about the 100-foot statues of Buddha there before now. I don’t have much good to say about the Taliban either, but they certainly have widened my own cultural knowledge a bit.
But to your main (and elegantly stretched-for) point: It would be easier to muster sympathy for Afghani Muslim religious sensibilities if the Taliban had shown any interest in the offers of people around the world to help salvage the Buddha statues. Saying you can’t live next to the symbol of an infidel religion is one thing; insisting that it be reduced to rubble is quite another. It gets back to a principle that isn’t so far removed from lots of church-state discussions here: It’s fine to present yourself as a person of faith, even to insist that your own particular beliefs or practices be respected by the rest of the (local or international) community. But if you refuse to acknowledge and respect those of others, you’ve crossed a line from faith to zealotry and have to take the consequences.
Afghanis have a right to feel as aggrieved as they care to about the statues–and if there were nobody else in the world who valued them (on either artistic or religious grounds), it wouldn’t be an issue. But refusing to even consider another group’s point of view changes this from an act of faith to an act of vandalism, nothing more.
Of course, we might want to inquire whether this decision really stems from popular pent-up feelings of religious resentment or is rather a brutal bit of political muscle-flexing by the Taliban leadership. They don’t put such things to a vote over there, so it’s unclear at least. But I think we can take the protests and entreaties of other Muslims (not under Taliban control) as evidence that this isn’t purely a religious decision.
I haven’t given the whole Afghanistan story that much thought–too busy fulminating about local stuff, I guess–but it does seem likely to raise potentially interesting issues about who should have custody of historical artistic/religious artifacts. There are some lovely old Asian Buddha statues in the University of Pennsylvania’s museum, for example: Has anyone suggested they be moved back to their original homes or put under the care of a specifically Buddhist organization? Should they?
Andy
