Report: Japan Offered to Move Giant Buddha Statues out of Afghanistan, but Taliban Asked Japan to Convert to Islam Instead...

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Belligerent then, belligerent now....

WASHINGTON -- Japan offered to hide Afghanistan's Bamiyan Buddha statues to prevent the Taliban from destroying them, but the hardline regime instead suggested the Japanese convert to Islam, a new memoir says.

Abdul Salam Zaeef, who was Taliban-ruled Afghanistan's most public face as ambassador to Pakistan, wrote that Japan was the most active country in pressing the regime not to demolish the 1,500-year-old statues in 2001.

He said that an official delegation from Japan, along with a Buddhist group from Sri Lanka, offered to remove the statues piece by piece and reassemble them abroad.

"Another suggestion they had was that they cover the statues from head to toe in a way that no one would recognize they had ever been there, while preserving them underneath,"Zaeef wrote in "My Life With The Taliban," just published in the United States.

He said that the Japanese told the Afghans that they were forefathers of their religion and should preserve its heritage, but Zaeef said Afghans considered Buddhism "a void religion."

"Since they saw us as their forefathers and had followed us before, why had they not followed our example when we found the true religion, I asked them," he wrote.

Defying the intense international appeals, the Taliban spent a month using first anti-aircraft guns and then dynamite to obliterate the Buddha statues, arguing that Islam forbade idolatry.

Zaeef said he believed that the destruction was within Islamic sharia law.But he wrote that the decision had "bad timing," as it worsened the Taliban's foreign relations.

ZIP

H/T:Spencer

Comments

[listingstarboard]

If Europe does not soon stem the tide of Islamic invasion we will see mass destruction of our treasured art.

[Diamond Girl]

...and now we know the rest of the story behind the scenes...the real story.

I remember this well.

Thank you so much for this info. here, it has been passed on.

[Elric66]

"But he wrote that the decision had "bad timing," as it worsened the Taliban's foreign relations."

So you kidnapped and killed foreigners as an olive branch?

[Pete(Detroit)]

Taliban::Spit

[attack]

i can remember a video of the taliban shooting into the buddha statues with an old soviet tank. just parked there blasting away at the giant figures. at the time was struck by how similar it looked to images from a japanese godzilla movie.

kept hoping the statues would come to life, start breathing fire and stomping on the taliban goons.

[myrtle]

This is why you don't give military weapons from the 21st century to people living in the 7th century.

[ImNoDhimmi]

"If Europe does not soon stem the tide of Islamic invasion we will see mass destruction of our treasured art."
Posted by: listingstarboard

Exactly. Does anyone actually believe the Louvre, the Tate Gallery, the British Museum, the Uffizi Gallery,or any other museum in Europe is safe?

[Pete(Detroit)]

Myrtle - +1

[greggg57]

Myrtle-+2