Sphinx Jinxed? Islamists – A Menace to ‘The Glory That Was Egypt?’
I was just about to post this when I spotted a highly relevant article in Frontpage Magazine, by Robert Ibrahim. Seems that top Islamist clerics in the Middle East have actually taken up the call for Egypt’s heritage to be despoiled, as I all unknowingly suggested might happen.
I’ll provide the link at the end of this post.
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Al-Qaeda linked Islamists destroy Timbuktu shrines
AFP 30/6
Al-Qaeda linked Islamists in northern Mali went on the rampage in Timbuktu Saturday, destroying ancient tombs of Muslim saints just after UNESCO listed the fabled city as an endangered world heritage site...“They have raped Timbuktu today. It is a crime,” said a source close to a local imam in Timbuktu, known as the “City of 333 Saints”.
As a sometime amateur archaeologist, my heart goes out to the people of any creed who see their heritage thus ravaged. But it’s a fact of life that if such Islamists get into the driving seat, they behave like the rabid wreckers they are.
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King Tut – At Risk?
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My headlime today is not really meant to be taken seriously, not yet, at any rate, but the Glory That Was Egypt is unequivocally pagan, so those Salafists breathing down the new Muslim Brotherhood President’s neck must harbour malevolent intent towards such wonders as the Sphinx, the Pyramids, Tut-Ankh-Amen’s Tomb and all the other magnificent aspects of Egypt’s heritage that draw thousands there every year.
- I have visited Egypt and admired all those superb antiquities, I hope and pray the Egyptian people would rise up to stop any such monstrous plan.
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Bamyan, Afghanistan
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It’s a global threat, though.
The worst example ever, or at least the most infamous, was the destruction of those giant statues in Afghanistan.
But we have had the same manic hatred on display here in Indonesia.
Semar, the legendary guardian of Java, and all the figures portrayed in the Ramayana, that Indian epic which was enthusiastically adopted centuries ago by the peoples of this archipelago, are loathed by the savages of the FUI here.
Here’s an extract from our post on 18/9/2011
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Pos Kota today reports that an Islamist rabble in Purwakarta, Central Java, attacked and ‘destroyed three statues of Semar, Krishna and Bhima.’ These are three mythological characters prominent in Javanese culture, often starring in the popular wayang puppet shows. The ignorant scumbags ran amok as usual, the excuse being ‘to remove people from the threat of idolatry!’
Pos Kota said that ‘tensions had blanketed the Purwakarta Regency’ as hundreds of bigots followed motorbike and car convoys around the city.
‘Not unexpectedly, the mob rampaged and pulled down the statues at three locations, including a main roundabout, where Semar stood….
Semar
As is often regrettably the case, the journos were on the ball, but not the police, who didn’t manage to save those statues, but at least ‘thwarted the plan to destroy that of Arjuna,’ another Javanese hero.
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It is beyond reason. Nobody worships them anymore, but they are loved and held in high esteem in much the same way as King Arthur and his Knights are revered in English folklore. That alone makes them the targets of islamist hate-campaigns.
What bothers me as much or more is what might befall Borobudur and Prambanan, the two huge temple complexes near Jogjakarta.
Borobudur (above) and
Prambanan (below)
- The former was erected by Buddhists, the latter by Hindus, in the eras when those creeds held sway.
Suppose the pig-ignorant islamists actually came to hold full power in Indonesia?
==========Ansar Dine, one of the armed Islamist groups which has seized control in northern Mali, has said no site would be safe in Timbuktu. “Ansar Dine will today destroy every mausoleum in the city. All of them, without exception,” spokesman Sanda Ould Boumama told AFP through an interpreter from the city.
The Ansar Dine spokesman suggested Saturday’s action was in retaliation for the UNESCO decision on Thursday to put the World Heritage site, a cradle of Islamic learning founded in the fifth century, on its endangered list. “God is unique. All of this is haram (or forbidden in Islam). We are all Muslims. UNESCO is what?” he said, declaring that Ansar Dine — which wants to impose sharia law in the region — was acting “in the name of God.”
…..besides its monuments, the city houses nearly 100,000 ancient manuscripts, some dating back to the 12th century, preserved in family homes and private libraries under the care of religious scholars..
These swine are no different from the Taliban, or the barbarians in Purwakarta. They are like a plague of locusts. And how do we deal with the latter phenomenon?
Oh, yes, I forgot, Obama is seeking a deal with the Taliban. Perhaps he’ll also try to negotiate with the next plague of locusts that appears.
PS Here’s the link I promised, to Ibrahim’s article on Egypt!
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/raymond-ibrahim/muslim-brotherhood-destroy-the-pyramids/
Shiva, 
Chris Streatfield, 
themahdiblog 6:06 pm on July 10, 2012 Permalink |
Everyone relax. Let me remind you that it’s not like Egypt just became a Muslim country. It’s been that a very long time. The pyramids and the sphinx are still there. And by the way, it was the British soldiers that used the nose of the sphinx are a shooting target. what?
ross1948 6:49 pm on July 10, 2012 Permalink |
Egypt was indeed conquered and forcibly ‘converted’ over a thousand years ago, but since the Ottoman Era at least, fanatics like the MB have not been in power. Now they are.
The examples here in Indonesia of assault on the people’s heritage are not as significant as the Taliban’s monstrous cultural crimes, but do show that where Islamists get a chance to erase the non-Islamic past, they tend to take it.
I’d really like to believe Egypt’s heritage is safe, but Ibrahim’s article quotes from the mouths of very dangerous men.
And I think he refers to the vandalism of the Pyramids too.
themahdiblog 12:50 pm on July 11, 2012 Permalink |
The Pyramids and the Pharaohs are mentioned in the Quran Multiple times. You are right in saying that whoever wants to destroy the pyramids is an extremist. but he or she are not Muslim. Islam is about inner peace with yourself, not with others and not through Politics. those who seek Political Islam to influence others have lost the way.
ross1948 1:02 pm on July 11, 2012 Permalink |
Indeed, my friend, I know many sensible Muslims who share your thinking, but unlike you, they don’t voice their opinions against the bad guys like the FPI here in Indonesia and their counterparts elsewhere.
I rather think other readers may take issue with you, so I’ll await any more contributions on this topic.
Chris Streatfield 9:43 pm on July 11, 2012 Permalink |
It was not British but French soldiers from Napoleon’s invading army that used the Sphinx’s nose as target practice or so legend says i believe.
Shiva 12:38 pm on December 4, 2012 Permalink |
The Egyptian Arab historian al-Maqrīzī, writing in the 15th century AD, attributes the loss of the nose to iconoclasm by Muhammad Sa’im al-Dahr, a Sufi Muslim from the khanqah of Sa’id al-Su’ada. In AD 1378, upon finding the Egyptian peasants making offerings to the Sphinx in the hope of increasing their harvest, Sa’im al-Dahr was so outraged that he destroyed the nose, and was hanged for vandalism. Al-Maqrīzī describes the Sphinx as the “talisman of the Nile” on which the locals believed the flood cycle depended.