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"All We Are Breaking Are Stones"
KABUL, Feb 27 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A day after ordering the destruction of ancient Buddhist statues, the Taliban militia chief in Afghanistan Tuesday shrugged off international condemnation, saying "all we are breaking are stones."
Mulla Mohammad Omar told the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) that he had issued his order to destroy all statues in Afghanistan, including those from its rich pre-Islamic past, in line with "Islamic" beliefs.
"According to Islam, I don't worry about anything. My job is the implementation of Islamic order," he said from the militia's stronghold in southern Kandahar.
"The breaking of statues is an Islamic order and I have given this decision in the light of a fatwa of the ulema [clerics] and the supreme court of Afghanistan. Islamic law is the only law acceptable to me."
The edict by the Islamic militia has drawn protests from historical, cultural and religious groups around the world, the BBC says.
The order, announced late Monday on official Taliban radio, was met with shock from Tokyo to Paris, where UNESCO demanded the Taliban "halt the destruction of [Afghanistan's] cultural heritage."
Radio Shariat said the ministry of information and culture and the religious police would carry out the destruction.
"Only Allah, the Almighty, deserves to be worshipped, not anyone or anything else," Mulla Omar's decree said.
Afghanistan, a Buddhist center before Islam came to the area 1,400 years ago, is famous for its two massive and ancient Buddha statues in the central province of Bamiyan, dating back to the second century.
"It is a great loss, a tragedy for the Afghan people and for the world," said Angelo Gabriele de Ceglie, Italy's ambassador to Pakistan and a representative of the Society for the Preservation of Afghan Culture and Heritage, reports the Washington Post.
The cultural preservation society, a largely Italian-funded organization, is worried the country's sense of heritage is suffering from 20 years of relentless war, the Post adds.
Carved into sandstone cliffs and standing 50 meters (165 feet) and 34.5 meters tall, they are among the tallest standing Buddhas in the world.
In Tokyo, Hokkaido University's professor emeritus of Buddhism Kotatsu Fujita said: "I cannot believe the Taliban will destroy the big Buddhas."
"Even though the statues are in Afghanistan, they are really world heritage sites now. I strongly doubt the Taliban's understandings of cultural heritage."
All Japan Buddhist Association secretary general Kijo Nishimura said the destruction "must be avoided as much as possible under any circumstances."
"Once you destroy something, you can never get it back. We have an important responsibility to leave these statues to our descendants," he said.
Other appeals not to destroy the ancient relics have come from United Nation's General Secretary, Kofi Annan and the United States.
In a statement through his spokesman, Annan noted that the U.N. General Assembly "has repeatedly called on all Afghan parties to protect the cultural and historic relics and monuments of Afghanistan, which are part of the common heritage of mankind."
Spokesman Fred Eckhard said "the secretary general has learned with alarm of the edict issued yesterday by the Taliban supreme leader."
Annan appealed to the Taliban leadership "to abide by their previous commitments to protect Afghanistan's cultural heritage in general, and the two great Buddhist sculptures in Bamiyan in particular."
Afghanistan's former director of archaeology, now teaching in France, said he was "devastated" by the decree, which he branded a "global cultural catastrophe."
"We must urgently alert world public opinion to this unacceptable decision," Zemar Tarzi, who ran Afghanistan's archaeological center between 1972 and 1979, said in Paris.
In response to the international criticism, Omar said Afghan history was secondary to the history of Islam.
"Whoever thinks this is harmful to the history of Afghanistan then I tell them they must first see the history if Islam," Omar told the Pakistan-based AIP.
"Some people believe in these statues and pray to them ... If people say these are not our beliefs but only part of the history of Afghanistan, then all we are breaking are stones."
In deeply Buddhist Thailand, foreign ministry spokesman Pradap Pibulsonggram said the loss of the Bamiyan Buddhas would be a "loss to humanity."
"It is their loss. I hope they could rethink their decision. It's a loss to humanity," Pradap said.
The decree was issued as a team of western diplomats visited the Afghan capital, Kabul, to confirm whether the Taliban had recently vandalized ancient statues in the national museum.
Along with the diplomats, a team of Pakistan-based Society for the Preservation of Afghanistan's Cultural Heritage (SPACH) also met with senior Taliban officials but the regime denied access to Kabul museum.
"Mulla Omar's latest instructions to destroy pre-Islamic statues in Afghanistan is unacceptable and must be reversed immediately," SPACH said.
"Any willful damage and destruction must be prevented at all cost," the SPACH team said on its return from Kabul.
A spokesman for opposition commander Ahmad Shah Masood "strongly condemned" the decree.
"It is a clear message for those who believe the Taliban can be changed through positive engagement," he said.
The Taliban, or movement of religious students, seized Kabul in 1996 and have imposed a mix of Pashtun tribal and Sharia' law in a bid to create their idea of a true Muslim state.
Their regime is recognized only by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and is not represented at the United Nations or the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
The Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, on Tuesday told MSNBC, ''we don't care why they weren't destroyed in the past, but we have a government now in Afghanistan that is religious and we want to stop all things that are against Islam."
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