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India-Pakistan
Zakir Naik Supports Taliban's Decision To Destroy Buddha Statues, Calls Buddhists 'Drug Addicts'!
2016-07-19
[INDIATIMES] At a Chennai event in 2002, controversial Islamic preacher Zakir Naik was asked a question by about the Taliban's fatwa to destroy Bamiyan Buddhas after they termed the status "un-Islamic".

The Taliban dynamited and destroyed these iconic 6th century statues in March 2001 as part of a campaign to remove all non-Islamic art from Afghanistan.

Zakir Naik began his explanation by stating that this act by the Taliban was "educating the Buddhists". Claiming to have read Buddhist scriptures, Naik said that Buddha had never asked for statues of himself.

Naik did admit that this act, of the Taliban did cause grief among million of Buddhists around the world.

However, it was what he said next that was disturbing - he compared statues, a manifestation of Buddhist faith to expensive drugs.
How many Muslims in Afghanistan and beyond use opium? How many in the Horn of Africa chew khat? How many in the Arab world do pills for fun and profit? Like so many forms of Muslim jihad, the majority of victims are other Muslims. Statues are a good deal less harmful.
"For millions of human beings in the world, drug is god for them". He also called Afghanistan, and its Buddhist statues the "property" of the Taliban. "Who are we to object?"
How fortunate that they -- and Afghanistan -- were only briefly Taliban-owned, though really the preacher is talking of the higher ownership that means all unbelievers merely hold their property as a trust for the next Muslim walking by to stretch out his hand and take.
The statues were among the most famous cultural landmarks of the region, and the site was listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site along with the surrounding cultural landscape and archaeological remains of the Bamiyan Valley.

Well, it might upset Naik to know that 15 years after Taliban dynamited the world-famous Buddhas of Bamiyan, the giant statues were resurrected with 3D light projection technology in the empty cavities where they once stood in Afghanistan!
*snicker*
Japan and Switzerland, among others, have pledged support for the rebuilding of the statues. Both Standing Buddhas - 115 ft and 174 ft tall - were carved out of sandstone cliffs and stood at one point painted and gilded. They managed to survive for more than 1500 years, before the Taliban's 1996-2001 reign, in which they committed this act of "cultural terrorism".
Posted by:Fred

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