Wanna visit the Great Pyramids? The Sphinx ?

POSTED BY: AURaptor
UPDATED: Monday, August 10, 2026 15:33
VIEWED: 4700
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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
Wow Niki, you got to actually see the Giant Buddha. How amazing. I have a friend who travelled there in thr 70's and showed me photos recently. Like you, she was devestated when they were destroyed.

It's nothing new. Religious fanatics despise all over religions and it has been rife through history and it wouldn't be the first time in Epyptian history. The Pharoah Akhenaten had his face removed from all iconography depicting him because of religious reasons. The practise, known as iconoclasm, has a long and illustrious history and is not limited to one religion. From wiki

* In Judaism, King Hezekiah purged Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem and the Land of Israel of figures, including the Nehushtan, as recorded in the Second Book of Kings. His reforms were reversed in the reign of his son Manasseh.
* A Midrash included in Genesis Rabba attributes a major act of iconoclasm to Abraham. This is not attested in the Biblical account of the Partriarch's life, but is an important aspect of Abraham's character in later Jewish tradition.
* The Roman Empire's polytheist state religion's images were destroyed during the process of Christianisation.
* In the world of Islam, there have been various periods of iconoclasm against images of other religions (e.g., Christianity, Buddhism,[2] etc.) and those produced within Islam.
* Byzantine iconoclasm in the Eastern Orthodox Church, of its own religious imagery.
* The Beeldenstorm in Europe during the Protestant Reformation and the religious conflicts following, with Protestants destroying traditional (by then considered Catholic imagery) or sometimes Protestant imagery.
* Most of the moai of Easter Island were toppled during the 18th century in the iconoclasm of civil wars.
* During the French Revolution, people widely destroyed religious and monarchical imagery.
* During and after the Russian Revolution, there was widespread destruction of religious and secular imagery.
* During and after the Communist overthrow of the Chinese monarchy, as well as during the later Cultural Revolution, there was widespread destruction of religious and secular imagery in China, including in Tibet.
* In the Roman Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council, much of its traditional imagery, art, and architecture was discarded.[citation needed]
* Statues of Stalin, from as early as 1956 in Budapest, continuing sporadically through the fall of Communism and into the present day.[3]
* Statues of Lenin and Felix Dzerzhinsky in formerly-communist Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
* The Taliban's destruction of two ancient statues of Buddha at Bamyan in Afghanistan.

These of course dont account for the destruction caused by simple plundering of religious and cultural icons, and it is worth noting that we don't seem to mind a bit of tomb raiding if there is treasure to be had, and I include peeps such as Howard Carter and the Earl of Elgin.

So the practise sucks, but its not new and its not an especially Muslim feature.

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Not to mention religious zealots destroying controversial artworks merely because they are offended by such material.

Only an idiot would try to claim that there's only ONE religion doing such things.

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservatives." - John Stuart Mill

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Originally posted by Kwicko:


Not to mention religious zealots destroying controversial artworks merely because they are offended by such material.

Only an idiot would try to claim that there's only ONE religion doing such things.

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In our life time ? Only 1 religion has done that.

Only an idiot would deny that fact.


" I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend. "

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Riona, good old Ghengis was about as nasty as they come, and so were his progeny. There's a hill called the "Screaming City" (Shahr-E-Gholgola) on the way to Bamiyan where he slaughtered living thing in the city,


...and of course the "Red City" (Shahr-i-Zahak) only 11 miles from Bamiyan. It IS red because of the clay, but got the name for blood. Eight hundred feet above the entrance to the Bamiyan Valley, once home to 3,000 people and the primary defense for the valley during 12th and 13th centuries. It's a thousand feet up, and they had to carry food, water, and fuel up those cliffs every day! In 1221 it was attack by the grandson of Genghis Kahn. The fort held and the grandson was killed. In revenge Genghis Khan himself attacked the valley and destroyed everything including the irrigation systems. The Red City was never rebuilt. What's left of it still stands only because of the dryness of the desert around it.




It wasn't a "gentle" area, nor is it now, obviously. Whatever else can be said of current times, they are nothing compared to those days. There are atrocities still being committed in areas of the world, but nothing on the scale Ghengis, Tamur-the-Lame (Tamerlane, or Timur) or any number of those guys did throughout the Middle East.

On the other hand, the current Governor of Bamiyan, Habiba Sarabi (Afghanistan's first and only female governor) is very forward thinking; she's working to make Bamiyan a tourist attraction again, and they SAY it is one of, if not THE, safest place in Afghanistan now.


Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off

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Originally posted by AURaptor:

Quote:

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Originally posted by Kwicko:


Not to mention religious zealots destroying controversial artworks merely because they are offended by such material.

Only an idiot would try to claim that there's only ONE religion doing such things.

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In our life time ? Only 1 religion has done that.

Only an idiot would deny that fact.


" I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend. "

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"In our life time ?"

Were you born yesterday, then?

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Civitas, a lobby group that says it aims to re-Christianize France, launched an online petition and mobilised other fundamentalist groups. The staunchly conservative archbishop of Vaucluse, Jean-Pierre Cattenoz, called Piss Christ "odious" and said he wanted this "trash" taken off the gallery walls. Last week the gallery complained of "extremist harassment" by fundamentalist Christian groups who wanted the work banned in France.

Lambert, one of France's best known art dealers, complained he was being "persecuted" by extremists who had sent him tens of thousands of complaint emails and bombarded the museum with spam. He likened the atmosphere to "a return to the middle ages".

On Saturday, around 1,000 Christian protesters marched through Avignon to the gallery. The protest group included a regional councillor for the extreme-right Front National, which recently scored well in the Vaucluse area in local elections. The gallery immediately stepped up security, putting plexiglass in front of the photograph and assigning two gallery guards to stand in front of it.

But on Palm Sunday morning, four people in sunglasses aged between 18 and 25 entered the exhibition just after it opened at 11am. One took a hammer out of his sock and threatened the guards with it. A guard grabbed another man around the waist but within seconds the group managed to take a hammer to the plexiglass screen and slash the photograph with another sharp object, thought to be a screwdriver or ice-pick. They also smashed another work, which showed the hands of a meditating nun.

The gallery director, Eric Mézil, said it would reopen with the destroyed works on show "so people can see what barbarians can do". He said there had been a kind of "inquisition" against the art work.

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http://atheism.about.com/b/2011/04/30/barbaric-christians-destroy-art-
in-avignon.htm

Seems barbarians come in every religion. Even Christianity.

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservatives." - John Stuart Mill

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Mmmmm, does appear fundamentalism isn't relegated to Muslims, doesn't it?

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Usually it's extremist Muslims who make the news for violence against infidels who dare insult their religion, but we shouldn't imagine that Christians aren't equally capable of violence themselves. In Avignon, France, some Catholic extremists used hammers to destroy art that offended them because it was "blasphemous." Apparently, it's just not permissible for anyone, anywhere, to publicly display anything that any Catholics regard as blasphemous. Who knew?

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The gallery director, Eric Mézil, said it would reopen with the destroyed works on show "so people can see what barbarians can do". He said there had been a kind of "inquisition" against the art work.

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Three cheers for Eric Mézil -- both for the fact that he refuses to be intimated by these Christian thugs and for the fact that he will display the fruit of their religious extremism. A lesser man might have removed the artwork earlier or might have hidden it away after it was attacked; Mézil, however, insists on displaying to all the world what happens when religious extremists are allowed to have their way.

And why did these Christians suddenly start acting violently? Catholic leaders themselves have given tacit approval to the violence. Alan Escada, secretary general of "Civitas," has refused to condemn the act. He says he doesn't "support" it either, but when you refuse to condemn acts of violence you are implicitly saying that violence is acceptable.

Political leaders have also done things that would seem to encourage religious violence on the part of Christians. The anti-art movement in France started after President Nicolas Sarkozy's ruling UMP party held a "debate" on religious and secularism in France. Sarkozy has also increased his use of divisive, anti-Muslim rhetoric as the next presidential elections approach.

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Asked by the daily Libération why the Piss Christ protest had happened now, Mézil pointed to Sarkozy's speech in March lauding "the Christian heritage of France" at Puy-en-Velay, where the first Crusades were preached.

He said: "Clearly we saw in Saturday's demonstration that a Catholic fringe wanted to take the president at his word, with extremely violent appeals." He said there was a climate of tension, with protesters insulting museum staff of north African origin. One guard said he heard: "I'm going to pour donkey piss on the Qur'an." An email to the museum talked about "plunging the diary of Anne Frank in urine".

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When religious believers use violence to get their way, they reveal that while they may have been preaching the value of civility, in reality all they have been seeking is the to replace civilization with their own brand of religious barbarism.

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Hear hear!

Apparently our own fundamentalists were "pissed" about the photo long ago, too:

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The violent slashing of the picture, and another Serrano photograph of a meditating nun, has plunged secular France into soul-searching about Christian fundamentalism and Nicolas Sarkozy's use of religious populism in his bid for re-election next year.

It also marks a return to an old standoff between Serrano and the religious right that dates back more than 20 years, to Reagan-era Republicanism in the US.

In 1989, rightwing Christian senators' criticism of Piss Christ led to a heated US debate on public arts funding. Republican Jesse Helms told the senate Serrano was "not an artist. He's a jerk."

Serrano defended his photograph as a criticism of the "billion-dollar Christ-for-profit industry" and a "condemnation of those who abuse th

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