A world apart

If we believe the world is one small village the Taliban have proved us wrong, writes Amira Howeidy
Only Prophet Mohamed, it seems, could have succeeded in convincing the Taliban movement, which controls 90 per cent of Afghanistan, not to demolish pre-Islamic Buddha statues in their country.
Two weeks of unprecedented international mobilisation to save the statues reached a peak last Sunday when a delegation from the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) flew to Kandahar, Taliban's political capital, to convince Afghani Muslim scholars to spare the monuments. They arrived only to be told that the two giant Buddhas in Bamiyan had already been demolished.
The delegation consisted, among others, of the Qatari State Minister for Foreign Affairs, Egypt's Mufti Farid Wassel as personal envoy of President Hosni Mubarak, highly respected Egyptian Muslim scholar Youssef El-Qaradawi, Mohamed Al-Rawi, a prominent scholar at Al-Azhar, Fahmy Howeidy, a prominent columnist specialising in Islamic affairs and Haythem Al-Khayat, adviser to the World Health Organisation's chairman. Their initiative followed a UNESCO appeal to the OIC as well as to President Mubarak last week. According to a source in the delegation, contacts with Taliban's Emir, the Mullah Mohamed Omar, prior to their departure to Afghanistan, indicated willingness on his side to accept "another view" as long as it was supported by Islamic Sharia.
This "other" view was clearly expressed in a private letter which El-Qaradawi sent to Mullah Omar on 8 March. The letter, obtained exclusively by Al-Ahram Weekly, sounds a strongly-worded argument against the religious edict issued by Afghani Muslim scholars last February to destroy all statues in the country. El-Qaradawi went as far as describing this as "a clear violation" of Sharia, as Prophet Muhammad said that Muslims should follow his teachings and those of the sahaba (who became the rightly-guided Caliphs). El-Qaradawi argued that the Caliphs had agreed at the time of the Islamic conquest not to cause any damage to pre-Islamic monuments. "This is the Sunna [the way of Prophet Mohamed] followed by the rightly- guided Caliphs and it is a matter of consensus," he said.
"Mullah Omar was ready to accept this argument but the problem was with Afghani scholars," Howeidy told the Weekly hours after the delegation returned to Qatar from Kandahar. The delegation, he said, met with 30 Afghani Muslim scholars over two long sessions on Sunday and Monday. The first session focused on the general situation in Afghanistan, including education, the status of women and the civil war, while the second attempted to refute the religious basis of the edict to destroy statues the Taliban refer to as asnam (idols worshipped in the pre-Islamic era).
Howeidy dismissed as inaccurate reports that the Taliban insulted the delegation by telling them they should have headed to India where Islamic monuments are being destroyed, or else to Palestine, site of Israeli aggression against Palestinians and sacred Muslim monuments. "Those statements were made by the Taliban Minister of Information to reporters in Kabul. The delegation was met in Kandahar with respect," Howeidy said.
Yet, despite the religious and political weight of the delegation, it failed in its mission. "They were simply being extremely stubborn, no matter what was said to them. And as we spoke, they received two fatwas from unknown Saudi clerics supporting the edict." Howeidy explained, "they were angry with the international community which they feel has turned its back on them. They are bitter because, although they control 90 per cent of Afghanistan, the world does not recognise them while it recognises warring factions that control the remaining 10 per cent. The timing of the demolition of the statues coincided with what they believe is a campaign to suffocate and strangle them."
Does that mean the destruction of the statues was a political manoeuvre to draw attention to their situation?
"They didn't say so in so many words," responded Howeidy, "but it is my interpretation that the destruction of the Buddhas was somehow politically motivated."
To many, including Sheikh El-Qaradawi himself, the Taliban might have drawn the desired attention, but they also won new enemies beyond the West-Asia region. Says Howeidy: "The Taliban are too narrow-minded to understand the consequences of their actions." But according to him, the Taliban assured the delegation that they "destroyed statues that constitute one per cent of the 40,000 ancient monuments in Afghanistan. The rest will remain untouched because they are not viewed as idolatrous."
The Taliban appear to have succeeded in drawing the world's attention to Afghanistan. On Monday the UN World Food Programme launched an appeal for a $76 million emergency operation to save people in Afghanistan from starvation caused by a cycle of drought and civil war. Qatar went further on Tuesday by donating $50 million to the Taliban. And almost every press report covering the saga mentioned in one form or the other the miserable state of the Afghani people. "Ninety-five percent of Afghanistan does not have electricity; it hasn't rained for four years; hundreds of thousands of farmers have emigrated in search of better living conditions. It's no exaggeration if one described the country as a wasteland. They are a world apart," said Howeidy.
Recommend this page
Related stories:
The campaign continues
Ozymandias in flames
Man against stone 8 - 14 March 2001
The will of the people? 5 - 11 November 1998
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
Send a letter to the Editor