After successful rescue, 3rd C Buddhist figures destroyed at police station.

The heaviest statue was of the Bodhisattva (left). Other artefacts included Jatka and sculptures of Hariti. PHOTO: ATHAR KHAN/EXPRESS.

After successful rescue, 3rd C Buddhist figures destroyed at police station.(TE). Karachi .Amid the sweating and heaving, labourers offloading smuggled boxes from a seized container argued whether their contents were Hindu or Buddhist, ignoring that they were smashing the treasures in the process. The work, which began at about 8am turned the Awami Colony police station into a mangled museum of Gandhara art of over 30 pieces. “We’ll open a museum right here,” joked one of the police officers. “Here, you want to take one home?” Their value in Japan, according to one estimate, could be more than $10 million. The truck carrying the sculptures was seized by the police at Bilal Chowrangi in Korangi. Its other contents included water coolers, slippers, straw and broom sticks. “We got a tipoff from the intelligence agencies and seized the truck,” beamed SHO Javed Brohi. The artefacts, sculptures, tablets, and figures were destined for Sialkot. The driver, Zafar Ali, was arrested but all he could tell the police was that the vehicle was loaded from his employer Asif Butt’s warehouse in Ibrahim Haidery. According to Qasim Ali Qasim, the director of the archaeology and museums department, the Buddhist sculptures were known as Gandhara art and were found in Taxila, Peshawar and Swat in Pakistan and even parts of Afghanistan. He estimated that they date to the third century and are mostly of mediating goddesses and gods. One of the heaviest ones was a 1,000 kg Bodhisattva, a mustached sculpture, adorned with a crown and ornaments. In Buddhism, a Bodhisattva is an enlightened and wise being who invites others towards Buddhism. Pointing to a tablet with dancing goddesses engraved on it, Qasim explained that it was an important artefact known as Jataka. “This piece tells the story of Gautama Buddha’s birth,” he said. “Though images, it shows how Queen Maya gave birth to him and shows others dancing and pouring water in joy.” Another prominent sculpture was Hariti, a mother goddess with one child in her arms and the other standing next to her. “This goddess was a demon and used to eat children, but after meeting Buddha, she became a mother goddess.” Qasim doubted that the artefacts were stolen from a museum or their reserves, and said they were most likely illegally dug up from Swat during the presence of the Taliban in the valley. This would have been a violation of the Antiquities Act of 1975, he added, saying that you needed a licence to be in possession of such items.Read the full story here.

Islam vs. History

Islam vs. History.By Daniel Pipes

July 2, 2012
Cross-posted from National Review Online: The Corner.

The Islamist destruction underway in Timbuktu (including the tomb of Sidi Mahmoudou, d. 955, and the doors of the Sidi Yahya Mosque, ca. 1400) raises a question: What is it about Islam that so often turns its adherents against their own patrimony? Consider some examples:

• The doors of the Sidi Yahya Mosque, built ca. 1400, which were only to open at the end of time, smashed apart today by Islamists.

  The destruction of Hindu temples in medieval India.
• The Mamluks using the Great Sphinx of Egypt as target practice and the Great Pyramid as a quarry.
• The Turkish destruction of churches in northern Cyprus since 1974.
• The Saudi destruction of antiquities in Mecca since the 1990s,
• The Palestinian sacking of the Tomb of Joseph in 2000.
• The Taliban destruction of the Bamiyan Buddha in 2001.
• Al-Qaeda's bombing of Ghriba synagogue in Tunisia in 2002,
• The pillaging of Iraqi museums, libraries, and archives in 2003.
• The destruction of an historic Malaysian Hindu temple in 2006.
• The destruction of L'Institut d'Égypte in 2011.

In addition, some intentions to destroy antiquities (Khomeini contemplated razing Persepolis, a grand mufti of Egypt banned exhibiting statues) might yet be realized. (On the other hand, the story about Muslims burning the ancient Library of Alexandria appears apocryphal.)
Although these examples include both non-Muslim and Muslim artifacts, motives differ in the two cases: eliminating infidel remnants establishes the superiority of Islam, while eliminating Muslim ones establishes the superiority of Islamism. In both cases, the motive is foul and the results are, historically speaking, tragic. (July 2, 2012)

Islamists in the process of destroying a centuries-old Timbuktu shrine.

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Islamists destroy Timbuktu treasures listed as UNESCO World Heritage site.

Islamists destroy Timbuktu treasures listed as UNESCO World Heritage site.(AA).Hardline Islamists occupying northern Mali went on the rampage in Timbuktu on Saturday, destroying ancient tombs of Muslim saints and threatening to wipe out every religious shrine in the fabled city. The onslaught by armed militants from the fundamentalist Ansar Dine group was launched just two days after UNESCO named the city an endangered world heritage site because of the unrest in the vast desert north of Mali. “They have raped Timbuktu today. 
It is a crime,” said a source close to a local imam in the town known as the “City of 333 Saints”. Witnesses said the Islamists had destroyed the ancient tomb of one revered Muslim figure after encircling a cemetery in the north of the Timbuktu, and were on the attack against another in the east. “This is tragic news for us all,” Alissandra Cummins, chair of UNESCO’s executive committee, said in a statement to AFP in Russia, where the body is meeting this week, describing the attacks as “wanton damage”. “I appeal to all those engaged in the conflict in Timbuktu to exercise their responsibility.”
Ansar Dine, one of the hardline Islamist groups which seized control of the vast desert north of Mali in the chaotic aftermath of a March coup in Bamako, 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 to put the World Heritage site, a cradle of Islamic learning founded in the fifth century, on its endangered list on Thursday “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.”
Area residents said armed men from the Islamist group Ansar Dine threatened locals going to worship at the Sufi saint’s grave. "What you are doing is haram! (forbidden). Seek help from God directly rather than the dead," one of the gunmen said, according to a resident.
Witnesses in Timbuktu said the gangs had destroyed the mausoleum of a saint whose 15th century tomb was already desecrated in May by members of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb, another of the groups in control in the north. “As I am speaking to you, Islamists from Ansar Dine have destroyed the mausoleum of saint Sidi Mahmoud,” one witness told AFP. “They are now in the process of destroying the mausoleum (of Sidi Moctar),” added a local journalist. “They have said they will destroy everything.”
UNESCO said its decision to place both the town and the nearby Tomb of Askia in Gao on its List of World Heritage in Danger “aims to raise cooperation and support for the sites threatened by the armed conflict in the region.” UNESCO, the world’s main watchdog over the safety of some of history’s greatest treasures and most threatened cultural exhibits, first designated Timbuktu a heritage site in 1988. As well as three historic mosques, Timbuktu has 16 cemeteries and mausolea, according to the UNESCO website. It is also home to 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.Hmmmm........Reminds me the 'Haram' "Buddhas of Bamiyan" you think they will blow this also to kingdom come?Read the full story here.