Afghanistan's Taliban--no poster child for public relations--recently took two steps deeper into the global abyss of backwardness. Late last February the fundamentalist Muslim regime declared that it intended to destroy all Afghan art that dated before the birth of Islam, including Buddhist art objects considered among the world's most valuable. Then, in May, the government demanded that its Hindu and Sikh citizens wear identity labels on their clothes, a move that recalled World War II Germany's practice of forcing Jews to wear yellow Stars of David.

While the Taliban's recent actions shocked the world, the loud chorus of objections came as no surprise. A regime previously known for its human rights abuses and harboring Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden could now add cultural demolition and behavior-befitting-Nazis to the growing list of international complaints.

In the last decade, Islamic fundamentalism has filled a void in the Western imagination, becoming what the "Evil Empire" of the Soviet Union once was: a convenient foil for liberal democracy, and an indispensable enemy for the United States and Europe. The recent news reports have played this conflict up, telling steadily more horrific stories of the Taliban's aberrant behavior. But this viewpoint has gone too far. While there is much to be condemned among the Taliban's actions, a closer look at the events surrounding the destruction of Bamiyan's famed Buddhas shows that some of the moral outrage brought against the regime has been unwarranted, even hypocritical.

For observers, the Afghan art crisis had the feel of a bandage slowly being peeled off--instead of one uncomfortable tug there was the peculiar benefit of being able to feel every painful jerk and tear. It began with a February 26 decree from the Taliban's leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, stating that the government intended to destroy its collection of idolatrous artwork, including two Buddha statues in Bamiyan, central Afghanistan--the two tallest standing Buddhas in the world. It lingered while the "Afghan government assembled explosives," and concluded at the end of March as grainy photographs trickled over the news wires confirming the demolition.

During the weeks of uncertainty, the press kept the international community abreast of numerous attempts to save the Buddhas. We learned that the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) sent a special envoy to Kabul. Soon after there were reports of a delegation of fifteen ulemas who publicly disputed the Taliban's interpretation of Islamic law. The Taliban, we were told, were not "authentic" Muslims. Finally, we read of New York Metropolitan Museum of Art's offer to buy and transport the threatened artifacts to, of course, New York.

Art historians, Islamic clerics, preservationists, curators, journalists, and diplomats--rallying behind a belief that the soul of a nation is its heritage--all came to the Buddhas' defense. "The loss of the Afghan statues, and of the Buddhas of Bimayan in particular," warned UNESCO's Director-General Kochiro Matsuura, "would be a loss for humanity as a whole."

Taliban, O brave monster

Whose heritage?

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