by Raymond Ibrahim
FrontPage Magazine
July 10, 2012
According to several reports in the Arabic media, prominent Muslim clerics have begun to call for the demolition of Egypt's Great Pyramids—or, in the words of Saudi Sheikh Ali bin Said al-Rabi'i, those "symbols of paganism," which Egypt's Salafi party has long planned to cover with wax. Most recently, Bahrain's "Sheikh of Sunni Sheikhs" and President of National Unity, Abd al-Latif al-Mahmoud, called on Egypt's new president, Muhammad Morsi, to "destroy the Pyramids and accomplish what Amr bin al-As could not."
This is a reference to the Muslim Prophet Muhammad's companion, Amr bin al-As and his Arabian tribesmen, who invaded and conquered Egypt circa 641. Under al-As and subsequent Muslim rule, many Egyptian antiquities were destroyed as relics of infidelity. While most Western academics argue otherwise, according to early Muslim writers, the great Library of Alexandria itself—deemed a repository of pagan knowledge contradicting the Koran—was destroyed under bin al-As's reign and in compliance with Caliph Omar's command.
However, while book-burning was a simple process in the 7th century, destroying the mountain-like pyramids and their guardian Sphinx was not—even though many early Muslim leaders certainly tried; by the time gunfire was invented, Egypt's Medieval Mamluk rulers even managed to "de-nose" the Sphinx during target practice (though popular legend naturally attributes it to a Westerner, Napoleon).
Now, however, as Bahrain's "Sheikh of Sheikhs" observes, and thanks to modern technology, the pyramids can be destroyed. The only question left is whether Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood president is "pious" enough—if he is willing to complete the Islamization process that started under the hands of Egypt's first Islamic conqueror.
Nor is such a course of action implausible. History is laden with examples of Muslims destroying their own pre-Islamic heritage—starting with Muhammad himself, who ransacked Arabia's Ka'ba temple, transforming it into a mosque.
Read more at RAYMONDIBRAHIM.COM ...
From TRP: Don't think for a moment that the destruction of the pyramids is far-fetched. With the Muslim Brotherhood in charge of Egypt now, it's a very real possibility. Islamists in Mali recently destroyed ancient tombs at a Timbuktu mosque. And who could forget the destruction of the ancient Bamiyan Buddha statues that the Taliban destroyed in 2001?
Below is a video which shows the carved-0ut hollows (near the end of the video) which housed the ancient Hindu statues destroyed by the Taliban in Afghanistan. The sequence of footage was shot from a helicopter during Operation Enduring Freedom around 2003 - 2004.
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