Why we must destroy the Sphinx and Pyramids!

Al Arabiya; I. Rony, Wisdom Quarterly

These objects of awe and wonder need to be returned to dust; it's God's will (whatafy.com)

   

Murgan Salem al-Gohary (DreamTV)

An Egyptian jihad leader, with self-professed links to the [CIA's] Taliban, called for the “destruction of the Sphinx and the Giza Pyramids in Egypt,” drawing ties between the Egyptian relics and Buddha statues [in Bamiyan, Afghanistan], local media reported this week.

Murgan Salem al-Gohary, an Islamist leader twice-sentenced under former President Hosni Mubarak for advocating violence, called on Muslims to remove such “idols.”

Well, after sleeping on it, let's keep them.

“All Muslims are charged with applying the teachings of Islam to remove such idols, as we did in Afghanistan when we destroyed the Buddha statues,” he said on Saturday during a television interview on an Egyptian private channel, widely watched by Egyptian and Arab audiences.

  

“God ordered Prophet Mohammed to destroy idols,” he added. “When I was with the Taliban we destroyed the statue of Buddha, something the government failed to do.”

His comments came a day after thousands of ultraconservative Islamists gathered in Tahrir Square to call for the strict application of Sharia law in the new constitution.

But in retaliation to Gohary’s remarks, the vice president of Tunisia’s Ennahda party, Sheikh Abdel Fattah Moro, called the live program and told Gohary that famous historic military commander Amr ibn al-Aas did not destroy statues when he conquered Egypt.

Giza pyramid and ancient chimera Sphinx with cavern entrance under its paw and watermarks revealing its actual antiquity, Egypt, northern Africa (iamxa/trekearth.com)

  
“So who are you to do it?” he wondered. “The Prophet destroyed the idols because people worshipped them, but the Sphinx and the Pyramids are not worshiped.”

Gohary, 50, is well-known in Egypt for his advocacy of violence, Egypt Independent reported.

“He was sentenced twice, one of the two sentences being life imprisonment. He subsequently fled Egypt to Afghanistan... In 2007, he traveled from Pakistan to Syria, which then handed him over to Egypt. After Mubarak's fall in early 2011, he was released from prison by a judicial ruling,” the newspaper added. More

Two forms of Jesus (Issa), the popular vs. the historical, the make-believe vs.
the unknown. The edited Bible is not the place to look. Read the Apocrypha.

 
Thou Shalt Obey or Else
Pat Macpherson, Seven, Wisdom Quarterly (COMMENTARY)

If it's God's will, who are we to argue? As Holy Book-obeying Christians and Muslims, we must follow leaders like Gohary into battle against these graven images and idols.

  

It's not The God's will, it's His command. (Kinda makes one wonder why He doesn't do it Himself, but who are we to question the almighty star-god?)

  

Monotheisms

And it's not just him. The CIA created the "Taliban" from released prisoners in Pakistan and elsewhere, bringing them to a foreign land that did not practice violent jihad or Wahhabi-ism. What happened to the Buddhas of Bamiyan, Afghanistan, some of the largest in the world, and more recently to Buddhist rock art in Pakistan, is not an aberration of erratic Muslims.

These are staged activities -- staged by the CIA and US military PsyOps -- to infuriate otherwise peaceful bystanders. Why, for what? So that we will turn the other way whatever is done to our Muslim brothers and sisters. When we listen to religious edicts, particularly those of the barbaric Near East, we engage in a history of violence, from religious crusades, to imperial raids, to hegemony, and attempts at world domination.

How? Fear. In fear we kill, less often out of greed, and least often out of hate -- but always, always, co-motivated by delusion.

Whether Mr. Gotary really wants to destroy Egyptian heritage, long the pride of mathematically-amazing Muslims, it is no reason to call for or condone wars and attacks.

  

If propaganda says kill, let live. If propaganda says be afraid, live. Live and let live.

Maybe the CIA or extremist Christians and pious Islamists will demolish all art, particularly those gorgeous Greek nudes. So? That's on them. Stopping the destruction of arts and antiquities never needs to come to violence. Protection is defensive not offensive. Religious extremism is all around us.

The Near East has better reason to fear Judeo-Christian attacks than the West need fear the Near or Middle East.

But we would never know that because the mainstream media and the propaganda arm of our military constantly beats the drum of fear and war until we are ready to sign off on any atrocity -- drones, extrajudicial killings, assassinations, invasions, oil theft, rape, pedophilia, slavery, radioactive poisoning (particularly from the use of "depleted" uranium which is anything but depleted), and secret war crimes and unspeakable crimes against humanity we are not generally made aware of such as purposely contaminating water supplies, bombing hospitals, and worse.

• Excavating the Sphinx's paw (thank you, Edgar Cayce)
• VIDEO: Israel's enemy within (paranoia?)

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Amazing Afghan Buddha discoveries (video)

Brent E. Huffman; Wisdom Quarterly via TheWorld.org

"The Buddhas of Aynak" (teaser) by archeologist and filmmaker Prof. Brent E. Huffman, Northwestern University.

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Mining threatens new Afghan Buddhas (audio)

David Leveille, TheWorld.org (Geo Quiz, Nov. 9, 2012); ZenPundit; Wisdom Quarterly

A gold-plated seated Buddha overlooks China's impending MCC mine (Brent E. Huffman/CNN).

  

CIA's Taliban demolishing Buddha (CNN/XTL)

For [The World's] "Geo Quiz" picture: a golden Buddha sitting atop a mountain of copper [gold, and rare earth minerals]. We’re looking for one of the largest underground copper deposits in the world. It’s in an eastern province of Afghanistan southeast of Kabul.

A Chinese company has purchased the right to mine the site. And cash-strapped Afghanistan stands to reap billions of dollars in revenue from the deal. But there’s a hitch.

(TheAbdaliBacha) Filmmaker Brent E. Huffman addresses the effort to save an ancient Buddhist archeological site from Chinese mining interests.

  

Bamiyan Buddha (culturalpropertylaw)

There’s an ancient Buddhist monastery [the oldest known and perhaps the most magnificent, situated near Siddhartha's birthplace, the actual Kapilavastu] there and the site is full of centuries old Buddha statues and artifacts.
  

Mining operations threaten all of them, and archaeologists are scrambling to save what they can. So which is more important? The copper representing Afghanistan’s economic potential -- or the Buddhas representing its cultural heritage?
  

For now just tackle this simpler question: Name the site where ancient Buddhas may soon be destroyed by a copper mine that’s set to start operations in December [2012]. Answer + Photos + Video

• Afghanistan's Vanishing Buddhas (Foreign Policy)
• Brent E. Huffman is a documentary filmmaker and assistant professor at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern Univ. He started making a film about the Mes Aynak site in the summer of 2011 thinking he would be documenting the site before it was demolished and recording the process of rescue archeology. Now he hopes he can use his film to raise awareness to actually save Mes Aynak. 

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Where was the Buddha really born?

Ranajit Pal, Ph.D. (ranajitpal.com)

Bamiyan, Afghanistan, was near Kapilavastu, birthplace of the Buddha (Afghan Treasures)

The fantastic recent find of about 10,000 ancient Buddhist fragments at Bamiyan [Afghanistan], part of which is now in the Schoyen Collection, shows that Buddhism was born here. 

  

The names Tiŝŝa, Siddhartha, and Suddho-dana, of the Persepolis Tablets prove conclusively that Gotama [Gautama Buddha] was from Seistan-Baluchistan. 

  

About the iconography of a beautiful schist stele from Mes Aynak, G. Fussman of the College de France writes that the prince shown sitting under foliage of [a] Pipal [tree] is Siddhartha before his enlightenment. 

  

Sistan-Baluchistan, ancient Indian frontier

Gregory Schopen also writes about a "cult tied to a cycle of festivals celebrating four moments, not in the biography of the Buddha but in the pre-enlightenment period of the life of Siddhartha."
  
Yet neither he nor G. Fussman recognizes the need to integrate the Mes Aynak findings with the priceless inscriptions from the Persepolis Tablets, which mention Tissa, Sedda Saramana (Siddhartha), Sudda Yauda Saramana (Suddodana), and Saman.
  
Schopen's video, entitled "Buddha as a Businessman," is largely based on false Nepalese data. More

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Visiting Buddhist-Afghanistan (without a gun)

Edited and expanded by Dhr. Seven and Amber Dorrian, Wisdom Quarterly

Mes Aynak archaeological excavations

Michal Przedlacki (REPORTING)

LOCATION: Southern chapel, Kafiriat Tepe monastic complex, Logar Province, Afghanistan [ancient Gandhara, frontier India]

Gandhara-style Buddha (SF Asian Museum)

Of great interest in Mes Aynak ["Copper Well"] is the association of many Buddhist monasteries with the economic activity of copper mining. There is no doubt that the wealthy decoration of the monasteries is linked to the wealth that people living nearby derived from the mine.

   

In May 2012 I traveled to Afghanistan on an assignment for the Czech edition of National Geographic magazine. I photographed excavation and rescue efforts at the world’s largest archaeological excavation site, located in Mes Aynak (“copper well”) area, Logar Province, Afghanistan.

The Buddha's western face (buddhaskulptur.de)

Being an equally inspiring and unique place, experts on site believe that uncovering the ancient city of Mes Aynak would not only re-write the history of the Silk Route but also the history of Buddhism.

  

[According to maverick Indian archeologist Dr. Ranajit Pal, modern Bamiyan, Afghanistan, was ancient Kapilavastu, India, the Buddha's hometown. We at Wisdom Quarterly agree that the historical Buddhist sites were far west of modern Nepal.]

That is, however, unlikely to happen. At the end of December 2012, the first part of the ancient site will be destroyed [by corporate Chinese interests bent on extracting rare earth minerals, copper, and gold].

Policeman guards excavation (time.com)

Due to the economic interests of China and Afghanistan [the former desperately needs rare minerals for producing electronics like iPhones, whereas the latter desperately needs cash in the face of an invasion by a foreign army that has occupied the country with no end in sight] a massive open copper mine complex just where the ancient city lays will be established. 

  

US strike team soldier drives bulldozer through infrastructure to help make country "safe" for capitalism during US war on and continued occupation of Afghanistan (defense.gov)

  

Marks of a Great Man (en.wikipedia.org)

[The upshot is that this massive Buddhist archeological site located west of India in Central Asia will be destroyed and covered by a massive mining city before it is ever excavated or even fully documented. Afghanistan's Department of Archeology is working as fast as it can with no hope of even describing all of its wonders before the Chinese are contracted to start their demolition of the site. While China may have one billion uncounted Buddhists, it is ruled by an officially atheist Communist regime bent on capitalist riches.]

  

Mes Aynak is also a home to a second-largest unworked cooper deposit in the world.

  

To give you a hint, this earth-covered ancient city -- yet to be excavated -- sprawls across a territory of approximately 1.5 by 1.5 kilometers [distance, perhaps a temple complex a square mile in size. Wisdom Quarterly does not refer to it as "the World's Greatest Buddhist Site" for nothing].

  

Gandharan (flickrhivemind.net)

Recent findings suggest that underneath the 2,600 years-old town [which, not coincidentally, is the exact official age of Buddhism itself -- since Buddhism came to Afghanistan just seven years after Siddhartha's great enlightenment, when as the "Buddha" (Shakyamuni, "the Sage of the Shakya Clan") he visited his home town and converted his father King Suddhodana who entered the first and second stages of enlightenment and continued to rule (reaching full enlightenment on his death bed when the Buddha returned to help him awaken), his stepmother Maha Prajapati who became the first Buddhist nun, his son Rahula who at 7-years-old became the first Buddhist novice, his half-brother Nanda and half-sister Sundari Nanda, and many of his relatives like his cousin Ananda from the royal Shakya clan's territory, shakya meaning "grey earth," a reference to the strangely grey soil in this area of Afghanistan], Mes Aynak was inhabited in an organized manner as early as 5,000 years ago, well into Bronze Age.

• The Shakya Clan: The Buddha Gautama's Family

It is considered a literal missing-link between worlds East and West, a trading hub, a money factory, a place where two civilizations met and interacted. 

Gandhara-style Buddha (SF Asia Museum)

According to international archaeologists on site, Mes Aynak is one of the five most important findings in the entire history of archaeology. It is in the same category as Petra and Machu Picchu. [It is, in fact, the world's greatest Buddhist site -- rivaling Indonesia's Borobudur, Cambodia's Angkor Wat, and Sri Lanka's Anuradapura.]

  

Unfortunately, we will never learn about it. For underneath Mes Aynak City exists the second-largest known unworked copper deposit in the world. MCC (China Metallurgical Group Corporation, a government-owned giant) bought rights to it for about $3 billion. It plans to excavate copper and rare earths for the next 30 years, aiming to extract approximately $100 billion worth. As such, a massive open copper mine visible from outer space will completely destroy this ancient site. 

Fitzgerald (InvisibleHistory.com)

So far only about 15% of the newest archaeological layer has been uncovered. A second earlier layer will never be accessed. The entire city’s history, including its administrative center, Buddhist burial mound/reliquary shrines (stupas), monasteries, nunneries, as well as evidence of its Bronze Age past will be forever lost.
  

CIA-funded Afghan Muslims (uberhumor.com)

Archaeologists say they would require 20 to 30 years to fully uncover and simply document this site -- to say nothing of preserving or restoring it. But they have no power to oppose decisions taken by the [CIA-corrupted Karzai] government of Afghanistan and MCC [just as mere archeologists could neither oppose or prevent the planned ransacking of priceless treasures in the Iraqi Museum, which the West considers the "Cradle of Civilization." A further complication exists: Islamic regimes are in no hurry to uncover their pre-Islamic/Buddhist pasts.
 
So sites in Pakistan, Iran/Persia (where the Buddha's mother, Maya Devi, was likely born, according to Dr. Ranajit Pal, who posits that she was from Seistan-Baluchistan, which is a border area between Afghanistan-Iran-Pakistan), Kazakhstan, and elsewhere go largely unprotected in spite of the meager efforts of earnest archeologists].

• Buddhism in Iran (iranian.com)
• The REAL American history of Afghanistan
• Ancient Western Buddhist art (gandhara.com.au)

Kabul Bank bail out (Huff Po; NPR)

A team consisting of international and Afghan archaeologists is conducting so called “rescue archaeology” -- digging out as much as possible in the remaining few months before demolition begins.
  

Reporting (with text by Jiri Unger and Nicolas Engel) has been published exclusively in the September edition of the Czech version of National Geographic magazine.

  

Application for UNESCO protection

(Nadia, Afghan Treasures) Fantastic news! We have blown past our original goal of 10,000 signatures for our petition to protect the Afghan Mes Aynak site from Chinese mining developers.  Who can imagine these incredible archaeological treasures being destroyed for commercial profiteering?  More than 10,000 signatories think that is a bad idea. As of today, we have collected 10,360 signatures and are stretching the goal to 20,000 [2011]. We will report our progress the April newsletter, which features an exclusive article on Mes Aynak by Prof. Tarzi. (We welcome comments and feedback). Here are three things to do right now:

1. Subscribe to Afghan Treasures.
2. Sign the Care2 petition.
3. Subscribe to the newsletter.

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Afghan Buddhist loot returned to Kabul

BBC.co.uk, Aug. 5, 2012 (VIDEO)

Many of the precious [pre-Islamic Buddhist] objects were looted during Afghanistan's civil war.

Hundreds of archaeological artifacts looted from Afghanistan have been handed over to the country's national museum during a ceremony in the Afghan capital, Kabul. Many of the 843 pieces were stolen during Afghanistan's civil war in the 1990s and ended up on the black market.

   

Some of the items, which include stone statues of Buddha [who was born near the ancient Indian frontier in an area known as Gandhara conjectured to be in the vicinity of modern-day Bamiyan, Afghanistan] and intricate ivory carvings, are up to 4,000 years old.

   

The British Museum in London has helped to complete their return. Some of the stolen artifacts were recovered by British border forces and police, while others were found in private collections and bought back by generous donors.

  

One stone Buddha, thought to be around 1,800 years old, was stolen from the museum in Kabul and recovered in Japan. The British Ministry of Defence (MoD) flew the pieces back to Afghanistan in large crates, landing at their military base in Camp Bastion. More 

"As the figure of [the] Buddha looks down at us, finally at rest after its 20-year ordeal, it is hard not to think of its future"

- Aleem Maqbool ( BBC News, Kabul)

• VIDEO: Looted art's homecoming to Kabul

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"Lost Treasures of Afghanistan" (video)

National Geographic; Wisdom Quarterly

During Afghanistan's civil war in the 1990s, the National Museum outside [the capital] Kabul was literally on the front line, repeatedly attacked by rocket fire and looted by [CIA-inspired] warlords.
   
Then, during the reign of the fundamentalist [CIA-created] Taliban regime, all non-Islamic statues and tombs were ordered destroyed. This led to the loss of two-thirds of the hundred thousand items in the Kabul museum.

      
In search of a larger reclining Afghan Buddha statue than the ones destroyed (Nat Geo)

  

The Taliban was forced from Kabul after the U.S. military [illegally invaded in a preemptively strike and] intervention in Afghanistan in late 2001. Before then, the Taliban's culture minister supervised the destruction of many of the remaining exhibits at the museum.

 
What the Taliban didn't know was that many of the most magnificent objects had already been spirited away. More than 25 years ago museum staff had hidden the treasures as the bombs started to fall. (See photos of the Afghanistan museum treasures.)...

 

Bactrian Gold

Indian gold coins (coinindia.com)

Although virtually unknown to the world public, Afghanistan's cultural heritage is one of the world's richest. Afghanistan was for a long time a cultural crossroads. The lost treasure represents a Silk Road melting pot of precious objects from China, India, Egypt, Greece, Rome, and ancient Afghanistan. 

  

Perhaps the most important of the lost treasures were the famed Bactrian gold pieces, great icons of Afghanistan's cultural heritage. The hoard -- discovered in the fall of 1978 by Soviet archaeologists -- included more than 20,000 gold objects from the 2,000-year-old Silk Road culture of Bactria, an ancient nation that covered parts of what is now Afghanistan. More

• Real history of Afghanistan (Invisible History) 
• World's Greatest Buddhist site: Mes Aynak
• Spectacular Bandi Amir (lake) of Bamiyan
• Afghanistan: Profile and Photo Gallery
• Ancient Assyrian Treasures Found Intact in Baghdad
• Lost Iraq Treasures: Rare Geographic Photos
• How They Found National Geographic's "Afghan Girl"
• PHOTO GALLERY: National Geographic 

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Buddhas of Bamiyan, Afghanistan (new photos)

James Gordon, Los Angeles (photos); text Seven; graphic design CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly

The Buddhas of Bamiyan, Afghanistan -- which the maverick scholar and historian Ranajit Pal, Ph.D. considers to be in vicinity of the original Kapilavastu, where Siddhartha grew up -- is ancient land in Himalayan foothills.

 

Buddhism is steeped in the geography of ancient Greater India (Maha Bharat), which at the time of the Buddha was a collection of loosely aligned territories. There are relics and markers throughout the region (many now outside the country) including ancient northwest Gandhara, present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan. 

   

Note people on foot. The tallest of the Buddhas of Bamiyan may not be the biggest in Asia.

  

India, and its Shakyan neighbor in the northwest, was expansive and fluid. People were aligned with extended family clans, and united by commonalities in language and trade. Buddhism and its precursor "wandering ascetic" (shramana) tradition are found even in the preceding Harappan era along with much of the history the Buddha mentioned, which we can assume was from the Indus Valley Civilization and earlier.

  

Bamiyan valley looking north to snow capped Himalayan range of Koh-i-Baba/Hindu Kush

  

Buddhas are spoken of as having arisen in previous aeons, far earlier than modern archeology is willing to concede that modern humans existed. But another maverick historian and archeologist shows evidence of the great antiquity of humanity (and hybrids) on this planet: Michael Cremo, who is informed not only by science but the ancient Vedas as well, as humans have been devolving through the ages.

  

The area of Bamiyan in Central Asia was Zoroastrian, founded by the asura Zoroaster (Zarathustra), and Buddhist at one time, that is, whatever fragments or memories remained of pre-Shakyamuni buddhas. before Gotama which implies that Buddhism was as old as Zoroastrianism. Dr. Pal contends that "detailed study reveals close links of early Buddhism with Hinduism, Judaism and Zoroastrianism which rose in the Bamiyan-Baluchistan-Gandhara area." 

   

The viewing point over Bamiyan valley from within the head of the tallest Buddha statue

  

(Holger Kersten is an excellent resource for information on ancient Jewish outposts in India). "The crucial fact that the Silk Road passed through the Buddhist heartland has escaped the notice of all," Dr. Pal explains. This is how Buddhism spread, even as the Buddha Gautama went back and forth from his native Kapilavastu to the ancient central kingdom of India, Magadha, where he otherwise spent much of his time teaching. He early on sent enlightened missionaries in all directions to spread the Dharma. They must have reached at least as far as Kalmykia, in indigenously Buddhist Europe.

  

Band-e Amir Bahar, west of and within two miles of the famous Buddhas of Bamiyan

  

Lumbini (Siddhartha's garden birthplace) or Kapilavastu (his hometown) in Nepal is, Dr. Pal contends, an archeological and historical "fraud." Wisdom Quarterly much to the chagrin of the governments of Islamic Afghanistan and Hindu-dominated Nepal and India. (Nepal was once the only Hindu nation in the world; India never was; they both now lean secular with a great financial interest in Buddhist tourism and history). Dr. Pal points out that, "Nothing in the art, archaeology, history or literature of early Nepal has the faintest hint of Buddhism." More photos

  

Shakya -- Siddhartha's clan name -- means "grey earth," a strange feature of Afghanistan.

Reassembling the Bamiyan fragments after the CIA/Taliban's destruction

• The Buddhas as Wonders of Bamiyan
• Searching for the Buddha's maternal home
• Afghanistan copper mining will crush Afghan site
• The Buddha's words can douse rancor and discord
• The REAL Invisible History of Afghanistan
• Deciding between heritage and hard cash in Afghanistan
• VIDEO:  Monk from Buddhist mission to Ladakh honored
• PHOTOS: Bhutan, Buddhist Land Beyond Heaven and Earth

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