Zakir Naik Supports Taliban's Decision
To Destroy Buddha Statues, Calls Buddhists 'Drug
Addicts'!
Kunal
Anand July 17, 2016 Indiatimes
At a
Chennai event in 2002, controversial Islamic preacher Zakir Naik
was asked a question by about the Taliban's fatwa to destroy
Bamiyan Buddhas after they termed the status
"un-Islamic".
The Taliban
dynamited and destroyed these iconic 6th century statues in March
2001 as part of a campaign to remove all non-Islamic art from
Afghanistan.
Zakir Naik
began his explanation by stating that this act by the Taliban was
"educating the Buddhists". Claiming to have read Buddhist
scriptures, Naik said that Buddha had never asked for statues of
himself.
Naik did
admit that this act, of the Taliban did cause grief among million
of Buddhists around the world.
However, it
was what he said next that was disturbing - he compared statues, a
manifestation of Buddhist faith to expensive drugs.
"For
millions of human beings in the world, drug is god for them". He
also called Afghanistan, and its Buddhist statues the "property" of
the Taliban. "Who are we to object?"
The statues
were among the most famous cultural landmarks of the region, and
the site was listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site along with
the surrounding cultural landscape and archaeological remains of
the Bamiyan
Valley.
Well, it
might upset Naik to know that 15 years after Taliban dynamited the
world-famous Buddhas of Bamiyan, the giant statues were resurrected
with 3D light projection technology in the empty cavities where
they once stood in Afghanistan!
Japan and Switzerland, among
others, have pledged support for the rebuilding of the statues.
Both Standing Buddhas - 115 ft and 174 ft tall - were carved out of
sandstone cliffs and stood at one point painted and gilded. They
managed to survive for more than 1500 years, before the Taliban's
1996-2001 reign, in which they committed this act of "cultural
terrorism".