On Mon, 5 Mar 2001, Grant Gerlich wrote:

> I thought this was a Museum list, not a venue for espousing one's political
> views. But if you insist I would like to point out that this current "right
> wing-conservative" administration has little to do with the events at hand,
> nor did the previous administration have any success in preventing them.

====================

I completely agree that Museum-L should be non-sectarian from the point of
view of politics (and equally of religion), and I'm not defending the
particular posting that seems to have offended you.

However, you sometimes can't separate political actions from their - often
unintended - museum or wider cultural consequences.

In the present case, many very responsible and moderate experts and
commentators around the world are linking the Afghan Taliban religious
leader's sudden turn-around last week directly to action by the United
Nations Security Council on the initiative of the new American
Administration.

For over two years Mullah Mohammed Omar had been arguing that the Taliban
should NOT destroy the many Greek and Buddhist sculptures in the country's
museums and on outdoor historic monuments. Within days of the marked
toughening of UN sanctions because of Afghanistan's refusal to hand over
Bin Laden, indicted for organising and sponsoring international terrorism
against the USA and several other countries, Mullah Omar reverse his
position and demanded to total destruction of all pre-Islamic religious
monuments and art.

Only a throughly sick person could blame the Bush Administration for this
utterly deplorable and indefensible reaction to increased sanctions on
what is, after all, not the legitimate government of Afghanistan in
the eyes of all but three of the 200+ countries of the world.

Equally, it has to be recognised that politics and culture cannot be
totally isolated from each other in these (and indeed many other)
circumstances.

What has happened in countries such as former Yugoslavia over the past few
years shows that the actual or threatened destruction of cultural
monuments and institutions can be used as a very powerful political weapon
in the present world circumstances.  The shelling of Dubrovnik and
destruction of the Library in Sarajevo attracted much greater
contemporary international condemnation than the genocidal mass murder of
Croats and Bosniacs that was going on at the same time.


Patrick Boylan

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