Analysis Of The Aconoclasm Of Bamiyan Buddhas

Afghanistan is the crossroad of the silk road, it gathered the treasures of the ancient world, left their history written on the ground. But last three decades, war and terrorism devastated Afghanistan's cultural legacy. Bamiyan valley is the most important place for its archeological legacy. This beautiful valley is dominated by the hundreds of Buddhist caves, were occupied by some five thousand monks in Bamiyan's heyday. Buddhism spread from India to China and keep the roots here with the gigantic statues of Buddha. In march 2001 the world witnessed the blown up of Bamiyan Buddhas by the Afghanistan's Taliban government, and that was shocking for rest of the world. They destroyed it because these monumental Buddhas represented the notion of idolatry. This destruction is iconoclasm, which means destruction or more specifically aimed destruction. This paper will discuss the iconoclasm of Bamiyan Buddhas. Brubaker in her article argues that "the most familiar reason to destroy images

She illustrates the reasons behind iconoclasm, for example, the Roman army used to stole the statue of the captured city to Rome. They usually did not destroy the statue, but displacing these and bringing these art objects to Rome is also a different form of iconoclasm. Another important reason of destroying image or statue is to show disrespect to the specific person or society. Brubaker also claims that " A broader conception of image destruction - perhaps closer to our modern understanding of the term iconoclasm - is attributed to the Byzantines" (Brubaker 2013, 15), however Byzantines iconoclasm was under Christian context, but here the context is Islamic iconoclasm. Idolatry and image worship is forbidden in Islam, moreover, Islam is