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Iconoclasm
North Miami Beach, FL
March 3, 2001 Aaron H.
Schectman
THINKING ALLOWED
Essays on issues, ideas and reflections on the times. Published now and
then, Opinions pro or con are welcome.
ICONOCLASTS
My neighbor in New Jersey - at the back and three houses closer to the
Ocean - the Pagan, worshiped idols. That was strictly his business. He was
nice enough. He went to work in NYC every weekday morning and dressed in
Grey Flannels throughout the year and could be seen reading his copy of the
Wall Street Journal at the train station at 6:15 a.m. The idols he
worshipped were small ones and were set up in a grove of trees shielded from
view of on-lookers. His was a private religion and bothered no one and few
besides me were knowledgeable about him or idolatry.
Now here is the problem with iconoclasts. They are idol breakers. Despite
the fact that Moses was given the tablets of the law, he broke them
(iconoclasm) when he came down from the mountain after his chat with God.
His iconoclasm was perhaps a foreshadowing of his shock at seeing the people
he led out of slavery from Egypt worshipping a golden calf. He destroyed
this idol by grinding it to powder and forced the backsliders to drink it in
water (this in the desert at the foot of a mountain that smoked).
I have been noted as an iconoclast albeit of a minor proportion. You can
destroy idols by fiddling with the words used to describe sacred cows. I
liked to question a lot of practices that seemed engraved in stone. But,
enough of that. The purpose of this essay is to decry the iconoclasm of the
Taliban in Afghanistan.
It seems that the fundamentalist Islamic rulers of Afghanistan want to add
iconoclasm to their record. They force women to hide themselves in purdah.
Now they want to destroy statues (idols) of Buddha that are almost 2,000
years old. This is in their country but they want to do away with a
cultural heritage (not a practice of idolatry) of the entire world. This is
an art. They are objects of art and historical evidence documenting how
part of our human ancestry saw the world through the persona of Gautama, the
Buddha. Like my neighbor, the pagan, these objects of interest should be
left alone. What do you think?
Carol's Evaluation:10 out of 10.
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