Quote:

---

Abd Al-Munim A-Shahhat, a spokesman for the Salafi group Dawa, has said that Egypt’s world-renowned pharaonic archaeology — its pyramids, Sphinx and other monuments covered with un-Islamic imagery — should also be hidden from the public eye.

“The pharaonic culture is a rotten culture,” A-Shahhat told Asharq Al-Awsat, saying the faces of ancient statues “should be covered with wax, since they are religiously forbidden.” He likened the Egyptian relics to the idols, which circled the walls of Makkah in pre-Islamic times. The challenges to the tourism industry in post-revolutionary Egypt have led to the establishment of the Coalition to Support Tourism, whose members also met with Al-Katatny.

http://arabnews.com/middleeast/article493760.ece?comments=all

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by AURaptor:
“The pharaonic culture is a rotten culture,” A-Shahhat told Asharq Al-Awsat

---

Quote:

---

The department spent $8,000 on blue drapes that hide the two giant, aluminum art deco statues, said spokesman Shane Hix. For aesthetic reasons, he said, the drapes were occasionally hung in front of the statues before formal events. The department used to rent the drapes, but has now purchased them and left them hanging.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by AnthonyT:

Especially when there are other people in the world who are actually covering and/or destroying objects in the name of religious convention and propriety.

--Anthony

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by AnthonyT:
Hello,

I must disagree.

There is only one demographic for that, and Dennis Leary sang it best.

--Anthony

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Phoenixship:
I bet some of those meatheads might actually want to do it, but... the overwhelming greed of the human animal and the money earned from tourism will convince them to "spare" the illegitimate pharoahs and hold their noses while they take our money!

"Why're you arguin' what's already been decided?"
Mal to Jayne, "Jaynestown"

---

Quote:

---

CAIRO: Sunbathing in Alexandria may soon be a thing of the past, at least if some Egyptian politicians have their way.

Egypt’s tourism industry has suffered a severe blow since the outburst of anti-regime demonstrations in January. But that did not stop the Freedom and Justice Party, the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, from demanding stricter regulations over what tourists can do and wear while visiting the country. The party is urging officials to ban skimpy swimwear and the consumption of alcohol on Egyptian streets.

“Beach tourism must take the values and norms of our society into account,” Muhammad Saad Al-Katatny, secretary-general of Freedom and Justice, told Egyptian tourism officials. “We must place regulations on tourists wishing to visit Egypt, which we will announce in advance.”

---

Quote:

---

( to be honest, I had figured they already had banned them... )

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by AURaptor:

Quote:

---

Originally posted by AnthonyT:

Especially when there are other people in the world who are actually covering and/or destroying objects in the name of religious convention and propriety.

--Anthony

---

Well, there's ONE group into destroying objects of significant artistic and religious importance to human history. Those being the Muslims.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Fremdfirma:

As if we have any room to talk....

Justice Department covers partially nude statues
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002/01/29/statues.htm

Quote:

---

The department spent $8,000 on blue drapes that hide the two giant, aluminum art deco statues, said spokesman Shane Hix. For aesthetic reasons, he said, the drapes were occasionally hung in front of the statues before formal events. The department used to rent the drapes, but has now purchased them and left them hanging.

---

If you had any sense at all Rappy, you'd realize the greater threat of religious law comes from the very sumbitches you support, who are in truth cut from the very same cloth as the goddamned taliban, the only real DIFFERENCE is which VERSION of that vile and horrific religion they follow, cause it's not even a different one, just a slightly different aspect of the same one!

And yet both sets of dumb shits are willing to kill each other, and anyone else, over it.

I wonder though, if things might have taken a different historical path if Abrahams response had been "You want me to do WHAT ? Fuck You!"...

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Kwicko:

Quote:

---

( to be honest, I had figured they already had banned them... )

---

Well, at least you're man enough to admit when you don't know what the hell you're talking about, eh?

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by AURaptor:
You'd better hurry up then...

Quote:

---

Abd Al-Munim A-Shahhat, a spokesman for the Salafi group Dawa, has said that Egypt’s world-renowned pharaonic archaeology — its pyramids, Sphinx and other monuments covered with un-Islamic imagery — should also be hidden from the public eye.

“The pharaonic culture is a rotten culture,” A-Shahhat told Asharq Al-Awsat, saying the faces of ancient statues “should be covered with wax, since they are religiously forbidden.” He likened the Egyptian relics to the idols, which circled the walls of Makkah in pre-Islamic times. The challenges to the tourism industry in post-revolutionary Egypt have led to the establishment of the Coalition to Support Tourism, whose members also met with Al-Katatny.

http://arabnews.com/middleeast/article493760.ece?comments=all

---

Ahhh! Smells like Arab Spring !

---

Quote:

---

General Albert Pike speaks:

"The First World War must be brought about in order to permit the Illuminati to overthrow the power of the Czars in Russia and of making that country a fortress of atheistic Communism. The divergences caused by the "agentur" (agents) of the Illuminati between the British and Germanic Empires will be used to foment this war. At the end of the war, Communism will be built and used in order to destroy the other governments and in order to weaken the religions."

"The Second World War must be fomented by taking advantage of the differences between the Fascists and the political Zionists. This war must be brought about so that Nazism is destroyed and that the political Zionism be strong enough to institute a sovereign state of Israel in Palestine. During the Second World War, International Communism must become strong enough in order to balance Christendom, which would be then restrained and held in check until the time when we would need it for the final social cataclysm."

"The Third World War must be fomented by taking advantage of the differences caused by the "agentur" of the "Illuminati" between the political Zionists and the leaders of Islamic World. The war must be conducted in such a way that Islam (the Moslem Arabic World) and political Zionism (the State of Israel) mutually destroy each other. Meanwhile the other nations, once more divided on this issue will be constrained to fight to the point of complete physical, moral, spiritual and economical exhaustion…We shall unleash the Nihilists and the atheists, and we shall provoke a formidable social cataclysm which in all its horror will show clearly to the nations the effect of absolute atheism, origin of savagery and of the most bloody turmoil. Then everywhere, the citizens, obliged to defend themselves against the world minority of revolutionaries, will exterminate those destroyers of civilization, and the multitude, disillusioned with Christianity, whose deistic spirits will from that moment be without compass or direction, anxious for an ideal, but without knowing where to render its adoration, will receive the true light through the universal manifestation of the pure doctrine of Lucifer, brought finally out in the public view. This manifestation will result from the general reactionary movement which will follow the destruction of Christianity and atheism, both conquered and exterminated at the same time."

by General Albert Pike, British agent in the US Civil War and jewish pope of Freemasonry, letter to Giuseppe Mazzini, founder of the Mafia in Italy, in 1871

http://geraldcelentechannel.blogspot.com/2010/07/albert-pike-letter-to
-mazzini.html

---

Quote:

---

General Albert Pike speaks:

"There is in nature a one most potent force, by means whereof a single man, who could posses himself of it, and should know how to direct it, could revolutionize and change the face of the world. It is a universal agent, whose supreme law is equilibrium; and whereby, if science can but learn how to control it, it can be possible to change the order of the seasons, to produce in night the phenomenon of day, to send a thought in an instant around the world, to heal or slay at a distance, to give our words universal success, and made them reverberate everywhere. The Gnostics held that it was adorned in the secret rites of the Sabbat or the Temple, under the hieroglyphic figure of the Baphomet or the hermaphroditic goat of Mendes."
-Pike, Morals and Dogma, page 734

"The true name of Satan is, the Kallaists say, is that of Yahweh reversed; for Satan is not a black god, but the negation of God. The Devil is the personification of Atheism and Idoltry. For the Initiates, this is not a Person, but a Force, created for good; but which may serve for evil. It is the instrument for Liberty or Free Will. They represent this Force, which presides over the physical generation, under the mythological and horned form of the God Pan; hence came the he-goat of the Sabbat, brother of the Ancient Serpant, and the Light-Bearer, or Phosphor of which the poets have made the false Lucifer of the legend."
-General Albert Pike, [url= http://www.srmason-sj.org] and Dogma of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry[/color][/url], page 102

"The Apocalypse is, to those who receive the 19th Degree, the Apotheosis of that Sublime Faith which aspires to God alone, and despises all the pomps and works of Lucifer. LUCIFER, the Light-bearer! Strange and mysterious name to give to the Spirit of Darkness! Lucifer, the Son of the Morning! Is it he who bears the Light, and with its splendors intolerable blinds feeble, sensual, or selfish Souls? Doubt it not!"
-Pike, Morals and Dogma, page 321

"All religions issued from the Kabalah and return to it: everything scientific and grand in the dreams of the illuminati is borrow from the Kabalah; all the Masonic associations owe to it their Secrets and Symbols. The Kabalah alone consecrates the allegiance of the Universal Reason and Devine Word. The Bible, with all the allegories it contains, expresses, in an incomplete and veiled manner only, the religious science of the Hebrews. Thus was a second Bible born, unknown to, or rather uncomprehended by, the Christians; a collection, they say, of monstrous absurdities; a monument, the adept says, wherein everything that the genius of philosophy and that of religion have ever formed or imagined of the sublime; a treasure surrounded by thorns; a diamond concelaed in a rough dark stone. One is filled with admiration, on penetrating into the Sancuary of the Kabalah, at seeing doctrine so logical, so simple, and at the same time so absolute. The Absolute Deity, with the Kabalists, has no name. The terms applied to Him are the Most Simple Light. For then there was no space or vacant place, but all was infinite Light."
-Pike, Morals and Dogma, page 744-5

http://nationalheritagemuseum.typepad.com/library_and_archives/albert-
pike/

Albert Pike Museum at House of the Jewish Temple, Washington DC
http://scottishrite.org/headquarters/museums/

History of Baphomet and Freemasons
http://blog.templarhistory.com/2010/04/the-baphomet-and-the-freemasons/

"Freemasons have long been accused of Satanic practices as seen in the illustration of the Baphomet from Leo Taxil's The Mysteries of Freemasonry, 1897. Source: Archives of the Supreme Council, S.J., 33°"
-Scottish Rite Journal, I Was Called a Satanist Today, Feb 2002
http://www.srmason-sj.org/web/journal-files/Issues/Feb02/moss.htm


Freemasonic ceremony

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Niki2:
many think the money would be better spent providing electricity and other things to a country which, when we were there, was practically just coming out of the stone age. Besides, you can't replace things like that, and most Afghans feel the empty niches should be left as monuments to the fanaticism of the Taliban.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
Wow Niki, you got to actually see the Giant Buddha. How amazing. I have a friend who travelled there in thr 70's and showed me photos recently. Like you, she was devestated when they were destroyed.

It's nothing new. Religious fanatics despise all over religions and it has been rife through history and it wouldn't be the first time in Epyptian history. The Pharoah Akhenaten had his face removed from all iconography depicting him because of religious reasons. The practise, known as iconoclasm, has a long and illustrious history and is not limited to one religion. From wiki

* In Judaism, King Hezekiah purged Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem and the Land of Israel of figures, including the Nehushtan, as recorded in the Second Book of Kings. His reforms were reversed in the reign of his son Manasseh.
* A Midrash included in Genesis Rabba attributes a major act of iconoclasm to Abraham. This is not attested in the Biblical account of the Partriarch's life, but is an important aspect of Abraham's character in later Jewish tradition.
* The Roman Empire's polytheist state religion's images were destroyed during the process of Christianisation.
* In the world of Islam, there have been various periods of iconoclasm against images of other religions (e.g., Christianity, Buddhism,[2] etc.) and those produced within Islam.
* Byzantine iconoclasm in the Eastern Orthodox Church, of its own religious imagery.
* The Beeldenstorm in Europe during the Protestant Reformation and the religious conflicts following, with Protestants destroying traditional (by then considered Catholic imagery) or sometimes Protestant imagery.
* Most of the moai of Easter Island were toppled during the 18th century in the iconoclasm of civil wars.
* During the French Revolution, people widely destroyed religious and monarchical imagery.
* During and after the Russian Revolution, there was widespread destruction of religious and secular imagery.
* During and after the Communist overthrow of the Chinese monarchy, as well as during the later Cultural Revolution, there was widespread destruction of religious and secular imagery in China, including in Tibet.
* In the Roman Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council, much of its traditional imagery, art, and architecture was discarded.[citation needed]
* Statues of Stalin, from as early as 1956 in Budapest, continuing sporadically through the fall of Communism and into the present day.[3]
* Statues of Lenin and Felix Dzerzhinsky in formerly-communist Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
* The Taliban's destruction of two ancient statues of Buddha at Bamyan in Afghanistan.

These of course dont account for the destruction caused by simple plundering of religious and cultural icons, and it is worth noting that we don't seem to mind a bit of tomb raiding if there is treasure to be had, and I include peeps such as Howard Carter and the Earl of Elgin.

So the practise sucks, but its not new and its not an especially Muslim feature.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Kwicko:


Not to mention religious zealots destroying controversial artworks merely because they are offended by such material.

Only an idiot would try to claim that there's only ONE religion doing such things.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by AURaptor:

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Kwicko:


Not to mention religious zealots destroying controversial artworks merely because they are offended by such material.

Only an idiot would try to claim that there's only ONE religion doing such things.

---

In our life time ? Only 1 religion has done that.

Only an idiot would deny that fact.


" I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend. "

---

Quote:

---

Civitas, a lobby group that says it aims to re-Christianize France, launched an online petition and mobilised other fundamentalist groups. The staunchly conservative archbishop of Vaucluse, Jean-Pierre Cattenoz, called Piss Christ "odious" and said he wanted this "trash" taken off the gallery walls. Last week the gallery complained of "extremist harassment" by fundamentalist Christian groups who wanted the work banned in France.

Lambert, one of France's best known art dealers, complained he was being "persecuted" by extremists who had sent him tens of thousands of complaint emails and bombarded the museum with spam. He likened the atmosphere to "a return to the middle ages".

On Saturday, around 1,000 Christian protesters marched through Avignon to the gallery. The protest group included a regional councillor for the extreme-right Front National, which recently scored well in the Vaucluse area in local elections. The gallery immediately stepped up security, putting plexiglass in front of the photograph and assigning two gallery guards to stand in front of it.

But on Palm Sunday morning, four people in sunglasses aged between 18 and 25 entered the exhibition just after it opened at 11am. One took a hammer out of his sock and threatened the guards with it. A guard grabbed another man around the waist but within seconds the group managed to take a hammer to the plexiglass screen and slash the photograph with another sharp object, thought to be a screwdriver or ice-pick. They also smashed another work, which showed the hands of a meditating nun.

The gallery director, Eric Mézil, said it would reopen with the destroyed works on show "so people can see what barbarians can do". He said there had been a kind of "inquisition" against the art work.

---