TexasDevilDog
04-03-2006, 11:16 PM
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/egyptreligionheritage
CAIRO (AFP) - A fatwa issued by Egypt's top religious authority which forbids the display of statues has art-lovers fearing it could be used by Islamic extremists as an excuse to destroy Egypt's historical heritage.
Egypt's Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa, the country's top Islamic jurist, issued the religious edict which declared as un-Islamic the exhibition of statues in homes, basing the decision on texts in the hadith (sayings of the prophet).
...
But Qaradawi joined Gomaa in declaring that statues used for decoration are "haram" or un-Islamic.
"Islam proscribed statues, as long as they symbolise living entities such as human beings and animals," Qaradawi said on an Islamic website.
"Islam proscribed all that leads to paganism or smells of it, statues of ancient Egyptians included," he added.
The one-meter-wide nose on the face is missing. It has long been presumed that the nose had been broken off by a cannon ball fired by Napoléon's soldiers. However, sketches of the Sphinx by Frederick Lewis Norden made in 1737 and published in 1755 illustrate the Sphinx without a nose. The Egyptian historian al-Maqrizi, writing in the fifteenth century, attributes the vandalism to Muhammad Sa'im al-Dahr, a Sufi fanatic from the khanqah of Sa'id al-Su'ada. In 1378, upon finding the Egyptian peasants making offerings to the Sphinx in the hope of increasing their harvest, Sa'im al-Dahr was so outraged that he destroyed the nose. Al-Maqrizi describes the Sphinx as the "Nile talisman" on which the locals believed the cycle of inundation depended.
http://diwww.epfl.ch/~wuillem/voyages/sharm2002/ca31_sphinx_b.jpg
CAIRO (AFP) - A fatwa issued by Egypt's top religious authority which forbids the display of statues has art-lovers fearing it could be used by Islamic extremists as an excuse to destroy Egypt's historical heritage.
Egypt's Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa, the country's top Islamic jurist, issued the religious edict which declared as un-Islamic the exhibition of statues in homes, basing the decision on texts in the hadith (sayings of the prophet).
...
But Qaradawi joined Gomaa in declaring that statues used for decoration are "haram" or un-Islamic.
"Islam proscribed statues, as long as they symbolise living entities such as human beings and animals," Qaradawi said on an Islamic website.
"Islam proscribed all that leads to paganism or smells of it, statues of ancient Egyptians included," he added.
The one-meter-wide nose on the face is missing. It has long been presumed that the nose had been broken off by a cannon ball fired by Napoléon's soldiers. However, sketches of the Sphinx by Frederick Lewis Norden made in 1737 and published in 1755 illustrate the Sphinx without a nose. The Egyptian historian al-Maqrizi, writing in the fifteenth century, attributes the vandalism to Muhammad Sa'im al-Dahr, a Sufi fanatic from the khanqah of Sa'id al-Su'ada. In 1378, upon finding the Egyptian peasants making offerings to the Sphinx in the hope of increasing their harvest, Sa'im al-Dahr was so outraged that he destroyed the nose. Al-Maqrizi describes the Sphinx as the "Nile talisman" on which the locals believed the cycle of inundation depended.
http://diwww.epfl.ch/~wuillem/voyages/sharm2002/ca31_sphinx_b.jpg