The end of the pyramids?

[Epictetus]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/articl...r-wax.html

[Robert Vermaat]

Hold your horses folks. This article is essentially anti-Muslim and most facts are not even correct. Egyptians are not Taliban, never have been, never will be.

Muslims have ruled Egypt for about 1400 years. Some rulers were benevolent, some were fanatics. Yet almost all temples (and pyramids) still stand. As they do in Iran, Syria, Jemen, Saudi-Arabia, etc etc.
There is no religious ground in Islam for the demolition of ancient monuments (the case for Timbuktu being that the monuments were for saints, a Muslim sectarian disagreement).

Although there will forever be extremists calling for extremist actions, that does not mean that they are in any way acceptable to the mainstream Muslim. Plus, destroying these would eradicate Egypt's main source of foreign currency-tourism. Indeed, economic suicide. Can you imagine what the mainstream Egyptian labourer, very much depending on income from tourism, would say about that?

This stuff is mainly for PR reasons. A sort of 'holier-than-you' mentality.

[Dan Howard]

The Daily Mail isn't a newspaper. It is a gossip rag aimed at the semi-literate. They take the faintest hint of controversy, invent an entire backstory, fabricate interviews, and include photoshopped pics. Go to the home page and look at the other stories. Frontpagemag doesn't look much better.

[Nathan Ross]

Here's a possibly more balanced appraisal:

Salafists Target Works of the Ancient Egyptians

So nobody has actually suggested 'destroying' the pyramids or anything else. One man, Abd al-Moneim al-Shahat, suggested covering them in wax (a ludicrous idea), but he is not a member of the Egyptian government - he was an al-Nour candidate in Alexandria, but lost in the elections.

"The Muslim Brotherhood’s Hizb al-Hurriya wa’l-Adala (HHA - Freedom and Justice Party) and the Salafist al-Nour Party both announced they would hold “tourism conferences” to promote the industry. Leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood have shaken hands with tourists in Luxor and visited the Giza Pyramids to show their support for tourism based on Egypt’s ancient monuments."

So while we should be concerned about the effects of the Islamist trend on Egyptian society and culture, the sort of sensationalist misinformation put out by the Daily Mail and amplified all over the internet only fuels tension and increases antipathy.

[Lyceum]

The Daily Mail isn't a newspaper. It is a gossip rag aimed at the semi-literate. They take the faintest hint of controversy, invent an entire backstory, fabricate interviews, and include photoshopped pics. Go to the home page and look at the other stories. Frontpagemag doesn't look much better.

Correct! and you're not even from the UK are you? Honestly the DM doesn't even make good toilet paper.

re: antiquities however I do think a lot of people don't really understand the threat they face over the world though. Ok In Egypt despite previous...bad behaviour by Muslims the largest problem one has in excavating etc is rampant bribery. It's not even the weird cronyist odd type of bribrary one needs in Greece. It's...fully open to the point where I've known professors to declare it on their expenses forms in one way or another, its insane.

However, leaving Pharonic Egypt aside...Persian, Hellenistic and to a lesser degree Roman Egyptian antiquities are often damaged or gone missing etc, yet no one ever mentions such due to the obsession with Pharonic Egypt.

Over all though I still think Greece takes the prize for absolute worst treatment of antiquities I know of. :S

[Draconis]

Everything I've ever seen has indicated that Egyptians are very protective and proud of their ancient heritage and its role in civilisation. Why would they destroy that? Maybe some fanatics might want to, but I can't see that a majority of Egyptians would go for it. Religious fanatics of many stripes however have deprived the world of much that is good. I visited Canterbury Cathedral, and I recall that at one time there was a huge stained glass window of Thomas a'Becket that was smashed by the pikes of Oliver Cromwell's soldiers. I shake my head to consider how something that is supposed to want and bring peace to the world has brought so much destruction and misery.

[M. Demetrius]

Tom, there are many who say the Muslim Brotherhood is, indeed, fanatic. We will have to wait and see if calm, reasonable heads prevail. For now, the MB is pretty well on their way to gaining majority control of the Egyptian government.

[M. Demetrius]

http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/20...49092.html

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

It's not even the weird cronyist odd type of bribrary one needs in Greece. It's...fully open to the point where I've known professors to declare it on their expenses forms in one way or another, its insane.

However, leaving Pharonic Egypt aside...Persian, Hellenistic and to a lesser degree Roman Egyptian antiquities are often damaged or gone missing etc, yet no one ever mentions such due to the obsession with Pharonic Egypt.

Over all though I still think Greece takes the prize for absolute worst treatment of antiquities I know of. :S

How would you clarify that statement with facts Jass?

[Eleatic Guest]

Frontpagemag doesn't look much better.

Raymond Ibrahim is a competent, alternative expert, one who operates outside the mass media and records things which political correctness would prevent the media establishment from even seeing it.

The pyramid story is just another example that cautions us always to distinguish properly between message and messenger: just because the message may sound weird or implausible does not mean that the messenger is wrong or biased.

In fact, the pyramid story is only the tip of an iceberg of absurdities coming from Muslim extremists in the Middle East and elsewhere. What the secular mind often tends to forget that for fundamentalist Muslims the ultimate source of knowledge is not science, but the teachings of the quran. Reading this article by Ibrahim helpt me getting a much better understanding of what these insanities are all about.

[M. Demetrius]

The link just posted on this topic seems to corroborate the previous post with what are reputed to be direct quotes, from the English version of an Arabic newspaper.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

My dealing s with the common workers and their interpreters and religious minders from before the spring, was that even the ones who claimed to be devout followers of allah...were quite easily
picked apart with some humour.
I think there are those elements who are using this for political gain, it is not religion or
devout following of the Koran....they are manipulating the masses, as all religions do purely for thir path to power..
Sad really, all the common people wanted was freedom from oppression and equality.
Yhe usual quick talkers will rule the day and cause chaos.

[Dan D'Silva]

Raymond Ibrahim is a competent, alternative expert, one who operates outside the mass media and records things which political correctness would prevent the media establishment from even seeing it.

As an editor, and I was (a local) one for a couple of years, I would say that if I were running an international news venue, devoting scarce air or print space to this kind of story would depend on whether it seems like it's going anywhere. When the Taliban talked about destroying the Bamiyan statues, American papers covered it. And religiously-motivated irrationality is hardly unknown in the West, so I think we can wrap our minds around it. So the key question for me is whether it seems that Egypt as a country would allow anyone to harm the Pyramids.

[Eleatic Guest]

So the key question for me is whether it seems that Egypt as a country would allow anyone to harm the Pyramids.

But what is "Egypt as a country" today? The Muslim Brotherhood now rules the country, voted democratically into power by the people and headed by a president who publicly prays for the expulsion of the Jews and "victory over the infidels", that is, in case you happen not to be Muslim, over you. And, incredibly, they are not even the most radical Egyptians in the parliament, but hard pressed by the even more extremist Salafists who considered them too soft on Jews, the West, women and Copts, so basically on everybody except Muslim men.

You have already given yourself the answer in a way, the Taliban did destroy the most prominent 'pagan' monument in their country, so what makes people so sure their Egyptian fellow fanatics won't pull down the pyramids either? Just because rational people would consider it an insane crime does not mean that religious fanatics who live in their hermetic world by entirely different moral rules would feel the need to comply to them - Bamiyan is proof of this.

[Draconis]

From what I hear its a hoax, something to get westerners worked up