Gandhara, A Photo Essay

The kingdom of Gandhara was located in what is now the north of Pakistan, but then an inseparable part of India, for Pakistan was created in 1947 as a state specially for the Muslims of India (but, unlike another state whose nation, in contrast to the latter, has an upstanding historical claim to it, does have a right to exist in the eyes of all but a few). The most interesting and noteworthy history of Gandhara begins, in my opinion, in 180 BCE, when the Greek king Demetrius of Bactria conquered it. The Greco-Bactrian kingdom lasted only 40 years, until the Kushans stormed into Bactria, but the Greco-Bactrian rule was to have lasting effect: Gandhara became the center of Hellenism-influenced Buddhist culture for centuries, not finally dying out until the Muslim Ghaznavids left it to be forgotten in 1021.

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Because the Huns had already ravaged Gandhara in 450 CE, the Muslim Ghaznavid invaders of the 11th century left it to neglect instead of giving it the treatment Muslims gave so many other teeming areas of India: plunder followed by destruction of the un-Islamic artifacts. Had the Muslims found Gandhara in its 2nd-century glory, we would see none of its Greco-Buddhist art today. Like the Taliban of Afghanistan, and like Egypt’s Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa, Muslim invaders over the ages have destroyed the cultural artifacts of the conquered peoples as part of the “Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice” activities. (The Torah’s injuction against statues and engraved images, in case you bring it up, is, again, for Jews only—seeing a statue of a Hindu god in India, the only thing the Jew is instructed to do is not worship it or show any reverence toward it.)

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The Kushan Empire was a multicultural success because all its ethnicities and religions accepted a common system of law. Muslims, in contrast, subvert any multiculturalist state into a shariah-ruled state, first by living apart from the state’s laws, as communities which function as states within a state (French term: communautarisme), and then, through the demographic jihad, democratically replacing the law of the host state with theirs.

Even if you’re not a religious non-Muslim, you should wake up to the threat at least for the sake of the works of art you patronize, such as the sculptures of Michaelangelo and Bernini and the paintings of Rafael and Botticelli. They’re not guaranteed to be preserved under a shariah-ruled state.

In full on Our Children Are The Guarantors »

(Hat tip to commenter religion of pieces for the idea of this post.)