The Taliban, the Bamiyan and Us: the Islamic Other

Abstract

This article addresses current Western representations of Islam, taking as its point of reference the Taliban's destruction of the giant Buddhas in Bamiyan, Afghanistan. The author places this event, which has been seen as proof of that movement's extremist fanaticism, in the context of attitudes condemning images in several religions - Judaism, Protestant Christianity, Buddhism itself, African religions - and in secular puritan ideologies such as those which led to the vandalism during the French Revolution. The author shows how this act, far from being something exceptional and characteristic of Islamites, belongs to a set of iconoclastic puritanical attitudes which feature in the history of many societies, including Western society.