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No.174ー1
There Should Be No War between Civilizations
By Eiji Hattori, Professor at Reitaku University, Advisor to Meguro UNESCO
Xuanzang, very famous Chinese Buddhist priest who traveled to India in
order to obtain Buddhist scriptures in the 7th century, is said to have seen in Bamiyan a huge Buddhist statue that gave
off golden gleams. That Great Buddha is now in danger of being completely
destroyed by the Taliban, the revolutionary organization, who now control
ninety percent of Afghanistan. It is not only the Great Buddha that is
in danger. The leader of this fundamentalist movement, Mullah Muhammad
Omar, announced that they would follow Islamic teachings and destroy all
the idols in the country. In fact, the destruction has already begun as
is seen in the blasting of the Kabul Museum. A large number of Gandhara
works of art, the very fruit of the encounter between Eastern and Western
civilizations, a noteworthy event in the history of man, are now on the
verge of ruin.
In order to prevent such barbaric acts, strenuous efforts have been continued-an
urgent appeal made by Ikuo Hirayama, noted artist who proposes the Red
Cross movement for cultural heritage, under joint signature of the curators
of the world's eight major museums; the dispatch of UNESCO Director General
Koichiro Matsuura's special envoy to Afghanistan; an attempt of person-to-person
talks with the Taliban authorities by three members of the Japanese Diet. When
the Id al-Adha holiday is over, however, will the Taliban really stop their
attacks?
It should be noted that the United States and other Western nations are
trying to close in on the Taliban from all sides to suffocate them, condemning
them as the fundamentalists who support terrorists. As a result, one million
Afghans, who have nothing to do with politics, are facing starvation.
What we need now is dialogues that transcend politics and religion. If
we label the fundamentalists inculcated with their tenets as criminals,
nothing will be left but "war between civilizations". Dialogues
will certainly awake reason inherent in all human beings. Mankind should
have enough wisdom to avoid the realization of the nightmarish structure
that Samuel Huntington (*) described. (2001.3.8)
(*) Author of The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order
Reprinted from the home page of UNESCO, Paris