T H E W A R O F I M A G E S . OR T H E B A M I Y A N P A R A D O X
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international community, diverse comments were made o n the theological
tile 1-aliban's decision t o destroy the giant Buddha statues at Diimiyin. Their act, under cover of archaic justifications,
tllllctionedalong the lines of a very contemporary logic which, ironically, was based more o n a relationship with images rooted
(;l~ristianitythan on one instituted hy the I s l a ~ nso fiercely defended by the "students of religion."
To understand that decision we need to consider the meaning of the ancient act of image-breaking. Yet, if we are not
to be lost in infinite relativism, we also need t o be able t o disregard that, which - from destruction of antiquities t o the Chinese
cultural revolution - is a matter o f tropism that is t o o general t o have meaning in this particular case: in all circumstances and
all eras, h u n ~ a n shave broken objects, for countless good and bad reasons. If we confine ourselves t o the particular act of
destroying images f o r religious motives, we need t o stress the point that the frame of reference here is monotheism, the religions
of The Book: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
A p , i , ~ ~F R O M P R O T E S T S T H R O U G H O U T T H E
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AII I m a g e s A r e Not I d o l s
[ hlonotheism conveys a fundamental problematic relationship with fig~lrationbecause it was developed
against idolatrous
1 beliefs and was able to impose itself only in opposition to them. N o t all images are idols; they become s o only when they are
I adored, when believers relate their faith t o objects, thus endowing them with s ~ ~ p e r n a t u rpowers,
al
instead of t o the single
I and transcendent God.
Against these practices, monotheistic religions advocate different attitudes. The Old Testament condemns the creation
[
[ of images ("Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image" is one of the Ten Commandments), independently of what
they represent. Islam, in the Hadith (the Prophet's comments reported a posteriori) if not in the Koran, ~ r o s c r i b e s"the effigyn
but without saying of what. It also forrnally ~ r o h i h i t any
s claim t o represent God. This leaves a lot of room for other ~ i c t o r i a l
and even figurative undertakings, and even representations of humans, something which Moslems have not hesitated to d o
throughout the centuries1 -even if in Sunni Islam (the main branch) images remain a relatively rare mode of expression which
isoften the suhject of suspicion. From the outset, Christianity had a less hostile relationship with images than the two religions
strictly based on transmission of the divine word. For Christians, the word was made flesh in the body of Christ, "the Son is
the image of the Father." It was o n these foundations that the C h ~ ~ r c ohn s t r ~ ~ c t eits
d doctrine legitimating icons and which,
with the Council of Nicaea in 787, put a n end t o the iconoclastic quarrel.
This doctrine condemned "icon breakers," the ety~nologicalsense of "iconoclast," a misleading term, for iconoclasts
had nothing against images - o n the contrary, thep wanted t o reserve their use for the emperor rather than the Church. By
Securingthe right t o f i g ~ ~ r a t i o-nincluding God, the Virgin, etc. - in the name of the founding image that Christ had been,
the Church gave itself a powerful means of spreading its message.
It was on this basis that the relationship with images prevailing in the West was founded; one that articulates the visible
the invisible in a very particular way. This relationship with the invisible was tile hedrock of the legitimacy o f Christian
Imagesand of ~ L I ~ Lpictorial
II-e
art in the West.
This "Wester~l"relationship with images is, paradoxically, at the center of the destructive act committed by the Taliban:
the
bearers o f an "Easterny' c~1lture,Islam, against the legacy of another Eastern cultore, the statues o f Buddha. In
and
Le Murlde, 13 March 2001
fact it was not "religious" idols in the classical sense that were
destroyed by the Afghan rulers; as Mullah Omar himself said,
"there are no more Buddhists in Afghanistan to revere" what
he called "the famous Bamiyin Buddhist statues."
O n the other hand, it is highly significant that, after
seeing Buddhist statues in the Kabul Museum, opened for a
short while, the mullahs launched a campaign against objects
inherited from the pre-Islamic past. If a transcendence does
inhabit these objects, if a belief that the fundamentalists can
perceive as rivalling their religion is conveyed by them, then it
is nothing other than the fact of being perceived as works of
art (which was obviously not the meaning given to them by
those who carved the Biimiyiin giants in the fifth century of our
era). This cultural belief, elaborated in the West, is currently
one of the main bonds uniting what is called the international
community (and which by no means comprises the world's
entire population).
It is against that community and against a relationship
with the world that values a non-religious relationship with the
invisible, that the dynamite which destroyed the giant Buddhas
was used. Protest by that same international community in the
name of those same values thus looks like a pathetic
misinterpretation. At the same time, to find an effective
weapon against that community, the Taliban who wanted to
deny images and their power failed to escape the same fate: they
I
also did politics with images.
Translated from French by LIZ Libbrecht