It Can Happen There

Talk about your jealous gods — some in Islam can’t even tolerate the dead ones:

According to several reports in the Arabic media, prominent Muslim clerics have begun to call for the demolition of Egypt’s Great Pyramids—or, in the words of Saudi Sheikh Ali bin Said al-Rabi‘i, those “symbols of paganism,” which Egypt’s Salafi party has long planned to cover with wax. Most recently, Bahrain’s “Sheikh of Sunni Sheikhs” and President of National Unity, Abd al-Latif al-Mahmoud, called on Egypt’s new president, Muhammad Morsi, to “destroy the Pyramids and accomplish what the Sahabi Amr bin al-As could not.”

The Sheikh’s statement might seem like an outrageous, impossible boast — but the Taliban destroyed ancient (and massive) Buddhist statues in Afghanistan over a decade ago. That it happened in the months preceding the 9/11 attacks is hopefully just coincidence.