Fitzgerald: Start your own list

But then you look only at what has happened since the new century began, since 2000. And here is a tentative list off the top of my head:

Bamiyan Buddhas, 1,500 years old, in Afghanistan, destroyed by Taliban with explosives, and technical help from Saudi and Pakistani engineers.

Tomb of Joseph in Israel, the grave marker reduced to rubble by the "Palestinians," despite that site supposedly being sacred to Muslims as well as to Jews.

A Hindu temple in Kuala Lumpur, where Hindus and Chinese both labor under the disguised Jizyah of the Bumiputra system.

Orthodox churches and monasteries, destroyed in Kosovo and Bosnia, in full view of NATO troops, the U.N., and the world's media.

And then, of course, the thousands of churches destroyed in Indonesia, as recorded by the Barnabas Fund.

The remaining Greco-Bactrian artifacts among the tiny holdings in the Kabul Museum.

The damage done to the Temple Mount structure by the excavations and vandalism to Solomon's Stables from the "Palestinians."

Statuary vandalized by Muslims -- both Christian statuary in a church in northern France, and pagan statuary in the Piazza del Popolo.

The medieval Armenian cemetery of Jugha in Azerbaijan -- obliterated by Azeri authorities.

Oh, these are just things that come off the top of one's head. Should one recall the damage done to the Parthenon by Turkish Muslim troops, or to the Sphinx by generations of Muslim Arabs in Egypt, or to damage to the monuments of classical antiquity or left by other pre-Islamic civilizations, all of which are, in the Muslim view, worthless, part of a general Jahiliyya (time of ignorance), and not to be treated with respect or interest.

Start your own list. Do what Sita Ram Goel and other Indian scholars did in compiling merely a list of the thousands of Hindu temples destroyed by Muslim invaders. Make up a list, for example, of the Christian churches of Constantinople, for five hundred years the richest, most important city in all of Christendom.

Go ahead. Now look that list over. Now think about the Louvre, the Prado, the National Gallery, the Uffizi, the Alte Pinakothek, the Rijksmuseum. Think of what those who followed the strictures of the late Sheik Bin Baz, or the still-living Al-Qaradawi, or the primitive Ahmadinejad, or the Grand Mufti of Egypt Ali Gomaa, would do to the contents of all those.

What do you propose to do about it?

Thailand has offered to pay to rebuild the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan. If Hamid Karzai does not permit this rebuilding, then the Americans will have a clear sign of what this "new" Afghanistan is all about. But they needn't wait. They need only read about the rogues' gallery of assorted bullies, former Taliban members who have decided to be slightly less Talibanish, drug lords and those who profit from the drug trade, and of course those battening on American and other Infidel aid, and now making out like gangs, or gangbusters.

And if Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, two of the three countries (the third was the U.A.E.) that recognized and supported the Taliban regime, do not offer to relieve Thailand of the payment, even though it was apparently Saudi and Pakstani engineers who made the destruction possible, then that too will tell us something.

Consult an article I wrote earlier, "But who will save the monuments?," for more on what has happened to non-Muslim artifacts and monuments and religious sites around the world. And don't be surprised to read tomorrow of irreversible damage done to Temple Mount from what the "Palestinians" have been doing with their digging inside.

Surely archaeologists and art historians must never return to any Muslim country any artifacts were acquired. In fact, the more of historic and esthetic value that is removed from such countries, the better.

Which brings us to Western Europe. What is going to happen, what has already been happening but under-reported, even in newspapers of the very places where the damage is being done, when Muslims start to destroy that fresco in Bologna, or the madonnas in museums, or what is in Assisi or in the Louvre, or the Rijksmuseum (starting perhaps with one of Rembrandt's rabbis), or in all the other museums, large and small, from the National Gallery to the Ashmolean and the Fitzwilliam, from the Louvre to the Musee Guimet and the Musee Nissim Camondo, in every country where Muslims, taught what Muslims are taught about sculpture and paintings (see Al-Bukhari, and read closely), take their Islam seriously.

Why, after all, would you expect them to do anything less? At least, at that moment when they feel they are powerful enough to act on their beliefs?

What is done with art will be done and is being done with the laws, customs, understandings, and settled life of the Infidels. It is happening in classrooms and in courts, in police forces and in the security services, in the press and radio and television, in government offices, wherever Muslims can make their views known and intimidate, by their presence or by making known that they are watching, the apparently helpless Infidels.

Those Infidels should no longer stand by helplessly, but should move to save our heritage before more of it is destroyed.