Islamists Call for Destruction of Sphinx, Pyramids

Weeks after the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi entered office as Egyptian President, calls began to rise for the destruction of those “symbols of paganism” — the Egyptian Pyramids.

That was in late June and early July, but following last week’s U.S. presidential election, Islamic clerics again demanded the destruction of one of the Seven Wonders of the World. 

Murgan Salem al-Gohary, a jihadist leader with ties to the Taliban, called for the “destruction of the Sphinx and the Giza Pyramids in Egypt.” Gohary said “all Muslims are charged with applying the teachings of Islam to remove such idols.” 

More moderate voices within Egypt are trying to counter Gohary, but it’s doubtful how successful they will be when considering the actions of Islamic fundamentalists in other countries. 

Earlier in 2012, Mali Islamists blew up centuries-old mausoleums of “Sufi-Muslim saints in the city of Timbuktu.” In 2001, “the Taliban dynamited the 6th-century A.D. statues of Buddha carved into a cliff at Bamiyan in Afghanistan.”