On February 26, 2001, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan ordered the destruction of “all statues and non-Islamic shrines” in the country. In March the ministers of culture and finance destroyed 2750 of the nation's art treasures; after a month of intensive shelling, the Taliban government obliterated the statues of the Buddha in Bamiyan. At the end of December 2001, a conference of Islamic legal scholars (‘ulama) was convened on the subject of cultural heritage at Doha, Qatar. In between, of course, came the September 11, 2001, attacks (9/11).

This chronology matters for many reasons. Without Bamiyan it is unlikely that these Muslim scholars would have addressed the issue of cultural heritage so directly. Meeting only weeks after 9/11, these mainstream scholars may have been concerned about the protection of their own pre-Islamic heritage against extremists who had proven their destructive intent. It may be true, as the Muslim chaplain to Cambridge University J. M. Butt (citing a Washington Post article of November 21, 2001) argues, that documents captured in Kabul show Taliban leaders did not favor the Bamiyan action until isolation and the influence of foreign radicals prompted their deed. But when it was done, it was done in the name of an Islam with which many Muslims were unwilling to associate themselves. Indeed, many Muslim scholars and politicians had pleaded with the Taliban not to destroy the Buddhist site. One of the consistent themes in the volume drawn from the Doha conference, therefore, is the question whether non-Muslim heritage is entitled to preservation under Islamic law.

On this matter the contributing scholars are largely in agreement. So long as a statue or sacred precinct is not publicly used for idolatrous worship or the denigration of Islam, it is the duty of Muslim governments to protect it. Citing numerous Quranic provisions and statements attributed to the Prophet, most Islamic scholars have long held that if the original intent of the site or vehicle for the preservation of a group's identity has changed so that idolatry is absent, even the sacred artifacts of nonbelievers are to be protected. This has been the position taken toward the monuments of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, and the contributing scholars are quick to note that neither the early caliphs nor subsequent leaders have ever sought to destroy those sites. In his review of Islamic law, Sheikh Araki, director of the Islamic Centre of England, nevertheless adds the condition that “there can be no justification for the preservation of whatever has been definitively shown to be false or invalid by means of clear evidence in reasoning or sharî‘a law, and whose preservation serves no useful purpose, such as propagating the truth or eradicating and weakening falsehood” (p. 41). Araki's position, that cultural heritage is not an unqualified right but one that depends greatly on the uses to which it is put, is modified by that of Maulana Khan, who states, “Every group or community has its own particular culture and has the absolute right to safeguard that culture” (p. 66). For most Muslims, however, cultural attachments, just like blasphemy and public attire, are affected by context, local practice, and the absence of any definitive pan-Islamic legal authority. Just as nonbelievers have been taxed or limited in their civil rights at various times in Muslim countries; so, too, the Bamiyan case cannot be taken as assurance that a unified concept of inalienable cultural heritage rights is now the common view held by all Muslim governments and intellectuals.

Because many of the objects of cultural identity depict the human form, it is also important to understand that the contributors to the Doha conference are more prepared than many ordinary believers to acknowledge that there is no basis in Islam for the claim that all representations of persons is forbidden. Pictures of family members, a revered ayatollah, or powerful political leaders may be common; but to most Muslims, portraits—especially of the Prophet—threaten a descent into idolatry and are thought to be forbidden. But as even the more conservative Doha scholars repeatedly note, the Qur'an and traditions indicate no simple bar: Indeed, the Prophet himself is said to have preserved the image of Jesus and Mary on first entering the most sacred site in Mecca and to have approved a picture of his future wife Aisha. Thus, to the scholars at Doha cultural heritage may include pictorial representations of humans, even three-dimensional forms like those at Bamiyan, that are no longer the subject of worship.

Almost every contributor also refers to the central Quranic proposition that, had he wished to do so, Allah could have created all people the same. Where this notion informs the constant search for information about others' practices, encourages contacts at long distances, and revels in the multiplicity of how individuals can form bonds of interdependence that repel social chaos, these Islamic scholars apply the idea of desirable cross-cultural contacts to both the general quest for knowledge and the universality of cultural heritage. In the Qur'an the word for knowledge is the second most frequently used term after the name of Allah, and the Prophet's admonition that one should seek knowledge “even unto China” is no less applicable to an understanding of the ways ties may be formed with others than to forms of arcane religious study. Against this broad emphasis on knowledge is added (in the words of Khan) the idea that “no government is vested with the right to interfere in the cultural affairs of another community” (p. 66) to yield the conclusion that “in matters regarding the preservation of the cultural or historical heritage, the stance adopted by Islam is the same as that of other traditions and disciplines” (p. 67). Reassuring as this emphasis on universal principles of cultural heritage may be to liberal ears, it is, however, important to remember that restrictions may still be encountered, as in the West, if the representation is regarded as obscene or offensive. Thus even the House of Lords, at the time of the Salman Rushdie affair, ruled that one could only blaspheme against the Christian religion, and consideration would have to be given, beyond the broad consensus on the assertion that the destruction at Bamiyan was (in UNESCO's words) “a crime against the common heritage of humanity,” to local concepts of privacy, offensiveness, and the common weal (p. 11).

The brief statements and analyses offered in this bilingual publication by the participants in the Doha conference may or may not have differed if the incident around which they were formed was not the destruction of the Buddhist figures but the demand that the statue of Muhammad be removed from the balustrade of the New York Court of Appeals (as it was, under Saudi prompting, in 1955) or the removal of the figure of the Prophet from the north frieze of the U.S. Supreme Court building (which has not occurred) when Americans claim that the entire line of notable lawgivers is part of their cultural heritage, even though it gives offense to some Muslims. And matters may look quite different if one is discussing restrictions on the renovation of Coptic churches in Egypt or the preservation of minarets in Switzerland. What one can take away from the Doha conference, however, is that although local concepts of free speech and cultural representation will always affect the actual content of international declarations and covenants, there is, in this realm at least, some common basis in experience and doctrine for building a consensus around the meaning of what should be included within the category of cultural heritage. Indeed, the Doha statements even suggest a common basis for seeking more refined concepts of the public and the private, valued diversity and coherent identity, and representational meaning and utilitarian forbearance. If we can rejoice that we were not all created as one nation and must therefore form bonds of differential attraction, it may be in this field of cultural heritage that Muslims and non-Muslims may find common ground in situations that deeply affect their own and one another's history and identity.