Let me correct Arbibi Ashoy on one specific point, foreign institutions did offer to buy up and relocate the statues but the Taliban in their bigotry refused, fully bent on destroying the cultural treasures ( [#1]Taliban right to destroy statues [/#], March 6).

The writer advocates the destruction of all cultural artifacts that do not subscribe to one set of religious values. In such a vein, this will also justify the destruction of the Mughal era treasures in a predominantly Hindu India, the Mosque in Sian in China where Muslims form a minute part of the Chinese population and the Alhambra in overwhelmingly Catholic Spain.

What will happen to the cultural richness of the world if we are to follow such blind bigotry to its logical conclusion?

One cannot view the world only from the eyes of one religious group or we will all be fighting to no end.

Destroying cultural and religious structures is normally the first steps that a group will take to justify the extinction of views opposed to their own. It eventually carries on into genocide, the ultimate crime against humanity.

The Taliban by their recent acts have joined the ranks of the barbarians who destroyed civilisation in Roman Europe and the Nazis in Germany who exterminated non-Aryan art as the scourges of mankind.