As tensions rise in Egypt, the ISIS has said the nation’s cultural icons, like the pyramids and the sphinx, should be destroyed.
Britain’s The Telegraph reports members of ISIS have stated that objects shouldn’t be the subject of idolisation or worship.
ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi reportedly said destroying the monuments was a “religious duty”.
British Muslim political activist Anjem Choudary told presenter Dan Cruickshank: “When Egypt comes under the auspices of the Khalifa (Caliphate), there will be no more Pyramids, no more Sphinx, no more idolatry. This will be just”.
This week ISIS launched a wave of simultaneous attacks on Egyptian security forces. There were co-ordinated suicide attacks and ground assaults on the Egyptian military installations, which were eventually repelled with air support by Egypt’s F-16 fighter jets.
But preacher Ibrahim Al Kandari said the monuments were cultural, not religious, and should be destroyed. A Kuwaiti Islamist preacher, he called for the destruction of the monuments, saying just because early Muslims didn’t destroy them, “does not mean that we shouldn’t”.
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“The fact that early Muslims who were among prophet Mohammed’s followers did not destroy the pharaohs’ monuments upon entering Egypt does not mean that we shouldn’t do it now,” Al Kandari told the Egyptian Al-Watan daily earlier this year.
The pyramids and Sphinx are a massive part of Egypt’s tourism industry and are listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site.