by Raymond Ibrahim<\/p>\n
Frontpage Magazine<\/em><\/p>\n Because the article “Calls to Destroy Egypt’s Great Pyramids Begin<\/a>” went viral on the Internet \u2014 read nearly 400,000 times on\u00a0FrontPage Magazine<\/a><\/em>alone where it first appeared \u2014\u00a0as expected<\/a>, the infamous “hoax” charge has been made to lull the West back to sleep.<\/p>\n According to\u00a0Daily News Egypt<\/em>‘s “Another hoax: cleric calls on President Morsy to destroy Giza Pyramids<\/a>,” the calls from the Bahraini cleric I cited “urging President Mohamed Morsy to destroy the Giza Pyramids were issued from a parody Twitter account online, the Daily News Egypt has learned.”<\/p>\n That’s all \u2014 that’s the “proof” that this story is a “hoax”:\u00a0Daily News<\/em>\u00a0Egypt<\/em>(DNE<\/em>) “has learned” that someone was “impersonating” the Bahraini cleric. Unlike my article,\u00a0DNE<\/em>\u00a0offers no evidence, no links, no proofs to back its story: “Just believe us \u2014 you’ll feel better,” seems to be the message.<\/p>\n Some questions: If, as\u00a0DNE<\/em>\u00a0suggests, this was a hoax to scare people over the rising influence of Egypt’s Islamists, why did the hoax perpetrators choose a cleric from Bahrain, a small, foreign nation \u2014 why not parody an Egyptian cleric, which obviously would’ve made for a much more effective “hoax”?<\/p>\n More importantly, why does\u00a0DNE<\/em>\u00a0not address the\u00a0other<\/em>\u00a0sources I had cited \u2014 including Egypt’s very own Salafi party, which is\u00a0on record<\/a>\u00a0calling for the elimination of Egypt’s pyramids? Even\u00a0Elaph<\/a>, “one of the most influential websites in the Arab world,”\u00a0documents<\/a>\u00a0that both the Bahraini cleric and Egypt’s Salafis are calling for the Pyramids’ destruction.<\/p>\n Needless to say,\u00a0DNE<\/em>‘s hoax charge was quickly disseminated by others, who added their own “logic.” For example, after quoting\u00a0DNE<\/em>\u00a0as evidence, one Kate Durham, writing in\u00a0Egypt Today<\/a><\/em>, focuses on portraying me as having an “agenda” (which, of course, I do: safeguarding the Pyramids).<\/p>\n Likewise, after quoting the\u00a0DNE<\/em>\u00a0report,\u00a0Russia Today<\/em>\u2019s “Holy hoax: Radical Islamists call on Egypt to destroy pyramids<\/a>” offered a revisionist history that truly resembles a “hoax,” arguing that “demolishing the pyramids was prohibited during the 7th century \u2014 so the structures remained untouched.”<\/p>\n Really? This almost suggests that the Arabian marauders, who invaded Egypt in the 7th century, pillaging and destroying, were “respectful” of the “cultural significance” of the Pyramids \u2014 perhaps designating them as “tourist attractions”? What about 8th century Caliph Ma’mun, who \u2014 as this comprehensive\u00a0English-language fatwa<\/a>\u00a0dedicated to explaining the Islamic obligation of destroying pagan monuments, including the Pyramids, puts it \u2014 “wanted to destroy the Pyramids in Egypt and he gathered workers but he could not do it”?<\/p>\n What about 12th century Bin Yusif, Saladin’s son and ruler of Egypt? He attempted to destroy the Pyramids, and had an army of laborers work day and night to dismantle Menkaure’s Pyramid, only to quit after eight months, realizing the futility of the task, though his vandals did manage to leave a large vertical gash in the Pyramid’s north face (see\u00a0here<\/a>). What about Egypt’s Mamlukes who, with the advent of gun powder, used the “pagan” Sphinx for target practice, effacing its nose?<\/p>\n After citing the\u00a0DNE<\/em>\u00a0report,\u00a0Huffington Post<\/em>‘s Llewelyn Morgan<\/a>\u00a0offers his assurances: “Let’s be crystal-clear about this right here. The answer to the question in my title [“Are the Pyramids Next?”] is a mile-high, neon \u2018NO\u2019. The pyramids of Giza are under no threat whatsoever, and neither is any of the rest of Egypt’s glorious archaeological record.”<\/p>\n He then portrays me as “scaremongering” and “offer[ing] a deeply misleading account of what has been happening in Timbuktu,” because I had written, “Currently, in what the International Criminal Court is describing as a possible ‘war crime,’ Islamic fanatics are\u00a0destroying the ancient heritage of the city of Timbuktu in Mali<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 all to Islam’s triumphant war cry, ‘Allahu Akbar!'” Morgan explains:<\/p>\n To read that that you’d think that the only Muslims involved in events at Timbuktu were the ones doing the vandalism. But of course it was\u00a0Islamic<\/em>\u00a0buildings that they were attacking. Ansar al-Din, the al-Qaeda-affiliated zealots in northern Mali, consider the traditional Sufi practices of Timbuktu to be heretical.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This is strange logic, indeed. Because the Salafis of Mali consider Sufi buildings insufficiently Islamic \u2014 as all Salafis, Wahhabis, and “radicals” do \u2014 according to Morgan, that is proof positive that the Pyramids, which arepurely pagan<\/em>, are “under no threat whatsoever” from Egypt’s Salafis.<\/p>\n If Morgan’s point is that, by destroying Sufi Muslim shrines, the “al-Qaeda-affiliated zealots” are not practicing “true Islam” \u2014 that’s still neither here nor there. All Salafis \u2014 whether in Mali or in Egypt, whether “al-Qaeda affiliated” or not \u2014 reject Sufism as a heresy and pagan Pyramids as worse; and in Egypt, the Salafis are now out of the prisons and sitting in Parliament.<\/p>\n All of these apologists are unaware that the Koran portrays pre-Islamic Egypt’s Pharaoh as the quintessential infidel, with the result that the Pyramids, the handiwork of Pharaoh, have always been seen by the pious as an affront to the total victory of Islam in Egypt \u2014 hence why any number of Muslim leaders through the centuries tried to lay low those defiant symbols of Egypt’s pre-Islamic past; hence why such calls have again become vocal.<\/p>\n