As the people of the world watched the statues disappear into the dust cloud, the first thing passing through their minds was most likely...Why? If anyone were to ask any person on the street who did not know much about the situation they would most likely respond with a very simplified answer of they wanted attention and to gain publicity, but there is, in essence more to it than just that. While it was a very despicable thing to do, and people would probably not accept what they had to say about it being a part of their religion, it is important to understand at least the back-story to what they say the reason is for their actions are.
To do this, one has to venture back, both many centuries and specifically a couple weeks to look into the events leading up to this final act of destruction. As well as the ancient beliefs of Islam that seemed to be at the center of all the tragedy.
It was not quite yet the day of the destruction, and yet the UN had been receiving disturbing and upsetting messages for the last few days that gave them much cause to worry. Various threats from the Taliban militia regarding the destruction of two colossal ancient relics were becoming more and more worrisome, and the threats more insistent despite pleas not to go forth with the action.
At first it had been merely rumours, most of which had been vehemently denied by the Taliban, but those quickly turned into threats. The threats were to destroy the tallest standing Buddha's in the world, declaring them to be "nothing but stones, and ignored others countries plea's not to, insisting that the history of Afghanistan comes second to the history of Islam, which forbids idols of any kind. Nothing the people in the UN said would sway them, as they kept responding with examples from their religion, and stating these statures MUST be destroyed, as Allah is the only one who should be worshipped. To them, they say it is their duty to Islam to destroy the "idols” that were being worshipped, which were at this time the Buddha’s of Bamyan.
Before this however, there had been issues in the Museum, where reporters and foreigners were not allowed to enter. There had been rumours that the statues of Buddha, some over a thousand years old had been already smashed by the Taliban. The place was guarded by Taliban and no one knew what was going on until a few UN envoys were allowed in, only returning to describe it as “very sad”.
The Taliban say they are doing this for the Muslim religion, but even when the Islamic leaders began stating that this is “not a very Islamic thing to do”, and “a crime against humanity” the Taliban ignored them, it could not just be about the religion. After all, these were the leaders, the clerics and such who were supposed to be ones looked up to in the religion. It could be thought then that the Taliban were merely using very select texts and rules for their means, and thus give them a response to every question asked of them about why they were doing all this destruction of ancient and precious, mainly Buddhist artefacts. But even with these excuses, it was a very hard thing to accept, for anyone, despite the Taliban continuously insisting this was the reason. \
However, there are probably many other reasons for it, including the fact that Islam has always been hostile towards Buddhism because of all their idols and the fact they “were not of the book” and thus seen as enemies of their non-idol allowing religion. They would be considered easy targets, and even since this destruction of their heritage they have yet to really fight back against it. Also, the Taliban had been asking for a few years now from the UN to provide them with funds, and yet they were denied, at least until they halted the protection of people like Bin Laden. This did not go down well with the Taliban, and they began describing with anger how the UN will put millions into restoring and protecting statues and artefacts but will not help the people of their country. This, along with the dislike of the Buddhist’s and perhaps taking their Islamic beliefs a little too far, was all in conjunction the real reason why the Taliban ended up destroying the statues on March 2nd, 2001. It was an archaeological tragedy, and although this was the most dramatic destruction, as the sheer scale of it was enough to spark worldwide attention, there was yet more destruction upon the smaller, yet no less important objects within the country. Other, very valuable things like the objects in museums, paintings or even film that showed life of any kind had to be destroyed in their eyes because it depicted things that lived, and humans were supposedly not allowed to attempt to re-create the life that their God, Allah, had made for us in the first place. And so, while the statues crumbled into nothing, yet more tragedy had yet to be committed.