The OIC meeting is imperative as the Taliban Supreme leader Mulla Mohammad Omar has not only dismissed the international outrage over his week-old edict to demolish pre-Islamic relics, he has claimed their destruction as "a tribute to Islam and Afghanistan".
Omar accused non-Muslim nations of trying to refashion Afghanistan's Islamic identity into one more acceptable to them.
"The non-Muslim world is united against the Taliban, but we will not be deterred. We will keep our Islamic way,''Omar said in a statement carried by the Taliban's Bakhtar news agency.
''It has given praise to God that we have destroyed them.''It is important that the Organisation of Islamic Conference, the world's largest Islamic body, should be convened in an emergency session to show that it is not just individual Islamic leaders, scholars and nations which had condemned or criticised the Taliban actions, but the entire Islamic World is united with the non-Islamic World in regarding the pre-Islamic artefacts in Afghanistan as the priceless heritage of mankind which does not belong to any single nation or religion.
The failure of the special UNESCO envoy Pierre Lafrance sent from Paris to Kabul in his mission to dissuade the Taliban from destroying the relics has added greater urgency for an OIC meeting.
The Iranian President, Mohammad Khatami, who said that the Taliban under the ''guise of Islam'' commited acts that were ''inhumane, violent'' and against culture, also supports the convening of the OIC meeting.
The burning of a copy of the Koran and the tearing of posters of Islamic shrines in New Delhi on Monday to protest the Taliban destruction of ancient Buddhist statues must be condemned by all right-thinking people regardless of nationality and religion, as the desecration of one religion cannot be justification for the desecration of other religions.
It would be most tragic if the medieval barbarism of the Taliban in Afghanistan should lead to religious riots in India and other countries for this would be the triumph of the primitive Talibans not only in Islam but in other religions as well.
However, the world-wide repercussions of the cultural barbarism and religious intolerance of the Taliban is a salutary reminder to all peoples, nations and religions that in the era of globalisation, no nation or religion can isolate itself from the consequences outside the country or its own faith for any barbaric or uncivilised act.
(7/3/2001)