From Jihad Watch Board President Hugh Fitzgerald :
Already statues have been vandalized by Muslims…in both France and Italy. [Such] destruction…and hence part of the histories of Infidels, that so many Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Hindus, and Buddhists in the Middle East, in North Africa, in the Balkans and southeastern Europe, in Central Asia and Hindustan and in southeast Asia know well, now has come to Western Europe…What will happen to the churches, to the frescoes (including that which Muslims have been taped planning to destroy in Bologna)…? Has any organized association of museum curators, or of art scholars, even dared to think of organizing a conference on the protection of art in Europe, and the prohibitions of Islam against sculpture of all kinds, against paintings of living creatures?
What about those who fund foundations that will pay to rescue Roman mosaics from the rising man-made floods that covered Zeugma…but have a new kind of inundation to deal with, the flood-tide of Islam’s adherents, who to the extent that they take their Islam seriously, can only threaten Western art, as they once not only threatened, but managed to destroy, so much of Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Greco-Bactrian monuments, stupas, manuscripts, temples, artifacts…?
Fitzgerald calls upon people of courage – art historians, museum directors, et al. – to raise this pressing matter publicly. In particular, he asks that someone relay the message to Professor James Beck of Columbia University, who is known for his defense of Italian masterpieces.
Professor Beck, Mssrs. Philippe de Montebello and J. Carter Brown, and other luminaries of the art world, are you listening? Time is of the essence.