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Comment by reaperducer | Hacker News Reader

The noses are broken off in order to deprive the statues of their power.

It's the same reason the the Muslims scratched out the eyes of Jesus in all of the mosaics in the Hagia Sophia.

Wasn't that done because Islam rejects idol worship and the visual depiction of prophets?

I don't know. All I know is what I overheard a tour guide telling her group when I was there. But it makes sense, because I saw the same thing at all of the Christian churches I visited in Turkey.

As a Muslim, I can confirm we only do it because we reject idol worship and the visual depiction of any living being, particularly prophets. We dont believe in any power being present in statues. Just wanted to let you know :)

It doesn't justify the destruction of historical artifacts, though. :/

Working people up into a frenzy and giving them targets to assault is a time honored way to rise to power.

Statues don’t fight back. Real trouble is when you run out of statues.

Except in this case, it's not mob manipulation, it's calculated theology.

We have people tearing down statues in America.

Who the crap has a beef with Lincoln.

  This isn’t out of the blue, people are stirring them up.   People that have agendas.

> Who the crap has a beef with Lincoln.

IKR? Doesn't make sense anymore. But I was talking about the parent topic, which was the theologically-motivated scratching out of the eyes of figures in mosaic images.

Very pointed comment. It shows these illiterate people of 700 AD who tried to apply the Quoran rules on idolatry and tried to destroy statues (surely they must have) were no different from the quasi illiterate idle but raging mobs of Portland and Seattle.

Certainly yes, but its not historic if it was done in their time is it? I mean Islam has been around for 1400 years, this could have been done ages ago when the church was relatively new - also I believe most of those churches were converted to mosques (Muslim prayer place) which would justify some re-configuration for their usage. This is taking into account that this was their land/property, anything else would be going out of line, exceptions could be made of course for how offensive something is.

Such iconoclasm is certainly not unique to Islam. Many older Christian churches in the UK saw their crucifixes, statues and stained-glass windows defaced by Puritans, out of belief that Catholic symbolism was idol worship rather than any superstition about the crucifixes having any actual power

People worshiped idols. Chritians came and treied to convert them.

Heathen; “ don’t tread on me, I’m not giving up my idol!” Christin “okay fine, pray to this figurine of a saint”

Heathen: “so I can worship this idol of Saint Bernard?”

Christian: “ummm, itSs not a, ummm, okay close enough”

Proving once again that min/maxing arbitrary metrics leads to weird results.

Going even further back, the issue of idolatry was a major point of conflict in the early days of the Orthodox Church.

Correct but actually any depiction of any living thing was banned (I know this was true historically) that why you see amazing pattern designs over muslim architecture and not paintings.

Better info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aniconism_in_Islam

Hagia Sofia is a church though.

It was a church when it was build. Now it's a mosque

nope, they are not scratched out: https://www.google.com/search?q=jesus+Hagia+Sophia

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