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Comment by seren | Hacker News Reader

The most puzzling aspect for me is the reason being given : to fight "Idolatry". Seriously how many people are still adoring Sumerian gods? It would makes some sense if it was still an active religion, but there it sounds absolutely irrational. I know that I am trying to find logic where this is none. This is both infuriating and disconcerting.

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To the fundamentalist, sure-there-is-a-God mind, "idolatry" is not only the practice, it's a "thing" that exists all by itself, by virtue of its own presence as a concept. As long as there are still idols -- images of false gods -- idolatry is still alive and well, even if no one prays to them.

It's the same rationale as behind not allowing the representation of human shapes (or, for most Islam, the figure of the Prophet): to "us", it seems to be a simple case of "then don't fucking draw it", but in fact any representation is, to "them", insulting.

It's not about what people believed in the past or what they believe now, it's about what they might believe in the future.

By erasing all traces of other religions (and even all traces of other philosophical trends), they essentially make their god "The One And Only God". How could future generations believe in anything else than Allah's almighty existence when apparently everything men did or do is about Him?

They are reshaping History in order to shape the future.

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