 The topic’s just too big for a blog, but I’ll stir the waters a little anyway. (photo from channelnewsasia.com website)
I read today that Thai Buddha statues have been banned in Cambodia because they distort “Khmer Buddhism”. It seems that the beef is in the representation of the holy figure. According to Cambodia Daily news, “The Thai statues are different from their Khmer counterparts in that they have longer noses, more feminine hands and a different figure. Thai script is written on the back, and Chao Sikano said portraits of the Thai king are embedded inside the statues.”
Another recent ban has been the one on statues of women that’s being enforced on Pakistan’s Frontier area. It’s against Islamic law to represent women in sculpture, apparently.
Of course, that got me thinking about statue banning in general. Where did the banning come from? What’s so powerful and so imbedded in mankind’s consciousness that they feel banning images is the only answer?
Of course, there is the biblical ban on “graven images”. As a matter of fact, most of the statues that are banned or forbidden are done so for either religious or political reasons.
More on the topic later.
10:03:14 AM 
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