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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

What are you referring to, when you say "we"? Neither is there "one" islam nor is your specific personal faith identical to what muslims in egypt believed around 700-800 AD. Sure islamism is very dogmatic and has a strong ideal of imperial cohesion (as in: "we vs everyone else"), so that might sound like heresy to you, but not only are there many sects of islam, and there were even more when the majority was illiterate and followed their local teachers, your particular faith is probably very modern and thus devoid of the mysticism and superstition that was omnipresent at that time.

To be clear, yes there are alot of different sects in Islam but in Islam there is one core thing that no matter what, it never changes and that is the Quran (Islam holy book). How its preserved is an entirely different topic but its a book which all Muslims no matter the sect should follow clearly.

Islam sects came to be from different interpretations of certain verses by certain scholars but some verses/core messages are very explicit that there is no question about it, its what would put you under the umbrella of "Islam", some which include idolatry and that its absolutely prohibited and that statues have no power and they wont grant you any blessings nor protection. This is what I was referring to when I say we.

Of course some people will still go out of their way to say no or might very clearly misunderstood or be quite misguided because they were illiterate which would lead to believing many such superstitions but it would be quite a stretch to say thats all Islam where its clearly isnt

You seem to miss my point: i am saying you can't speak for the people conquering egypt in 700AD. You can't describe what they believed, because unlike them you grew up in a culture that eradicated polytheism centuries ago and has only a very abstract idea of what that even means. You can't fathom how people thought in a world where the vast majority of their neighbours burned incenses in front of statues. Yes the hadith calls for violence against such people and their idols, i am not denying that, i am not saying you can't make an educated guess what happened back then, what i am saying is that you should speak for yourself, not for some imaginary "we". Tell me, when you say "we only do it" do you say that you yourself destroyed such statues?

You are right, it was ignorant of me to generalize and phrase it that way. I apologize for this. In hindsight what I was trying to say was: As a current day muslim, what I think based on my core Islamic knowledge & history is that their reason of doing it would be because of said islamic belief which they should have been following specifically since they were converting the churches to mosques.