The effervescent satellite network Al Jazeera put its spotlight last week on the maddening world of fatwas, those Islamic religious edicts riling the lives of believers and nonbelievers from one end of the world to the other. Remember, September 11 was the result of a fatwa by Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahri, and assorted other so-called Muslim scholars decreeing a pact to fight “Crusaders and Jews.”

Ever since this momentous attack on America, Islamic fatwas multiplied. Many simply dictate lifestyle choices for Muslims. Others, however, tell them to wage jihad against various ills and targets, in the name of Allah. When originating with a weighty source, a fatwa can be deadly.

Among the wave of fatwas already out there, some authorize suicide bombings, forbid participation in voting or elections by Muslims living in the West, void marriage between spouses who practice intercourse in the nude (this one from Egypt), and ban the exchange of seasons’ greetings between Muslims and nonbelievers, to cite a few.

Frivolous fatwas have affected people’s lifestyles and mind-sets, including a ruling against the Arab version of “Who Wants To Be a Millionaire,” forbidden by Islam as a form of gambling; a fatwa banning beauty pageants in front of panels of male judges; one demanding that male soccer players wear long trousers to hide their skin; a ban on watching solar eclipses, and another against bullfights. Interestingly, no fatwas were ever issued banning female circumcision.

This past week, Al Jazeera carried a most explosive one: an edict from Egypt’s highest Islamic jurist, Sheik Ali Gomaa, decreeing that the exhibition of any statues is sinful, as is sculpture and those who practice it – going all the way back to Pharaonic temples, Greek and Roman sculptures, and Christian images spanning several centuries, ever since the dawn of history.

Should we prep for a Taliban-style orgy in Egypt? Melting gold statues of King Tut (Tutankhamen is his full name); smashing Cleopatra images; dynamiting the magnificent temples of Karnak; blowing up the Valleys of the Kings and Queens in Luxor; bulldozing the majestic Fila temple; burning Roman, Greek, and early Christian icons, and sacking treasures of civilization in Egyptian museums up and down the Nile Valley?

Sheik Gomaa is no lightweight. To many believers, his words are tantamount to marching orders. He was appointed grand mufti (jurisprudent) by none other than Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak. Several weighty religious figures rushed to his support.

Left standing, this fatwa is a declaration of war, more so as it has been endorsed by the most towering Muslim religious figure alive, Sheik Yusuf Al Qardawi of Qatar. “Islam proscribed all that leads to paganism or smells of it – statues of ancient Egyptians included,” Qardawi said on his Web site.

The very fact that no one of importance flagged these people on an edict that targets nothing less than the world’s cultural heritage is catastrophic. One wonders what would have happened if they declared dictators, not sculptors, to be sinners in Islam?

Targeting civilization in the name of religion has happened many times before in periods of historical darkness. Books and people were burned. Cities were sacked. The Taliban gave it notoriety when they used explosives, tanks, and anti-aircraft weapons to blow apart two colossal statues of the Buddha in Afghanistan.

Indeed, Gamal Al Ghittani, editor of the Egyptian literary magazine Akhbar al-Adab, was shocked at Sheik Gomaa’s fatwa, wondering what would come next. “We do not, therefore, rule out that someone will enter the temples of Luxor or any other pharaonic temple and blow it up on the basis of this fatwa.”

In the aftermath of September 11, this is not speculation. Taliban aside, it happened only 60 years ago in Saudi Arabia, when all pre-Islamic heritages were razed to the ground by Wahhabi zealots. It was only narrowly averted in Iran immediately after the Islamic revolution of 1979, when mobs armed with hammers and Molotov cocktails rushed to assault the magical Persian treasures in the city of Isfahan.

The unanswered question here is, How can so-called religious scholars suggest such a course to their followers without so much as a peep from Arab and Muslim-world governments or UNESCO, leaving it to a few brave souls and Egyptian intellectuals to shine a light in a kingdom of darkness?

As the writer Ghittani said, “It’s time for those placing impediments between Islam and modernity to go away.”