If Mulla Mohammad Omar, Afghanistan's reclusive leader, had put a gun to the world's head, he would not have received more instant attention than he has done by ordering the destruction of his country's most precious cultural icons.

Countries as far apart as Japan and Norway have expressed their horror and consternation over this decision. As rockets and tank shells are said to have blasted the magnificent giant Buddha statues at Bamiyan, the crescendo of criticism has grown. All kinds of proposals have been put forward, including the suggestion that a wall be built around the offending Buddhas. There have been offers to dismantle them and transport them to more hospitable lands. Smaller statues have been smuggled out of the war-ravaged country to private collections around the world. Japanese collectors have long been notorious in commissioning Pakistani and Afghan freebooters to dig up and loot all kinds of early Buddhist relics.

For a country in desperate need of international assistance, Mulla Omar and his fellow Taliban have been acting rashly in squandering any lingering goodwill they might have enjoyed. Their bizarre, stone-age attitudes have continued to shock world opinion; the current manifestation of religious fanaticism is only the latest in a series of self-inflicted wounds.

At a time when drought threatens to devastate what is left of their agriculture and poverty is driving growing numbers of Afghans from their homes, one would have thought the Taliban would be more, not less, conciliatory. But perhaps they have been driven to this extreme measure by tightening United Nations sanctions. With nothing to lose, they may be lashing out at the West where these spectacular statues are more admired than they are in a country travelling back in time. This is literally a case of cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.

To be sure, this latest bout of iconoclasm is nothing new: Moses urged his followers to smash all idols as they found their Promised Land. Byzantine Christians witnessed a movement to destroy all icons representing Christ. The civil war in England saw the destruction of hundreds of representations of Madonnas and the Infant Christ. The Wahabi movement in Saudi Arabia supervised the destruction of early and pre-Islamic relics. But acts are judged in the context of the times, and it is currently unacceptable to destroy national cultural heritage.

Mulla Omar has based his decision on his vision of Islam, but it is a vision shared by very few of his fellow Muslims. Even Maulana Samiul Haq, the Pakistani cleric whose madressahs have trained much of the brawn and the brains of the Taliban, has advised the Afghan leadership to sell the Buddhist statues to the West and use the money to benefit their people. But Mulla Omar is adamant that he is merely carrying out the Islamic edict to bar idol worship, never mind that there are no Buddhists in Afghanistan to actually venerate the statues, and for years there have hardly been any tourists to admire the gigantic masterpieces.

But this latest act in an increasingly perverse but tragic drama in Afghanistan is in line with the Taliban's weird notions of Islam. From their harsh treatment of women to their fixation about facial hair, they have attributed their wildest actions and edicts to religion. The problem is that even the most orthodox Muslims have refused to accept the Taliban's obscurantist interpretation of the faith. When women are punished publicly for accidentally showing an inch of their ankles, it is difficult to reconcile this with Islam's message of forbearance and forgiveness. And when music is banned on Afghan radio, it is not easy to understand how it flourishes in other Muslim countries if indeed Islam frowns upon it.

Basically, we need to understand the cultural context the Taliban have grown up in. Many of them are the children of the war of liberation their fathers waged against the occupying Soviet army. They grew up in refugee camps in Pakistan, and received such education as they got in madressahs where the only texts were the scriptures taught by barely literate mullahs. Most of them are Pashtun villagers from the most backward parts of a very backward country. Their grasp of religion is based on a literal interpretation of poorly understood texts, and there is a tendency to ascribe ancient tribal customs to Islam. Thus, the traditional place accorded to women in a very backward tribal society has acquired all the weight and solemnity of religious dogma.

Indeed, it can be argued that religion is generally blended with social and cultural mores as it is integrated into a society. The marriage customs of South Asian Muslims, for example, have less to do with Islam than with traditional rites prevalent in the region. Similarly, we have absorbed Hindu attitudes towards caste, which are at variance with the Islamic notions of egalitarianism. But in both cases, ignorant people will swear that these customs have religious sanction. All over the world, people hold beliefs that are not found in any religious texts, and yet ascribe them to the faith they follow.

In unsophisticated, insular societies like Afghanistan where years of war have either killed or driven away the educated elite and middle class, there are no countervailing opinions and views to temper their extreme (and untenable) interpretation of Islam. As the Taliban have conquered most of their benighted land (with Pakistani assistance, let it be remembered), they have come to believe that their military success is due to the purity of their faith. This makes it harder for them to accept that they may be wrong in their view of what constitutes the correct vision of Islam.

Pakistan is the only country in the world to have any leverage with Kabul. We not only aided the Afghan resistance to Soviet rule - suffering a tidal wave of heroin- and Kalashnikov-related crime as a result - but both our establishment and fundamentalist organizations have given crucial military, moral and diplomatic support to the Taliban. But for their own reasons, our rulers have chosen either not to influence the Afghan leadership to moderate its extremist policies or have decided not to interfere. In either case, Islamabad has shown a short-sightedness that runs counter to our interests. The rest of the world sees Pakistan to be almost as blameworthy as Afghanistan.

Encouraging an extremist regime next door carries a price tag, and we are paying that price now. The Taliban are ferociously opposed to the shias of Hazara, and this attitude is mirrored among sunni militias in Pakistan. The recent spate of sectarian killings is an indicator of the cost of fanning extremist fires around us. Islamabad has made the serious mistake of thinking it can neatly separate what is happening in Afghanistan and Kashmir from events in Pakistan.

Unless our leadership can douse the fire it has helped lit in the neighbourhood, it will consume our nation as well.