1st Century Buddhist reliquary from Afghanistan, gold and garnets

[Tanuki]

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More about this remarkable item:
https://thewonderhouse.co.uk/the-bimaran-casket-representing-the-buddha-in-human-form

"The Bimaran Casket is a small, gold reliquary which bears the earliest datable representation of the Buddha in human form. Earlier portrays of the Buddha took the form of symbols, such as footprints, a dharma wheel, or an empty throne shaded by a parasol. The reliquary was discovered with coins of the 1st century AD in one of the many Buddhist stupas scattered across the valleys and foothills of eastern Afghanistan south of the Hindu Kush, and is now on permanent display in the Sir Joseph E. Hotung Gallery for China and South Asia at the British Museum.

Gandhara was an ancient province centred on the Peshawar valley in modern-day northwest Pakistan, and Greater Gandhara refers to surrounding regions, including eastern Afghanistan. It was located on the Silk Roads, which connected South Asia with East, Central and Western Asia. Gandhara also refers to a school of Buddhist art.

Buddhism may have arrived in this region from its birthplace in India in the mid-3rd century BC, and some monasteries were perhaps founded soon afterwards, but there is no concrete material evidence to confirm this. Dated inscriptions and coins from the 1st-4th centuries AD are evidence of flourishing Buddhist communities there, and some early examples of these are on display in the Hotung Gallery. For example, the copper-plate ‘Patika’ inscription, which dates to c.AD 1-20, records the dedication of a Buddha relic and monastery in Taxila, in modern Pakistan, by the Indo-Scythian satrap (‘governor’) Patika."...(more)

[JI7]

1. South Asian Islamic countries destroy this history

If these things were found in Arabic Muslim countries they would do a good job with restoring and promoting it.

[Tanuki]

3. They destroyed some massive Buddhist statues that dated back to the 6th century

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamiyan

"The Buddhas of Bamiyan were two 6th-century[3] monumental statues of Vairocana Buddha and Gautama Buddha carved into the side of a cliff in the Bamyan valley of central Afghanistan, 130 kilometres (81 mi) northwest of Kabul at an elevation of 2,500 metres (8,200 ft). Carbon dating of the structural components of the Buddhas has determined that the smaller 38 m (125 ft) "Eastern Buddha" was built around 570 AD, and the larger 55 m (180 ft) "Western Buddha" was built around 618 AD, which would date both to the time when the Hephthalites ruled the region.[4][2]
...
The Buddhas are surrounded by numerous caves and surfaces decorated with paintings.[8] It is thought that the period of florescence was from the 6th to 8th century AD, until the onset of Islamic invasions.[8] These works of art are considered as an artistic synthesis of Buddhist art and Gupta art from India, with influences from the Sasanian Empire and the Byzantine Empire, as well as the country of Tokharistan.[8]

The statues were blown up and destroyed in March 2001 by the Taliban, on orders from leader Mullah Mohammed Omar,[9] after the Taliban government declared that they were idols.[10] International and local opinion strongly condemned the destruction of the Buddhas. Some Taliban sources credited Omar's decision to blow up the Buddha statues to the growing influence of Osama bin Laden.[11]

[JI7]

5. Afghanistan is south Asia not middle east. The middle east does take

care of their history. Look at Egypt .

South Asian muslims tend to be more exteme than Arabic ones.

[TheProle]

7. Egypt has a long history of iconoclasm

https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/touring/striking_power_egypt