UK radical Preacher Anjem Choudary echoed Baghdadi’s sentiments, telling The Telegraph: “When Egypt comes under the auspices of the Khalifa [Caliphate], there will be no more pyramids, no more Sphinx, no more idolatry,” saying that the ancient statues’s destruction “will be just.”

Another preacher, Ibrahim Al Kandari, agrees that the cultural monuments need to be destroyed to comply with the Shariah.

“The fact that early Muslims who were among prophet Mohammed’s followers did not destroy the pharaohs’ monuments upon entering Egypt does not mean that we shouldn’t do it now,” he told Al-Watan.

This week, Egyptian military personnel have faced an onslaught of terror attacks, particularly in the Sinai Peninsula, where a terror group loyal to ISIS remains the dominant terrorist outfit.

On Wednesday, the ISIS-affiliated Sinai Province (formerly known as Ansar Bayt Al Maqdis) claimed responsibility for a series of simultaneously attacks against Egyptian military checkpoints, killing, by some estimates, as many as 70 Egyptian soldiers.