Abstract
AbstractWith the growth of the so-called Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, the world is being forced to contemplate if there is any way we can ever comprehensively prevent cultural heritage of international significance falling into the hands of terrorists. The international community also has to consider the uncomfortable truth that how we handle the current crisis will send a clear message to the next group of extremists: Will the message be one of strength or impotence?
Highlights
“There can be little doubt” wrote Flood in 2002 “that the recent destruction of the monumental rock-cut Buddhas at Bamiyan by the former Taliban government of Afghanistan will define ‘Islamic iconoclasm’ in the popular imagination for several decades to come” (641)
It may be a surprise to realize that the biggest change to impact on issues of archaeological destruction is the advent of social media
There has been a flurry of social media comment1 over the ubiquity of the smartphone among the refugees fleeing to Europe over the Summer demonstrating an alarming lack of knowledge about life in the Middle East, notably a total ignorance of the fact that Syria and Iraq have traditionally had large well-educated urban middle classes who possess such items for the same reasons that the average banker, lawyer or doctor has them in London or Manchester
Summary
“There can be little doubt” wrote Flood in 2002 “that the recent destruction of the monumental rock-cut Buddhas at Bamiyan by the former Taliban government of Afghanistan will define ‘Islamic iconoclasm’ in the popular imagination for several decades to come” (641). In a thoughtful recent article on the subject, Harmanşah (2015) has suggested that the slickly staged videos of destruction with stirring Islamic chants in the background should be viewed more as performative acts than a source of information to be analysed by cultural heritage specialists: I would like us to treat the ISIS videos not as items of archival resource, something to be mined for objective information, but as artifacts of ideological discourse, which will allow us to question their documentary status.
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