Ancient Statues in Islamic Context: DAESH’s Discourse - The Response to History

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes the discourse developed by DAESH, focused on antiquity. Beyond its radical and destructive nature, the discourse hides greater complexity than expected, since it disguises its true arguments under the false appearance of a religious conflict, participates in current debates regarding the historical narrative built around archeology, pieces and museums, appropriates of ideas taken from the western and colonialist discourse, misrepresents and reinvents the past, and hides not only the reality of an antiquities trade, but also aims to destroy the existence of other perceptions linked to statues, attached to the memory and traditions of local communities, who saw in these statues much more than mere idols of the Ŷāhiliyya, the time before Muḥammad and Islam.

Keywords:
statues; idols; DAESH; colonialism; archaeology