Iconoclasm and strategic thought: Islamic State and cultural heritage in Iraq and Syria

This paper analyses the way in which Islamic State manages cultural heritage sites under its control. Drawing on three different case studies – Sufi, Shi’a and Sunni heritage sites, Palmyra and Mosul – it examines the manner in which the logic of Islamic State’s destruction can be considered a strategy. It is argued that for it to be considered as such evidence of three things need to be present: the degradation and delegitimisation of the existing societal fabric, the removal of all reference to the previous society and an attempt to reconstruct society in keeping with a new ideology. When these three elements are present and interlocking then iconoclasm as a strategy can be said to be manifest.