Regulative Autorität und Ikonoklasmus beim Islamischen Staat

Abstract

Just like other actors involved in conflicts around power in Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State regularly destroyed cultural properties. However, the movement deliberately puts these destructions on display and frames them as a pivotal element of its efforts to purify the sociocultural landscape. We argue that the Islamic State seeks to make its iconoclastic actions meaningful by interpreting them as characteristics of a permanent struggle between monotheism and its antipodes. Furthermore, the movement uses the destruction of ancient architecture and various sites of religious practice to enforce its regulative authority and prevent nonconforming behavior. In this sense, its iconoclastic actions not just target cultural objects, but even more so local communities and their sense of identity, which the Islamic State seeks to eradicate and replace with its own vision of a ‘genuine’ Muslim community.