Naming the Sacred. Religious Toponymy in History, Theology and Politics

2019

Anna Mambelli / Valentina Marchetto (eds.)

V&R Unipress

Starting from a comparison between the voices of some late antique witnesses, such as Libanius and Eunapius, and the edict issued by Mullah Omar in 2001, the author argues 1) the archicidium – that is, the destruction of statues and temples by extremist religious groups – is not new to history; 2) the attack on the global cultural heritage that ISIL is carrying out today cannot be attributed to an iconoclastic matrix, that is, a fundamental hostility to the image intrinsic to the Islamic religion and theology. The conclusion is that the archicidium has nothing to do with iconoclasm, but with the vandalising, brutal intention to eliminate the symbols of a past political order.