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The 's Impact On Canadian Constructions Of Heritage And Islam

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Spectacle and the Universal: ISIL’s Impact on Canadian Constructions of Heritage and Islam Context and Research Question: In August 2015, after capturing the ancient Roman site of Palmyra, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) spectacularly exploded the remains of the Temple of Bel and the Temple of Baalshamin. They immediately spread the images of their destruction online by creating videos and news reports. ISIL’s acts of destruction mark the largest-scale mass destruction of antiquities by one group since the Second World War (Kulish and Myers 2016), and their videos are extremely effective in disseminating their spectacles outside of the Middle East. Scholars in art history, archaeology, and law consider these acts the destruction of cultural heritage (Harmanşah 2015; Bauer 2015; Brodie 2015; Drasewska 2015; He 2015; Kila 2015). In particular, ISIL’s videos seek to defy Western European ideas about cultural heritage which are often cast as universal (Meskell 2002, 568) and engage a worldwide audience through carefully articulated performances. However, the many Canadian journalists using digital media to protest the destruction and reassert their own humanitarian, cosmopolitan, and civilized heritage values clearly mark the success of this strategy (Manley 2016). In fact, a trend emerged where popular news stories claim that ISIL is destroying the heritage that belongs to all of humanity (Harmanşah 2015, 173). Some scholars dispute the validity of this

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