University of Chicago Press The Idols of ISIS – From Assyria to the Internet

In 2015, the Islamic State released a video of men smashing sculptures in Iraq’s Mosul Museum as part of a mission to cleanse the world of idolatry. This book unpacks three key facets of that event: the status and power of images, the political importance of museums, and the efficacy of videos in furthering an ideological agenda through the internet. Beginning with the Islamic State’s claim that the smashed objects were idols of the “age of ignorance,” Aaron Tugendhaft questions whether there can be any political life without idolatry. He then explores the various roles Mesopotamian sculpture has played in European imperial competition, the development of artistic modernism, and the formation of Iraqi national identity, showing how this history reverberates in the choice of the Mosul Museum as performance stage. Finally, he compares the Islamic State’s production of images to the ways in which images circulated in ancient Assyria and asks how digitization has transformed politics in the age of social media. An elegant and accessibly written introduction to the complexities of such events, The Idols of ISIS is ideal for students and readers seeking a richer cultural perspective than the media usually provides. Review "Tugendhaft's book breaks images--and therefore it also makes them. He taps images together, using the ISIS video to sound out the hollowness of contemporary Western culture, from the internet to the United Nations to the war on terror."-- "Christian Century" " The Idols of ISIS comes to us at a timely moment, as scholars are sounding the alarm about how the internet delivers certain images to our lives, and as the scholarly and museum worlds begin to reckon more fully with their colonial pasts."-- "Critical Muslim" "In Idols of ISIS, Aaron Tugendhaft, a descendent of Iraqi Jews and scholar of the ancient Middle East, examines the significance of a video clip which had made the rounds online in 2015. It had showed ISIS militants smashing ancient artefacts using sledgehammers and drills in Mosul Museum, engaging in a modern-day iconomachy, purging 'heresy' from view and existence. Tugendhaft lingers on this specific video because, he argues, it not only shows a quasi-ritualistic demolition but also highlights the correspondence between imagery and politics. He finds in the clip a resonance, ranging from Biblical times to the sectarian turmoil of post-2003 Iraq. In his book, he also explores why the location of Mosul's museum matters, and discusses the apparent paradox in the militants' decision to record the events with a videocamera."-- "Review 31" "The succinct and reader-friendly prose is accompanied by a series of images. . .from ancient temples to modern museums, intersecting always with cultural and political developments in and between the West and what was once unabashedly referred to as the "Orient."-- "Tikkun" "There are reasons and evidence for why 'statues are too terrified to sleep at night lest they wake up as ruins (67), ' as Tugendhaft demonstrates expertly."-- "Hong Kong Review of Books" ""What are we to do with this complicated destruction and iconoclasm, which both draws us in and repels us? I can't think of a better and timelier resource to tackle these immense questions than [ The Idols of ISIS]."-- "Rough Sketch" " Idols of Isis is an engaging piece of cultural criticism, a passionate meditation on the tension between those seeking ideological purity in society and those seeking what he calls pluralistic grey zones of public discourse."--Alan Brill "The Book of Doctrines and Opinions Blog" "There's nothing better than a smart short book."--Bruce Lincoln, author of Apples and Oranges "An elegant meditation on the conflict of images and its necessary role in politics. Looking at the lives of Mesopotamian monuments from Ashurbanipal to ISIS, Tugendhaft shows us how the stories they tell about the building and destruction of images are full of surprising similar