Expanding the ‘Islamic’ in Islamic heritage

In 2017, in the aftermath of the highly mediatized destruction of museum objects and heritage sites in Iraq and Syria by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), I edited a special issue of the International journal of Islamic architecture that aimed to explore Islamic attitudes to the material remains of the pre-Islamic past (Mulder 2017). The special issue asked whether, particularly in the premodern period, we can discern an ‘Islamic’ notion of heritage value that pre-dated the modern Western European idea of heritage, and in particular it aimed to lay out an initial conceptualization for several distinct types of heritage value accorded by Muslims to pre-Islamic objects, places and localities. In my editorial essay, I advocated for an effort to define the particularities and contours of an ‘Islamic’ heritage. Also in 2017, the first volume of Trinidad Rico’s important new series Heritage Studies in the MuslimWorld was published: an edited volume whose aim was to disrupt established discourses about Islam and heritage. Rico’s collection explicitly sought not to promote an idea of ‘Islamic’ heritage as a definitional category, but rather took a processual approach in examining what contemporary practices of designating heritage value mean in the context of Islam (Rico 2017b, 2). In particular, Rico argued, Turnbridge and Ashworth’s (1996, 20) definition of heritage as ‘a contemporary product shaped from history’ has not been brought fully to bear in mapping Islamic heritage. In other words, the present-centredness of all heritage, including ‘Islamic’ heritage, is largely unacknowledged, particularly in disciplines outside critical heritage studies. In this article, Rico narrows that broader critique to focus specifically on the question of the uncomfortable relationship that the contemporary Western heritage discourse – as an ostensibly ‘secularized’ one – has had with religious practice more generally and its discomfort with the valorization of the religious heritage of Islam in particular. Rico makes a trenchant and insightful analysis, arguing that ‘two forms of knowing and acting upon historic resources (a universal/ secular and a local/spiritual one) have not been acknowledged enough in the literature of contemporary and critical heritage studies’ (p. 111) – thereby pointing to the fact that the modern, Western universal/secular practice of acting on historic resources is frequently seen as neutral, objective and value-free, when in fact it is laden with preconceived notions of value and significance that inevitably guide the work of heritage practice though the support, funding and visibility of the work of international bodies like UNESCO and other preservation and heritage organizations. I echo Rico’s assessment that ‘experts of a global heritage preservation industry are able to easily mobilize a very selective politicization of religious authority’ (p. 113), a critique that is well founded, important and compelling. Here, I’d like build on Rico’s analysis, focusing my response on some thoughts as to how this critique could be further developed if our aim is to move toward a more consistent, egalitarian and just model of heritage practice. As an art historian and a practising archaeologist who has spent the majority of my career working in Syria, I bring my own disciplinary perspective, one developed over many years in the field alongside Syrian colleagues and heritage specialists. Rico’s observations build on her