![enter image description here][1] [1]: https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4744/38832808380_8e6ccd10fc_k.jpg **Photo by B. Neil** ## **Memories of Utopia: Destroying the Past to Create the Future** ## ## Aims and Background ## Utopia is an imaginary landscape of the past or future, which is based on an ideological pursuit of purity and happiness. There have been many ideological movements in history which lay claim to a pure religion of the past, one that is unsullied by political or moral compromise. One such movement in the current day is ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) or Daesh, which lays claim to a purified Islam, as lived and preached by the Prophet Muhammed (d. 632). Conflicting claims to a utopian past dominate current conflicts between Muslim supporters and opponents of Daesh in the Middle East, as well as Muslims and Christians in all parts of the world. This is evident from pleas to preserve the historical monuments of Syria which hark back to the “birthplace of civilization” and the “cradle of Christianity”, just as much as in the battle call of those who seek to destroy monuments in the lands of the new Islamic State, who see themselves as wiping out idolatry and restoring a pure (Sunni) Islam. The strategies – physical, rhetorical and political – that are used today in apocalyptic discourse to reframe and erase history for utopian ends were in fact also common strategies in Late Antiquity. In the pre-Islamic context, the religious struggles of Late Antiquity involved pagans, Jews and Christians. Destruction in the name of utopian ideals, then as now, operated on various levels: the rhetorical destruction of the written past and the material destruction of the physical past, in the form of shrines and oracles, churches and temples, statues and inscriptions, and religious images. The exclusive rhetoric of religious superiority easily escalated into violence (Bremmer 2014; Dijkstra 2015b). The investigators aim to uncover a hidden record of similar supremacist discourses operating in Late Antiquity (300-650 CE). Our initial analysis of the literary, documentary and material evidence suggests that such discourses were often accompanied by acts of violence and destruction of objects of religious and cultural significance. Such discourse and destructive actions characterized both inter- and intrareligious conflict in this period, with profound effects on the later history of the Middle East. There are three major themes: a) writing (and rewriting) the hagiographical recordof conflicts between Christians in the Middle East; b) the destruction (past and present) of religious art and architectural monuments in Syria; c) forging a Christian identity in the Holy Land through the cultivation of sacred sites. **-B. Neil, ARC Discovery Project Proposal**