I believe that that the strategic purpose that ISIS has for destroying these sites are: 1. They see ancient cultural heritage as a threat to the validity and loyalty of Iraqi or Syrian or to ISIS itself 2. They disregard the nationalist agenda that the statues, temples, and cities represent and they feel that destructing them is a part of their duty. 3. The banish the worship of idols that these sites represent their intolerant Islam encourages them to attack polytheism wherever it is found. 4. They damage parts of the statues and sell stolen antiquities in the global market to earn money and according to the UN, this is being done on an industrial scale which adds millions of dollars to the ISIS war economy (Roberts, 2015).