Time to decolonise: ‘If not now’, then when?

The introduction of this special issue not only underscores the significance of engaging local communities in the reconstruction of their heritage in post-conflict contexts; it also emphasises the necessity and importance of including local researchers from the affected area, in this case the Arab region, in producing knowledge about its rich past. This special issue contributes towards a comparative knowledge base on the obstacles to and enablers of heritage reconstruction, management of cultural resources and recovery of societies in the Arab region. This introductory piece starts with examining the impact of colonial and post-colonial regimes on producing knowledge about the past and how the latter regimes introduced societal elitism in studying the past. I argue that by giving a voice and a chance to local scholars and early career researchers coming from the studied regions (even if they are currently based abroad), we would be taking another step towards decolonising the past by empowering societies and producing local decolonial knowledge about the region’s iconic ruins. Allowing alternative forms of non-Eurocentric (culturally diverse) knowledge production about the past, primarily generated by local scholars, to be introduced, presented, published and promoted would render knowledge production authentic and simultaneously delink heritage from decades of knowledge coloniality.