Semiology for image analysis of takfiri slogans

Semiology is the study of signs and symbols as a significant part of communications in a way that enables the follower to identify public and implicit messages in general to realize the objectives of communicator.

Professor Saeed Benkarad says that semiology is not only about a unique subject but it also tackles everything that belongs to the human experience. According to him, we cannot talk about semiotics unless we consider the action of the humans outside its direct manifestation.

Semiology, or semiotics, is defined differently due to the nature of the two schools that created this field of knowledge. The social science was founded by Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure who defined the new science as "semiology," and American logician Charles Sanders Peirce, who defined it as “semiotics”.

Despite the controversy over the actual founder and proper naming of semiology, there are two schools: the Geneva School, founded de Saussure, and the American School founded by Pierce as mentioned earlier.

In general, semiology is concerned with numerous subjects, i.e. analysis of literature, caricature, short story, poetry, image, film, and color. That has opened the way for the recognition of various meanings of symbols.

Semiology may be used to analyze the emblems of the slogans used by Islamist movements and terrorist groups, including the images and sentences. The slogans include flags, in addition to sentences, which can be analyzed by semiology.

The Muslim Brotherhood

Every political group selects a slogan that represents its positive concepts to introduce itself easily to the public, even if their actions are totally different. For example, the Muslim Brotherhood tries to show goodness and peace through the colors and icons of its slogan.

The group’s slogan hasn’t been changed since Hassan El-Banna founded it in 1928. The group’s flag comprises a green background with a picture of the Holy Qur’an on the top in golden color.

In general, the green color symbolizes life, fertility, growth, hope, peace and optimism. This truly reflects the group’s false promises since El-Banna and until today.

The golden color indicates wealth, glory, revolution, light, life, and activity. That reflects the group’s schemes to achieve political empowerment. That is rather evident in the group’s writings, which are full of vague terms.

The Holy Qur’an and the sword used symbolize the Islamic faith as El-Banna wanted the motto to stress that the Brotherhood monopolizes the Islamic religion. The Brotherhood also wanted to lure the public support via wooing their religious passion.

ISIS

Obviously, ISIS is clearer in showing extremist ideology compared to the Muslim Brotherhood despite the fact that the Brotherhood is the main source of terrorist concepts of promoted by its theorists such as Sayyid Qutb and others.

ISIS has taken a more extreme inclination with a flag comprising a background, a text and one single icon. It is a simple logo, but it clearly voices the group’s ideology.

The black color indicates death, destruction, evil and humiliation. By all means, this introduces the organization’s ideology world, saying: “We carry death, evil and destruction to you”.

There a sentence that reads: "There is no God but Allah". The terrorist groups and Kharijites use such text despite its holiness to hide their malicious objectives.

They want to persuade the public that they are only doing this to hold the flag of Allah. However, that is clearly a big lie as Allah did not order death and destruction.

The group’s icon is a white circle with the phrase "Mohamed, the Messenger of Allah", featuring a picture of Prophet Mohamed’s seal.

Although the white color indicates joy, hope and optimism, ISIS uses it for other purposes such as showing the Prophet’s seal.

The terrorist organization insists on lying even via its motto as it wants to show the public that its objective is to embrace the banner of ‘No god but Allah, Mohamed is the Messenger of Allah".

This holy Islamic phrase has nothing to do with all of ISIS’ atrocities.

Hezbollah

Hezbollah is an important political player in Lebanon. Its role is not confined only to the country’s internal affairs, but it also extends to regional affairs.

Hezbollah’s flag comprises a number of elements. The background is yellow with the name of Hezbollah written to the top. There is a hand holding a gun.

The Islamic Resistance in Lebanon is in the bottom of the flag. The yellow background may refer to joy, pleasure, life and activity, or indicate disease and death. Hezbollah shows to its supporters that it has goodness and optimism. However, it seeks death to its opponents.

Hezbollah placed its name on the flag in green, which indicates goodness and growth.  It placed the “Islamic resistance in Lebanon" in red, which indicates fatigue, hardship, death, war and fighting.

In conclusion, the Islamist movements designed flags and slogans that are based on their principles and intellectual literature to employ the image to convey a message.

These movements seek to show positive slogans through the color like the Muslim Brotherhood, or text like ISIS, or an icon like Hezbollah. However, they also show negative aspects, through the color like ISIS, or the icon like the Muslim Brotherhood, or text like Hezbollah.

The Islamist groups share similar intellectual roots and propaganda designs as well.