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The Islamic Imagery Project Home | Nature | Geography and Political | People | Warfare and Afterlife | Other | .pdf version Foreword Fred Barnard once said that “One picture is worth a thousand words,” summarizing the reason why we focus on pictures as much as words when we communicate with one another. As many people grapple with how to communicate effectively with the Islamic world, understanding the pictures, motifs, and images and, more importantly, the emotions that they evoke is essential. The Combating Terrorism Center at the United States Military Academy is pleased to provide this report on Visual Motifs in Jihadi Internet Propaganda. This report is the first comprehensive cataloging of the most important and recurring images used in violent jihadi literature, websites, and propaganda. These images can have very different meanings in different cultural contexts, and it is essential for students, teachers, and policy makers to have a way to understand the meaning of these images. This project supports the mission of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, which is to understand better the foreign and domestic terrorist threats to security, to educate leaders who will have responsibilities to counter terrorism, and to provide policy analysis and assistance to leaders dealing with the current and future terrorist threat. The Combating Terrorism Center is part of the Department of Social Sciences of the U.S. Military Academy and is closely integrated with the instruction for cadets and the Academy’s outreach and support of projects to educate and inform current and future leaders. The work for this project was done by the team of faculty members in the Combating Terrorism Center, led by Ms. Lianne Kennedy-Boudali. She has done a tremendous job in compiling, cataloging, and indexing this information to put it in a usable form for individuals with limited background in this area. This project would not have been possible without the efforts of Mr. Jarret Brachman, Ms. Lianne Kennedy-Boudali, Mr. Afshon Ostovar, and Mr. Chris Hefflefinger. Additional questions about the project can be directed to Mr. Clint Watts.
The opinions expressed in this report are those of individual contributors and not necessarily those of the U.S. Military Academy or any other agency of the U.S. government.
Preface The study of Islamic imagery has heretofore been the exclusive domain of art historians and museum curators, with pre-modern art being the central area of interest. Thus, there is a palpable lack of information on modern imagery associated with political Islam, especially imagery that is produced by radical, and often violent, Muslim groups. Nowhere is the dearth of critical research more apparent than in the study of jihadi organizations. These organizations have had a brief but prolific history in the production and distribution of visual propaganda, and have arguably created their own distinct genre of Internet-based Islamic imagery. While the tragic events of September 11 highlighted the importance of understanding the ideology and methods of jihadi groups, the process of achieving this understanding is still at the early stages, and the remaining areas of ignorance are profound. The current study on jihadi imagery, the first of its kind, is an important step in this process. Herein, visual propaganda is considered to be more than just a host for textual messages; rather it is treated as an expressive medium unto itself—one which communicates ideas just as effectively, and sometimes as explicitly, as the written word. We regard jihadi imagery to be a primary vehicle for the communication and diffusion of jihadi ideas, and an essential tool utilized by radical ideologues, terrorist organizations, and sympathetic propagandists, which plays to the particular religious and cultural experiences of their audience. Therefore, understanding how these images work, what ideas they convey, why they are employed, and what responses they may elicit, is vital to our struggle against the influence of jihadi organizations and the violence they create.
Introduction Since 2001, the United States and its allies have catalyzed two significant changes in the way the jihadi movement learns, communicates, and recruits. First, by eliminating the extensive network of al-Qa’ida training camps in Afghanistan, the United States has forced jihadist terrorist groups to find new ways to transfer knowledge to their membership. Second, by killing or capturing two-thirds of al-Qa’ida’s senior leadership, the United States has drastically undermined the jihadi movement’s ability to formulate and communicate its strategic vision. In the face of such challenges, the Salafi jihadi movement has adapted, finding new ways to keep the movement driving forward. Numerous analysts have recognized that jihadi websites are rapidly proliferating. The number of radical Islamic websites has increased exponentially, providing religious instruction and operational training; indeed, these websites have created a virtual global community. The Internet is providing a convenient way for jihadist to pass tactical and operational level instruction of the kind that they had been delivering in the Afghan training camps. More importantly, it allows them to paint a picture of their objectives, their enemies, and their strategy using visual imagery. This imagery is a sophisticated mix of graphics and photographs that reference architecture, religious symbols, historical events, and more. Visual motifs accomplish several objectives for jihadi propagandists. First, they create a mental conception of reality for their audiences. The use of carefully edited images evokes existing emotional or historical memories, eliciting an emotional response that may be conscious or subconscious. Often, these motifs tap into deeply held beliefs or intersubjective understandings within a public as a means of communicating an idea. Importantly, Constructivist theory teaches that there is no unmediated knowledge of reality. There are only symbolized, constructed understandings of reality, mediated through language and images. Each viewer of this propaganda, therefore, brings with him/her a unique set of experiences and knowledge, which helps to cognitively frame the messages being promulgated in the images. Secondly, they help the author, or propagandist, communicate a message, which is often a visual argument for something or against something. Texts and language, including imagery, provide interactive ways for jihadis to engage the ideology itself. The notion of resonance, the ways in which a message harmonizes with existing understandings of an audience, is the outcome of this dialectical process. The following report identifies recurring themes within a discrete sample of radical Islamic imagery obtained over the course of the past several years by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. These patterns, or motifs as we call them, pervade most of these radical jihadi websites. For the purposes of this assessment, the Combating Terrorism Center identified one-hundred motifs that commonly occur in jihadi propaganda. The CTC then developed a glossary entry for each of these motifs, and each entry is grounded in a deep reading of Islamic history, culture, language and experience. This report is a “first cut” at a topic that merits much more time and attention, although we have reached a number of preliminary conclusions. It is our belief that these images speak for themselves, quite literally. In most cases, one does not need to be able to read any of the text within the images to understand the broad meanings conveyed by the propagandists. The motifs may have a significant impact on people who are not literate in Arabic so long as they possess a cultural frame of reference that allows them to decode the components of the images. Many of the photographic images that are used by jihadi propagandists were not originally created by the propagandists; rather they have been lifted from other websites and various media sources. The propagandists have re-appropriated these images for their own purposes, both literally and figuratively, and the only modification may be the addition of a terrorist logo, or the name of a city, or individual. In short, originality and authorship do not matter beyond the desire for a particular group to show that it is participating in the global jihad. Although the photographic images are fairly contemporary, the motifs are often based on ancient traditions and historical cultural references. There is a certain timelessness to these motifs, which reflects the authors’ desire to portray their extreme interpretation of Salafi thought as a logical refinement of traditional Islamic thought. The propagandists use easily recognized symbols as a basis for creating new motifs that support a radicalized interpretation of Salafi ideology. The new motifs gain legitimacy when used in proximity to widely accepted symbols and cultural references. An example of this technique can be seen in the frequent use of a photograph of Osama bin Laden on a horse, which connotes his (supposed) kinship and affiliation with the companions of the Prophet Mohammad. Much work remains to be done in order to comprehensively capture and catalogue the full range of jihadi visual propaganda, particularly in regards to monitoring the frequency of existing motifs and identifying the incidence of new motifs. The rate at which particular themes become more or less popular may reflect broader changes in ideology and orientation of the global jihad movement and its sympathizers. It is our belief that this analysis will facilitate greater understanding of the subtleties of jihadi propaganda among counter-terrorism professionals. Creating links between diverse professional fields such as art history, communications, and counter-terrorism will enrich our understanding of terrorism-related issues. Finally, this analysis may serve as a template or reference point for further research in this area. Continue reading >>
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