I was reading a number of articles about “Jihadism” for my Middle Eastern politics class last week and came across something interesting in the propaganda used for recruitment and support by terrorist organizations. I found some great examples of how Al-Qaeda uses audience targeting, symbolism and imagery to not only effectively communicate their message but also make it difficult for others to denounce. Many of them are long and require thorough explanation so I just put in one ( the best one in my opinion) as an example.
In Osama bin-Laden’s “Decleration of War” he claims that “Hypocrisy stood behind the leader of global idolatry, behind the Hubal of the age — namely, America and its supporter s.”
Below I have added a short excerpt from one lengthy article by Michael Doran that describes the meaning of this sentence:
“Because the symbolism is obscure to most Americans, this sentence was widely mistranslated in the press, but bin Laden’s Muslim audience understood it immediately.
In the early seventh century, when the Prophet Muhammad began to preach Islam to the pagan Arab tribes in Mecca, Hubal was a stone idol that stood in the Kaaba — a structure that Abraham, according to Islamic tradition, originally built on orders from God as a sanctuary of Islam. In the years between Abraham and Muhammad, the tradition runs, the Arabs fell away from true belief and began to worship idols, with Hubal the most powerful of many. When bin Laden calls America “the Hubal of the age,” h e suggests that it is the primary focus of idol worship and that it is polluting the Kaaba, a symbol of Islamic purity. His imagery has a double resonance: it portrays American culture as a font of idolatry while rejecting the American military presence on the Arabian peninsula (which is, by his definition, the holy land of Islam, a place barred to infidels).
Muhammad’s prophecy called the Arabs of Mecca back to their monotheistic birthright. The return to true belief, however, was not an easy one, because the reigning Meccan oligarchy persecuted the early Muslims. By calling for the destruction of Huba l, the Prophet’s message threatened to undermine the special position that Mecca enjoyed in Arabia as a pagan shrine city. With much of their livelihood at stake, the oligarchs punished Muhammad’s followers and conspired to kill him. The Muslims therefor e fled from Mecca to Medina, where they established the umma as a political and religious community. They went on to fight and win a war against Mecca that ended with the destruction of Hubal and the spread of true Islam around the world.
Before the Prophet could achieve this success, however, he encountered the Munafiqun, the Hypocrites of Medina. Muhammad’s acceptance of leadership over the Medinese reduced the power of a number of local tribal leaders. These men outwardly accepte d Islam in order to protect their worldly status, but in their hearts they bore malice toward both the Prophet and his message. Among other misdeeds, the treacherous Munafiqun abandoned Muhammad on the battlefield at a moment when he was already woefully outnumbered. The Hypocrites were apostates who accepted true belief but then rejected it, and as such they were regarded as worse than the infidels who had never embraced Islam to begin with. Islam can understand just how difficult it is for a pagan to leave behind all the beliefs and personal connections that he or she once held dear; it is less forgiving of those who accept the truth and then subvert it.
In bin Laden’s imagery, the leaders of the Arab and Islamic worlds today are Hypocrites, idol worshippers cowering behind America, the Hubal of the age. His sword jabs simultaneously at the United States and the governments allied with it. His att ack was designed to force those governments to choose: You are either with the idol-worshiping enemies of God or you are with the true believers.”
Another example of how skillfully bin-Laden uses propaganda is when he implicitly compares the US/West as an equivalent to the Mongol threat. The Mongol threat refers to the time that the Mongols had sacked Baghdad and Islam’s “decline” had formally began.
Of course, most political propaganda also uses many literary tools to sway the masses. Hitler’s Germany and the Soviet Union are filled with countless examples of such practices. They are also easy to find today if you know how to look.
