Dr Kurstin Gatt, a lecturer at the Department of Oriental studies, set out to decipher linguistic strategies of manipulation devised by the self-named ‘Islamic State’ (a.k.a. DᾹʿISH) in a new publication entitled Decoding DᾹʿISH: An Analysis of Poetic Exemplars and Discursive Strategies of Domination in the Jihadist Milieu.
The scholar argues that if we want to understand the logic of jihadi groups, we must make sense of the daily messages with which individuals are bombarded, and decode these ways of communication to address how people come to embrace such deadly cults. By investigating primary jihadi sources in Arabic, the researcher examines the group’s laudatory slogans, single words, sempiternal images, and poetic verses which are subtly imposed on those living in the jihadi milieu in a million repetitions and taken on board mechanically and unconsciously.
From a literary and discursive-analytical perspective, Decoding DᾹʿISH looks into how Jihadists have turned the classical Arabic ode (qasida) into a potent weapon to shape political choices. Like pre-modern Arabic poetry, jihadi poetry engages in negotiating power relations, instructing doctrinal beliefs, and rousing warriors to battle. The book shows how flowery language with pseudo-Islamic overtones makes children and adults cling irrationally and emotionally to a course of action.
But more importantly, it reveals how authentic cultural artefacts are instrumentalised to legitimate brutality as virtue, concentrate bigotry, eulogise violence, and give a veneer of truth to the jihadi propaganda. The academic argues that the retooling of the classical poetic tradition should not be underestimated or dismissed merely because it is manipulative and distorts the tradition, for it is precisely in the way jihadi poetry mimics the Arabic-Islamic tradition that its danger and discursive power lies.
The findings of this publication show that our knowledge of Jihadism needs to be grounded in a profound understanding of the cultural logics of mobilisation, identity structures, and belief systems of jihadi groups. Decoding DᾹʿISH may be of significance to scholars in the fields of Arabic and Islamic studies, political studies, media and communication studies, and also for anyone interested in following underrated strategies of manipulation in jihadi propaganda.
Decoding DᾹʿISH is the latest volume of the series Literatures in Context (Litkon) published by Reichert Verlag. It is also available Open Access. More information can be found online.