spoiler

It’s the seal of Muhammed, used at the end of the letters he sent

  • Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]@hexbear.net
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    9 months ago

    That’s the seal of Muhammad. I’ve been into flags for a long time so basically the moment Daesh started showing up in the news when I was maybe 13 or so I was already hearing about the symbolism of its flag, including that the little circular symbol was the prophet’s seal, which I believe reads “Allah’s prophet Muhammad” – as opposed to the Shahada which says “Muhammad is the prophet of Allah”. The reason for the flipped word order compared to the Shahada is so that Allah’s name is literally above Muhammad’s, which I think is pretty cool.

    All in all the seal of Muhammad is a pretty striking, interesting, historic symbol, but now most non-Muslims only really associate it with Daesh or similar groups. I was at the library recently and saw a book called To søstre whose cover was literally just the seal of Muhammad in order to convey that it was a book about Daesh (specifically about two teen girls who were radicalized into joining). I thought that was a poor choice of cover, that played into basically what ignorant non-Muslims associate with the symbol rather than what the symbol actually means.

    Edit: OK so the word order isn’t actually reversed from that on the Shahada per se, it’s just that you read the words in reverse order.

  • KrupskayaPraxis@lemmygrad.ml
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    9 months ago

    It says Mohammed Rasulallah from bottom to top. It’s part of the Shahada, which is the core of the Islamic faith and which people have to recite in order to become a muslim. No negative feelings about it. This font seems to be the one ISIS uses though, and I don’t like them.

    (But am learning Arabic so I’m not representative of non-muslims as a whole.)

  • KrasnaiaZvezda@lemmygrad.ml
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    9 months ago

    I know it’s something of some significance in Islam, or the culture around it, and that it was recently most prominently used by daesh but I think it has been used in other places historically as well.

  • Alaskaball [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    9 months ago

    my kneejerk lizardbrain reaction would be thinking it’s from ISIS, but from my prior research I know it as the seal of Islam’s Prophet - which has often been co-opted by varying groups throughout the ages for varying purposes.