antoine-roquentin:

So the Americans distributed this propaganda poster in Afghanistan. Remember, of course, they’ve been there for 15 years. So the Pashto is decent, but the imagery, well, it features a lion chasing down an Arabic phrase often seen on ISIS posters known as “the testimony”. Only that phrase is “there is no god but Allah and Mohammad is his prophet”. It’s a statement that precedes ISIS by about a thousand years and represents one of the most basic tenets of Islam, and would be seen as representational of one’s own faith by virtually every Muslim on the planet. The Americans are represented by the lion chasing it down. They distributed this widely, of course, since the oppressor never needs to truly know the language of the oppressed. The only language he needs to know is violence.

So is the lion like, an Americo-Persian restoration of pre-Islamic religion then? I’d respect that.