On one level, he is trolling us with a cartoonish Orientalist stereotype (like Boris Karloff's Fu Manchu urging his Asiatic hordes to "kill the white man and take his women!") with the phallic obelisk mischievously restored to Eastern ownership. The Italian daily Corriere della Sera was quick to take notice of the image, while in the International Business Times, Umberto Bacchi pointed to the gloss provided by ISIS spokesperson Mohammed al-Adnani: "We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women, by the permission of Allah, the Exalted."
It flutters in the image like a skull-and-crossbones raised over a captured vessel, the flagship of Western Christendom reduced to pirate's booty. Its black-and-white flag, inspired by ancient descriptions of Mohammed's own banners, also coincides in color and general design with the Jolly Roger. ISIS is expert at representing its aspirations in prankish, media-friendly terms. It also reverses the West's more recent dispensations in the Middle East, from the divisions of the former Ottoman provinces after World War I to the results of the 2003 Iraq War. The accompanying headline, "The Failed Crusade," imagines a reversal of the West's medieval crusades, launched against the Muslim world from the Holy See. Peter's Basilica in Rome, hoisted atop the Egyptian obelisk that marks the center of the piazza. The Photoshop job in question shows the ISIS flag flying in front of St. The publication features interviews with jihadis and photos of their brutally slain victims, together with other material calculated to entice the devout to join the cause of world domination. In October 2014, an arresting image appeared on the cover of Dabiq, ISIS's slickly produced, English-language magazine. This article was first published on the Eidolon site.
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