Discourse Analysis of the Dominant Elements in the ISIS Terrorist Group's Actions with an Emphasis on Anti-Shi'ism

The Takfiri terrorist group ISIS served as a tool for Western colonialism to create crises in the Middle East and expand the wave of anti-Shi'ism. This group, largely supported by Western colonial powers and some Arab countries in the region, was established to advance these agendas. A discourse analysis of ISIS reveals that the central node of its discourse is the concept of the caliphate. Additionally, the floating signifiers within ISIS's discourse, which revolve around the core concept of the caliphate, include violence, the idea of a potential clash of civilizations, media centrality, the involvement of foreign forces in the Islamic world, the weakening of anti-Israel sentiment in the Islamic world, opportunities created for the Zionist regime, the weakening of Iran's strategic depth and ideological power, the destruction of the Islamic Republic of Iran's model of religious democracy, migration, and martyrdom.
In terms of discursive articulation, the key elements in ISIS’s propaganda structure include topics such as Takfir (excommunication), anti-Shi'ism, apostasy, jihad, monotheism, member recruitment, conflict and hostility, the chain of equivalence in discourse, the chain of difference in discourse, metaphorization, identity within ISIS’s structure, and the accessibility of ISIS's discourse as its primary features.