Palestinian Flag with Shahada (Political Parties, Palestine)

Last modified: 2006-02-18 by santiago dotor
Keywords: palestine | text: arabic (green) | text: arabic (red) | shahada |
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by Santiago Dotor and António Martins | 1:2

• Description
• Flag Variants

See also:

• The Shahada or Kalima
• Political Parties (Palestine)
• Palestine

A photo from the Israeli newspaper Yedi'ot Aharonot of 11 July 1999, which was taken the day before at a demonstration in Ramallah (Palestine Autonomy), shows a Palestinian flag with a Shahada on the white stripe. Other flags that are shown in the photo are regular Palestinian flags. It is possible, that this flag is a home made variant.

Anonymous, 11 July 1999

I have made an image combining the existing image of the Palestinian flag and the Shahada as it appears in the Saudi Arabian flag. Of course all of these are unofficial and I guess most are home-made, so none is the correct one. But still this variant is the one most frequently seen on television.

Santiago Dotor, 5 June 2001

Of course Santiago Dotor is right when he says 'none is the correct one'. Most Westerners know the Shahada in the form they have seen on the Saudi flag, though it did also appear on the Afghan flag in the Taliban era. It is in fact highly unlikely that either Hamas or Islamic Jihad would wish to be identified with the Saudi regime, and even less with what they would see as the 'nationalist' (ie. secular) flag of Palestine. They tend to favour banners in black or red with Quranic inscriptions. Their stated ambitions —the triumph of Islam over all its enemies— are of course not confined to the Palestinian sphere, so a flag that was purely national would not serve their purposes.

Maher Mughrabi, 11 September 2002

1:2      1:2

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all three by Juan Manuel Gabino

This photograph scanned from the Yedi'ot Aharonot newspaper shows a Palestinian flag defaced with a red Shahada, probably home made.

Anonymous, 10 October 2000

These three variants of the Palestinian flag with the Shahada were seen during recent demonstrations in the Autonomous Territories. It is remarkable that the Shahada is not the same as in the Saudi Arabian flag or other Muslim banners — here the Shahada is written in a 'plain text', less elaborate form.

Juan Manuel Gabino, 20 October 2001

Two letters are missing in the above three images, a 'lam' in the second word and a 'waw' in the fifth. The Shahada is probably different because these are usually home-made flags.

Anonymous, 21 October 2001

I made the images with a 'western' obverse i.e. the hoist to the left because that is how it is shown in this photograph, with the text clearly reading from fly to hoist. Maybe because it is a home-made flag, the maker did not care about writing the text on the reverse side as occurs on official flags, e.g. Saudi Arabia.

Juan Manuel Gabino, 22 October 2001

I dont think so. Right-to-left writing cultures usually conceive theoretical flag images as being shown with the hoist at the viewer's right hand. Note that 'obverse' and 'reverse' mean respectively 'main side' and 'back side' — nothing is implicit about the fly-hoist position. What I mean is that if the flag is Palestine [or Middle Eastern in general] it is arbitrarily conceived to have its obverse with the hoist at the viewer's left and the reverse with the hoist at the viewer's right. Therefore, if these flags show correct lettering when the hoist is at the viewer's left, then we can say they have a reverse unmirrorred for correct reading.

António Martins, 26 October 2001