A semiotic reading of the theme of jihad in Surah Muhammad (PBUH)

Semiotics is an approach in literary criticism that has the potential to explore how meaning is created in literary texts. This text-based method with a systematic approach studies all the factors that are involved in the production and interpretation of meaning or in the process of signification, and tries to achieve the key points of the text and its semantic layers. The Qur'an, as the foremost literary texts, has presented its teachings and long meanings in each surah in the form of an extensive network and a chain of sign systems. The present article, based on the descriptive-inferential method, has considered the theme of jihad in Surah Muhammad (PBUH). This reading examines the text of the surah as a system of codes and theological signs, in a coherent framework and in different structural layers of phonetics, lexicon and syntax-rhetoric. The signs in the text of this surah move away from their main function through the axes of companionship and succession and according to the context and atmosphere governing the surah and take new meanings.