Semiotic analysis of the title of the novel "Al-qhtel Al-shqar" by Tariq Bakari

Moroccan author, Tariq Bekari (1988), is a talented writer who scrutinizes a significant part of the problems affecting the Moroccan and Arab-Islamic societies with his eloquent writing style. The novel “Al-Qatil Al-Ashqar” is one of his prominent works, which depicts anomalies including the prevalence of prostitution, identity crisis, and murder. The title of this work is full of cleverly-chosen signs. In this article, the authors try to analyze the signs in the title of the novel “Al-Qatil Al-Ashqar” with the semiotic method. The results show that the word “Al-Qatil” in addition to its apparent meaning refers to fatal incidents including childhood rapes, emotional damage, loss of dignity concerning shama, identity crisis, and other painful incidents that destroyed a part of Ashqar's personality. In addition, the word Al-Ashqar can symbolically refer to the stigma caused by illegitimacy, specialness, and similar concepts, which is justified by companionship with “Al-Qatil”. In this work, Bekari artistically depicts the transformation of Ashqar's character into a vampire killer and his joining ISIS. In fact, by including various linguistic signs, the author tries to reveal the identity crisis and moral corruption of ISIS leaders