Jihadi propaganda frequently utilizes important political events or violent struggles occurring within Islamic communities to mobilize recruits and support. These images draw attention to events that have helped to shape the current jihadi movement, and they allow the propagandists to reinterpret the events through their own ideological and cultural framework. A key example of this is the way in which jihadi groups present past and contemporary defeats as examples of violent oppression and injustice inflicted upon the Muslim world, and hence as justification for jihadi activism. This specific image includes pictures of Shamil Salmanovich Basayev, also known as Abdallah Shamil Abu-Idris, leader of the Chechen Islamist rebel movement, and refers to its unsuccessful struggle against Russia during the 1990s.
