TO-LURE-RECRUITS

To lure recruits, ISIS uses pics to glamorize group
Much attention is paid to the extreme, distressing and sadistic propaganda disseminated by ISIS, who go to great lengths to circulate images and videos of the atrocities it commits. Yet little attention is paid to what could arguably be considered the most dangerous propaganda emerging from the group — the pictures and videos that attempt to normalize and even glamorize life within ISIS — and are used as a recruiting tool for the extremist group.

This week, a Western 'jihadi bride' found herself being chastised by fellow ISIS supporters for going off message with a picture of women posing around a luxury BMW. The same woman also posted a picture of a group brandishing guns in a similar pose often struck by their male counterparts.

This image suggests power and a sense of parity with male militants, but it is undermined by the recent ISIS document unearthed and translated by the counter-extremism think tank Quilliam telling women their position would be confined solely to the home and the service of their militant husbands.

Charlie Winter, a researcher at Quilliam, said propaganda attempting to normalize militants plays an important role in constructing an image of ISIS as a way of life as opposed to just a group. "It's all pretty clear what they are trying to get across — that ISIS is not just a jihadi group fighting, it is setting up a state. It's no longer a group even, it's a political machinery."