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On #IWD2015, thank-you to the @CanadianForces for joining the fight against #ISIL's campaign to enslave women & girls pic.twitter.com/PyVHHrhLD7 — Jason Kenney (@jkenney) March 8, 2015

And, read with Kenney’s reference to ISIS, they suggest to the reader that these scenes occurred under the terror group’s watch in Iraq or Syria.

But Kenney did not explain that the first image is actually from a ceremonial Shia Ashura procession that celebrates the heroism of the prophet Mohammad’s grandson, Hussein, and his family. The girls and women in the photo Kenney tweeted symbolize Hussein’s sister, who was taken in chains to Damascus after he was beheaded.

That is to say, the girls in the photos are actors in a play that depicts events said to have occurred 1,300 years ago. They are not a depiction of the current enslavement of Muslim women. There are thousands of images of these ceremonies online.

UPDATE: The exact origin of this photo is unclear but it appeared online as early as 2010 — before ISIS’s occupation of Northern Iraq — in a news story about the Ashura ceremony in the Lebanesse town of Nabatieh that year.

A Christian equivalent does not readily come to mind, but Kenney’s use of the images against ISIS might be compared to presenting photographs of annual re-enactment of the Crucifixion in a tweet denouncing Romans or Jews.

Kenney, as minister of multiculturalism, would likely be familiar with the Ashura processions, as they occur in many countries with Shia populations, such as Turkey. The ceremonies are perhaps better known for a self-flagellation ritual performed by some men.

Kenney is not the first to misrepresent the Ashura photographs. The same image circulated widely online last year with the false caption, “Muslim girls being lead off in chains to meet their new husbands.” (For a full debunking, see here and here.)