Imam Shamil: The First Muslim Guerilla Leader

The tragedy that overtook and continues to befall on Muslims in the shape of the destruction of their independence and power would have been sufficient to kill their will to live, were it not for a group of fighters who refuse to concede that slavery can be the destiny of Muslims. Muslims have continuously nurtured the sentiment of Jihad in their hearts. Imam Shamil's story of jihad against the Russians is a part of the same story. Little is known of the Muslims of Chechnya and the occupation of their lands by the Tsarist Russian invaders. The Sufi movement in the Caucasus in the eighteenth century was not a Muslim cult occupied merely in chanting God's praise: their jihad movement led by Imam Shamil is an epic story of faith in God and a legacy that Muslims cherish, to be retold from generation to generation.