Paternal Pride and Vicious Religious Puritanism

"As in gangs, the groups know they have to get you to do something pretty violent, pretty quick, so you are then committed. The more you get the person engaged in the actions, the more you get them interacting with other people with equally intense commitments, that's when you get the absolute commitment."
"For some, once they're committed it may mean, 'That's it, this is my moral foundation, and I'm willing to do anything in support of it'. For others, I think the moral principles that got them involved may cause them to be repelled by slaughters of innocent children or burying people alive."
Lorne Dawson, sociology professor, University of Waterloo, co-director, Canadian Network for Research on Terrorism, Security & Society

A boy, 7, believed to be the son of Australian Khaled Sharrouf holds the severed head of a soldier in the Syrian capital of Raqqa. Picture: The Australian

It's not every father who has the opportunity to steep his young boys in the traditions of warfare and the fierceness of jihadist-terror conflict. Nor would most intelligent, humane fathers wish to expose their young children to such horror-saturated experiences. But then, this is an Islamist jihadist who takes huge pride in posting a photograph of a seven-year-old proudly hoisting aloft the severed head of a Syrian soldier. This is reflective of the social values and family pride of a member of the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS).

Published by the newspaper The Australian, Prime Minister Tony Abbott characterized the incident as indicative of "just how barbaric" ISIS is. The photograph, the newspaper reported, had been taken in Raqqa, Syria, now the capital of the Islamic caliphate. Australian jihadist Khaled Sharrouf is pictured standing beside his son. This is a man, father to the boy, who was convicted of terrorism in 2009, and who used his brother's passport to take his leave of Australia last year, wife and three sons in tow.

He was prepared to fight as a committed jihadist in Syria and Iraq. And while at it, provide the opportunity for his young sons to find their future avocations. Presumably, this was just fine with his wife. This is the Sunni jihadist extremist group with no humane compunctions to trouble their conscience, as they leave heads on stakes as grisly reminders that they mean business. Any who remain unconvinced can witness victims buried alive and children murdered with pitiless resolve.

"What's different now than from the mid-2000s is social media" where jihadis can easily broadcast their atrocities far and wide, serving the purpose of both instilling terror in their 'enemies' and enticing recruits who find inspiration in the cult of martyrdom, explained Robert McFadden, senior vice-president with the Soufan Group, a private intelligence security firm located in New York.

Inspiring terror is an effective weapon for the Islamic State, and they are capable of producing terrifying scenarios whenever required, and that is lamentably frequently.

"ISIS is using social media for intimidation, for the fear factor and also it most likely sees it as a recruitment tool for young guys who are just mesmerized by this kind of violence and successes on the battlefield. It's a vicious cycle where it plays into the narrative that they are fearless ruthless fighters for their cause, which they wrap in religion", he explained.

In his previous career working in counterintelligence for the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service, he was exposed to the jihadi mindset through his interrogation of al-Qaeda detainees who informed him "with a straight face and without any hesitation that these tactics are called for in serving their higher ideological purposes."

"It's not so much that that level of bloodthirstiness applies to all of the rank and file, but when you're in that sort of environment with that sort of inculcation, then these types of things tend to feed on themselves, particularly as the battlefield successes grow."