The Appeal of Islamic State

"ISIS's message is that Muslims are being killed and that they're the solution. ... There is an appeal to violence, obviously, but there is also an appeal to the best in people, to people's aspirations, hopes and dreams, to their deepest yearnings for identity, faith, and self-actualization."
"We don't have a counter-narrative that speaks to that. What we have is half a message: 'Don't do this.' But we lack the 'do this instead'."
"[ISIL on the other hand is about] do this."
Alberto Fernandez, vice-president, The Middle East Media Research Institute

ISIS   In this file image made from a video released Sunday, Feb. 15, 2015 by militants in Libya claiming loyalty to the Islamic State group purportedly shows Egyptian Coptic Christians in orange jumpsuits being led along a beach, each accompanied by a masked militant.

The world, focused on the virulent danger expressed by Islamist jihad as exemplified by al-Qaeda and more horrifyingly by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, tries to understand just what it is and why it is that attracts young Muslims and Muslim converts to the monumentally barbaric exploits of fanatical Islam. Invariably when it is revealed that a young man or a young woman has covertly arranged to leave home to join ISIL in Syria, relatives are surprised and appalled.

They had seen few signs, signals, symptoms of that kind of fundamental strain of Islamist allegiance in their son or daughter. Neighbours speak of well-adjusted families supportive of offspring, and young men and women who have been neighbours who seemed friendly and normal, and who suddenly appeared to veer off into a completely different direction. And would not be persuaded otherwise, when parents became concerned.

But then, mostly parents weren't concerned because they saw no reason to be, since there was never any action or behaviour that might cause concern. One day their son or daughter suddenly was not there; they had decamped, made arrangements through the Internet, coached and encouraged and instructed and gone. Young men setting out on a brave new adventure that called through religious duty. Young woman setting out to become part of that adventure, to create a new world order.

Missing sisters, Sugra Khadija and Zohra Dawood with their children. Photograph: Khan Solicitors/PA

And then there were three sisters from Bradford, U.K. with nine children between them who had arranged to travel to Saudi Arabia for an Islamic pilgrimage. Their return date was June 11, but all have disappeared. Their husbands are frantic with worry about their children, about the decision they fear was made by their wives, and they cannot imagine what impelled them, and why. They only want their wives and their children returned to them, to normal life in Britain.

These are not the impressionable young teen-age girls who have slipped out of their family homes and surreptitiously made their way abroad to reach Turkey and from there meet handlers to escort them to Syria. These were mature married women with the responsibility of raising children. There was 30-year-old Khadija Dawood, 33-year-old Zohra Dawood and 34-year-old Sugra Dawood. Khadija and Sugra left their husbands, Zohra was separated from hers.

Akhtar Iqbal, husband of Sugra Dawood (L), and Mohammad Shoaib, husband of Khadija Dawood, during a news conference to appeal for the return of their wives and children. Photograph: Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Images

The old query used to be: Parents, do you know where your children are? Parents tend to trust their children, they have imbued them with life values, and they feel in so doing have equipped them to make good choices for themselves. An intervening world with its complicated interactions and choices can add layers to choices; if religion is all-encompassing in the lives of people they can be persuaded as with any overwhelming ideology, to sacrifice all for that imperative to honour their beliefs.

According to Erin Saltman and Melanie Smith who authored a report on Western female migrants to ISIL published by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue collaborating with the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization, given the striking "diversity within the profiles of women becoming radicalized and migrating to ISIS territory", it is not possible "to create a broad profile of females at risk of radicalization."

What will remain puzzling, however, is the seeming lack of awareness of the pride that Islamic State takes in its hideously brutalizing agenda, circulating videos of their exploits as a sadistic killing machine, indulging in the very worst of human traits to inflict the horrors of mutilating pain and fear into those they mean to kill in the absolutely most brutal ways imaginable, from beheadings to crucifixions, suicide missions to immolations, mass slaughter to mass rape.

Eagerness to join the ranks of such a group of morally degenerate barbarians extolling the virtues of their religion while blatantly executing the utmost of savagely depraved atrocities against other human beings is beyond understanding, yet young men and women feel compelled for some strange reason to commit themselves to the savages that take such special delight in torture and murder.

Leaving Mr. Fernandez's explanation of appealing to "the best in people, to people's aspirations, hopes and dreams", as an explanation of ISIL's success in attracting adherents sound tritely convenient, contributing nothing of any value in understanding of this addled phenomenon.