ISIS recruits

[MichaelEmouse]

What are the typical profiles of ISIS recruits, especially the ones who join from Europe & North America?
In terms of thoughts, feelings and behaviors, how do they tend to be before joining ISIS?

What do they think and feel about joining?

Anything else interesting about them?
How similar are they to those who joined anarchist movements at the turn of the 20th century, those who joined communist movement in the first half and middle of the 20th century and those who joined Western communist terrorist organizations in the 60s & 70s?

[Mr.Kobayashi]

Psychologist John Horgan quoted here says that ISIS casts a surprisingly large net regarding the motives of potential recruits; *“It is an equal opportunity organization. It has everything from the sadistic psychopath to the humanitarian to the idealistic driven.”

As far as foreign fighters are concerned, Horgan said, they are driven to join ISIS by the need to “belong to something special.”

“They want to find something meaningful for their life,” he said. “Some are thrill seeking, some are seeking redemption.”*

Or it could just be about power, going from a nobody to nightmare.

From what ICSR research fellow Shiraz Maher told the Times, it’s largely about feeling important.

“Can you imagine, a 20-year-old kid whose peers are getting drunk, obsessed with finding a girlfriend, as opposed to doing something in Syria or Iraq that, within an hour, gets a response from the president of the United States?” Maher said. “Obama doesn’t know what a 25-year-old manager at [clothing retailer] Primark does, but if he goes to Syria and becomes involved with the Islamic State, he goes from being the manager of a second-rate clothing store to someone giving headaches to the president of the United States.”

This jives with the psych research. According to the work of DePaul University psychologist P. J. Henry, people who perceive themselves as having low status are more violent than people who are high status. This research suggests that low-status people might be using violence as a way to feel important.

A captured ISIS recruit from Turkey talks on the lure of the organisation’s promises of community;

The man said he joined ISIS to get away from his life in Turkey, where he had few friends and his parents were pressuring him to study, marry and “straighten up” his life.
…
The prisoner was promised $50 per month along with a house and a wife. ISIS members also showed him “videos that made it look amazing,” he said. But he said that life under the group was not what he hoped.

[Arkcon]

MSN had a story about the young women joining ISIS, some of them actually admitted they knew that ISIS can’t create a perfect Islamic society as the Koran describes, there are simply too many difficulties in this world. I was pretty floored, they know it won’t work and they still want to join? Why?

Basically, they’re registering a sort of “protest-vote” against more moderate regimes that still restrict personal freedoms, despite claiming to be an secular state based Islamic principles. What I see is some sort of personal backlash or grudge against governments that might try to censor or arrest some fire-brand cleric, or maybe something simple, like requiring a hijab for schoolgirls, yet maintaining relations with Israel or the US.

It just sticks in some peoples craw and they react.