Revolution: An Ideology or a Death-Sentence?

I would never claim to be an expert on Islamic, or even Muslim, culture in a million years. Born in raised in Lutheran family, my exposure to this religion was very limited until high school. At that point, the amount of required reading we did on the three core faiths from the Middle East expanded my knowledge and understanding of the Muslim religion. The most extreme, ancient, and conservative of the Muslim denominations is Islam. One terrorist group that identifies as such, a branch from al-Quaida, has started to take over parts of both Syria and Iraq. They identify themselves as the Islamic State in Iraw and Syria (ISIS).

A photo of Zhara Balane before joining ISIS

Zhara Balane posted this photo after traveling to Syria

A recent surge in numbers suggest that women from many parts of Europe, as well as an unknown amount of Americans, are leaving their educations and futures to travel to Syria and Iraq to join the “sisterhood in the caliphate.” Lured by Internet predators, religious leaders, and the desire to make a difference in the world, many girls are leaving behind families for false promises of beautiful land, housing, and compensation for the children they birth. Many of these girls are not even from strict or practicing muslim families. Some have been converted by school friends and stories of children being bombed by the Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad. In total, there have been 50 documented cases of girls leaving in Britain, 40 from Germany, 14 from Austria, and an unknown, but suggested much larger number, from France. Total of both men and women that have left their homes to fight with Islamic rebel extremists is around 3,000. To me, the question is not why they are joining, but why they are giving up everything in their lives. After vigorous research through many articles about the disappearance, I found a quote in an article of a 20 year old originally from Glasgow:

“Most sisters I have come across have been in university studying courses with many promising paths, with big, happy families and friends, and everything in the Dunyah [material world] to persuade one to stay behind and enjoy the luxury. If we had stayed behind, we could have been blessed with it all from a relaxing and comfortable life and lots of money. Wallahi [I swear] that’s not what we want.”

Other psychologists have suggested that the romantic ideas of marrying a soldier and the raw power that the ISIS shows upon its enemies. To become a revolutionary in this modern day and participate in something radical, one cannot simply protest the 99% like Occupy Wall Street. Many of the protests in the European Union and the United States are not radical enough to make the difference that many girls, and boys, long to make on the world. Historically, this phenomenon has been equated to men and women joining communist groups, except this is both more dangerous and extreme.
The average runaway will call their parents after crossing the Turkish border and tell them that they never want to return. Supposed text conversation interviews and social media profiles suggest that many of the girls are happy and devoted to their cause. Experts say this may all be fabricated, though. The image I found that struck me the most was this one.

This girl tweets like a normal teenager yet not exactly. Her entire string of messages have to do with the actions Sharia law or the stupidity of Western civilization. Adding the hashtag “#checkyourself” to the end of a tweet about people not enjoying a beheading is a little bit of a terrifying juxtaposition of cultures. Another girl, @Al_Khanssaa, tweeted “Lol I have American journalists asking me questions about why muhajirahs like nutella while dawla is capturing and killing their colleagues.” They even talking about wanting to behead other people, ending their tweets with “plz.” These text terms and language have been so iconisized into modern culture that the idea of a young woman, some as young as 13, leaving this culture and willingly placing themselves into a place where the women are often sold as sex slaves or become malnourished. Some tweets even suggest the slavery of non-Islamic women. There are even memes to describe their alliance. As said before, the juxtaposition between Western social media culture and the extremist and chilling opinions of the young ISIS girls creates a resocialization of the media.

Meme found on tumblr

Sociologically, this idea of girls leaving their homes to join a radical group does not seem extremely strange. The way that they are treated once they are there, though is another story. The larger problem is that the girls are so willing to believe in this big concept that they disregard reports of women being beaten, killed, and used as sex objects in the caliphate state. They want to believe that they will be the one with a husband who has one wife; that the husband will fight and bring her honor. So, is there no room for a young girl to make a life of her own and assert herself as part of a broader system in Western cultures?
Not really.
Today's institutions make it so that women that decide to go to universities usually are not completely independent until after they graduate from college. Fifteen year old girls are caught by this idea of beginning their life now and romanced by the great adventure it would be. Obviously, their religion has much to do with their devotion to the ideology, but what seems to catch them is the idea that they would belong because they are needed as wives to the ISIS ranks. A woman from the US even joined a military cadet program in Texas so that a year later she could go to Syria and supply information to the ISIS soldiers.
National Security is asking what they can do to keep Internet predators from finding the girls. I say we challenge that and ask what we can do to keep these girls satisfied in the culture into which they were born. What about western culture is so unfulfilling that they need to join an oppressive, violent, and merciless extremist group?