Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
ISIS Actively ‘Recruits’ Girls And Women Online
ISIS Actively ‘Recruits’ Girls And Women Online
Jan 29, 2026 7:47 AM

In an ugly twist on the world of online dating scams, ISIS (the Islamic terrorist group responsible for much evil in places like Syria and Iraq) is now actively recruiting girls and women in the West to join their cause. Jamie Detmer reports that ISIS is now using social media to seek out females who want to join the cause, mainly by stressing the domestic life that supports it.

The propaganda usually eschews the gore and barbaric images often included in the general fare of jihadist online posts, such as the beheadings last month of dozens of Syrian army soldiers after a base was overrun in the northern Syrian province of Raqqa.

Instead, the marketing focuses on what one analyst calls the “private sphere,” concentrating on the joys of jihadist family life and the “honor” of raising new fighters for Islam. The online recruiters stress the pleasure of providing the domesticity that a warrior waging jihad needs and by doing so serving Islam.

One U.S. analyst warns that this is ing a “pipeline,” moving women from the West to Syria in order to marry jihadists. British officials are believed to have verified about twelve women who have gone to Syria to marry ISIS members. Some cases involve teens girls.

There have been several reports of European women traveling to Syria to join up with jihadists there. In April, two Austrian girls, aged 15 and 16, went missing in Vienna and resurfaced in Syria. They are being sought by Interpol. In May, 16-year-old British twins sneaked out of their home in Manchester and traveled to Syria to e jihadi brides. Salma and Zahra Halane telephoned their parents to tell them they had arrived in the war-torn country and told them “we’re ing back.” And in July, the FBI arrested Denver nurse Shannon Maureen Conley, a 19-year-old Muslim convert, as she boarded a plane to fly to Turkey for onward travel to Syria—she was recruited online, although in her case by a Tunisian man who claimed he was fighting for ISIS.

Umm Layth is purportedly a British woman now married to an ISIS member. She uses social media to assist other women who wish to do the same. She has more than 2,000 Twitter followers, and distributes advice via an online guide:

Biggest tip to sisters: don’t take detours, take the quickest route, don’t play around with your Hijrah [religious migration] by staying longer than 1 day for safety and get in touch with your contacts as soon as you reach your destination.

Even if you know how right this path and decision is and how your love for es before anything and everything, this is still an ache which only one [who] has been through and experienced it can understand. The first phone call you make once you cross the borders is one of the most difficult things you will ever have to do…when you hear them sob and beg like crazy on the phone for you e back it’s so hard,” she writes.She adds: “Many people in present day do not understand…why a female would choose to make this decision. They will point fingers and say behind your back and to your families’ faces that you are taking part in…sexual jihad.”

This is human trafficking wearing a different mask. Traffickers – whoever they are – prey on the young, the vulnerable, the weak. Why would we expect anything different from terrorists?

Read “The ISIS Online Campaign Luring Western Girls to Jihad” at the Daily Beast.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Supreme Court smacks down liberal double standard on free speech
Last week the Supreme Court struck down a Minnesota law that banned voters from going to the polls while wearing T-shirts, buttons and similar items containing politically charged messages. On the surface the issue may seem to be a trivial matter—at best a minor win for self-expression. But the court ruling was major victory against the double standards of the political left. As I wrote back in March, the case ofMinnesota Voters Alliance v. Manskyconcerned a Minnesota statute that broadly...
A Samson Option for Ireland’s Catholic hospitals?
National funding of health care has produced a fresh crisis in Europe. Not merely the never-ending “winter crisis” in the NHS each year, but a crisis of conscience for Catholic health care providers. The Republic of Ireland voted overwhelmingly to repeal the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, recognizing the unborn child’s inalienable right to life. With alarming speed, abortion has gone from illegal to mandatory. According to the (UK) Catholic Herald: Ireland’s Taoiseach [Prime Minister] has said that hospitals with...
Video: Rev. Ben Johnson on First Things blaming democracy and capitalism for abortion
Rev. Ben Johnson, editor of the Acton Institute Religion & Liberty Transatlantic project, appears on the Stephen Herreid Show on YouTube to talk about his critique of First Things editor Matt Schmitz’s essay which blamed democracy and capitalism for Ireland’s repeal by referendum of its 8th Amendment, which “recognizes the equal right to life of the pregnant woman and the unborn.” Latest news here. Read Johnson’s Acton June 8 blog post: ‘Satanic’ capitalism brought abortion to Ireland: ‘First Things’ editor...
Incredibles 2: Making superheroes great again
I saw Incredibles 2 over the Father’s Day weekend, and just like its predecessor, there’s a lot to ponder beneath the surface of this animated film. In the real world we’ve had to wait 14 years, but the sequel picks up basically where the original left off. As the Rev. Jerry Zandstra wrote of the original, “litigiousness and mediocrity are some of the biggest obstacles in our culture. The propensity to settle every dispute by legal action undermines values, such...
The overdue good news Juneteenth
Although bad news travels fast, good news often takes the scenic route. That appears to have been especially true during the Civil War. Although Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation became official on the first day of January 1863, word didn’t arrive in Texas until June 19, 1865. On that day Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed in Galveston with news that the war had ended and that those who were once enslaved were now free. One of Granger’s first...
The shrinking of the administrative state
In just the last year, the regulatory apparatus of the federal government has endured a range of healthy threats and corrections. Approximately1,579 regulatory actions have been withdrawn or delayed, according to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, and that wave is set to continue. “Agencies plan to finalize three deregulatory actions for every new regulatory action” this fiscal year, a recent report noted. “We’re here today for one single reason,” said President Trump said last December, holding a pair...
Introducing The Good Society
Frequent visitors to this blog know that the Acton Institute is rooted in a mission to promote a free and virtuous society characterized by individual liberty and sustained by religious principles. Over the years, our visitors and supporters have begged for an easy way to share this mission and Acton’s core teachings. Last week, our email subscribers got the first look at our newest short film series meeting that need: the inaugural six episodes of The Good Society. The Good...
Berkeley’s ‘mass extinction’ scare just more Malthusian mythology
Too often, environmentalists seem to see humans as a cancer mutilating the earth’s natural splendor, but the idea that fewer people is the solution to the earth’s woes ignores the incredible creative capacity inherent in the human mind. On June 12th, the Berkeley City Council unanimously voted to declare a state of “climate emergency.” The resolution, introduced by Council Member Cheryl Davila, calls for California governments to “initiate a just local, state, national, and global climate emergency mobilization to restore...
The Solow model and ideas
Note: This is post #84 in a weekly video series on basic economics. According to previous videos in this series, the Solow model seems to predict that we’ll always end up in a steady state with no economic growth. But, the Solow model still has one variable unaccounted for: ideas. Ideas do one thing really well, says Alex Tabarrok of Marginal Revolution University, they give us more bang for our buck. This means we get more output for the same...
Is the gig economy really reshaping our work?
We continue to hear doomsday prophecies about the future of work, with much of the fear focused on the recent growth of the so-called “gig economy”—a swirling sphere of temporary, flexible, and increasingly independent work. Epitomized by services like Uber and Airbnb, and scattered across a wider variety of independent and web-based work, the expansion of the gig economy has caused many to ponder whether its rise might mean the end of traditional long-term employment and a gloomy future of...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved