Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
ISIS Actively ‘Recruits’ Girls And Women Online
ISIS Actively ‘Recruits’ Girls And Women Online
Jan 30, 2026 2:50 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
Legatus Magazine & Acton Round-Up
The Acton Institute’s staff is heavily featured in the July/August issue of Legatus Magazine. First, there is a brief review of the Rev. Robert Sirico’s new book, ‘Defending the Free Market’: He shows why free-market capitalism is not only the best way to ensure individual success and national prosperity, but is also the surest route to a well-ordered society. Capitalism doesn’t only provide opportunity for material success, it ensures a more ethical and moral society as well. Next is Samuel...
‘Religion Takes us into the Marketplace’
On The Foundry, Sarah Torre writes about the many faith based challenges that remain to the Obamacare law. There are many organizations that are religious in nature, but are not themselves churches. ply with the new health laws, they will pelled to provide conscience violating services. Towards the end of the post, Torres quotes the president of Geneva College, Dr. Ken Smith: The issue that we have with the entire law is that the Obama Administration has tried to define...
‘That’s not fair!’ — a lesson in living in a free society
If you’re a Facebook fan of YogaFit Training Systems, you can get 15 percent off its conferences. If your kid gets good grades, he or she can score free nuggets at Chick-Fil-A. Presenting your military ID will get you a discount at Advance Auto Parts. And many independently-owned Ace Hardware stores offer 10 percent discounts to senior citizens. Does a business have the right to offer certain discounts to certain people in order to bolster business and offer a service...
America the Acquisitive?
Last week, in ...
Share Your Summer Reading Favorites
Have a new book, or one not so new, that you’d like to mend to PowerBlog readers for packing away to the beach and vacation spot? Add your picks to ment box on this post. Let’s begin with five books selected by Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg, who was a contributor to National Review Online’s symposium, “Got Summer Reading?” By Samuel Gregg For those who sense we’re presently reliving the 1930s (sigh), this is the book Paul Krugman and the...
What life was like in 1776
During the Revolutionary Era, Americans had the highest per capita e in the civilized world and paid the lowest taxes, says Thomas Fleming, and they were determined to keep it that way. By 1776, the 13 American colonies had been in existence for over 150 years—more than enough time for the talented and ambitious to acquire money and land. At the top of the South’s earners were large planters such as George Washington. In the North their es were more...
U.S. sugar policy invites bad jokes
Because there’s nothing sweet about it. As the 2012 Farm Bill moves through Capitol Hill, the policy debates are ramping up. The bill, projected to seriously cut the deficit, has garnered bipartisan support thus far, but will likely meet more resistance in the House. Whether or not the 2012 Farm Bill will cut its projected $23 billion dollars is subjective. Fluctuating crop prices and the extent to which the weather cooperates (pray for rain) will determine that. What is certain,...
Russian Warns on Demonic Roots of Socialism
In Rome to address a conference sponsored by the Dignitatis Humanae Institute (Institute for Human Dignity) on June 29, Russian pro-life campaigner Alexey Komov expressed amazement for the support that socialism gets in some quarters in the West even though it has “never worked in world history.” In an interview with the Zenit news service, Komov pointed to how this ideology had caused such great pain and suffering “all in the name of social reform, progress and improvement.” His criticism...
Getting Religion Back into Our Economic Lives
National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez talks to Rev. Sirico about his new book, Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Free Economy, the link between economic liberty and public morality, and the differences between socialism and capitalism: LOPEZ: How can you get more greed with socialism than capitalism? FR. SIRICO: To the extent that socialism holds back creativity and thus productivity, it increases poverty. When people e desperate, even good people can e self-centered. Few of us...
Upcoming Scholarship Deadline
If you, or someone you know, are searching for last-minute scholarship opportunities, I invite you to please take the time to learn more about the scholarship programs offered through the Acton Institute. Through the Calihan Academic Fellowship program, Acton’s Research department offers scholarships and research grants from $500 to $3000 to graduate students and seminarians studying theology, philosophy, economics, or related fields. Applicants must demonstrate the potential to advance understanding in the relationship between theology and the principles of the...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved