Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
ISIS Actively ‘Recruits’ Girls And Women Online
ISIS Actively ‘Recruits’ Girls And Women Online
Jan 28, 2026 6:40 PM

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
Acton Commentary: Race Alarmists Hijack Black History Month
Ignore those racial disparity studies that point to the “resegregation” of America’s educational system. They advance the lie that minorities cannot survive without whites. “What is best for e black and Latino students is what is best for all students: stable and supportive families, parental options, and high achieving schools with stellar teachers,” Bradley writes. Read mentary at the Acton website, and then discuss it here. ...
Debunking the New Deal
It’s long been my contention that the mythology surrounding the New Deal in large swaths of the popular imagination plays an ongoing, important, and harmful role in politics and policy debate. For that reason, I e periodic attempts to debunk the myth. Jonah Goldberg offers a perceptive and enlightening perspective on New Deal historiography and its current uses and abuses. Unlike Daniel Gross (cited by Goldberg), I don’t care whether the analyst is an historian, economist, policy wonk, or journalist,...
America’s Secular Challenge
I’ve been reading America’s Secular Challenge by NYU professor and president of the Hudson Institute Herb London. The book is essentially an extended essay about how elite, left-wing secularism undercuts America’s traditional strengths of patriotism and religious faith during a time when the nation can ill afford it. The assault on public religion and love of es in a period when America faces enemies who have no such crisis of identity and lack the degree of doubt that leaves us...
PBR: Monsma and Carlton-Thies Speak Out
In response to the question, “What is the future of the faith-based initiative?” As part of Christianity Today’s Speaking Out (web-only) feature, Stephen V. Monsma and Stanley Carlson-Thies, of Calvin College’s Henry Institute and the Center for Public Justice respectively, address the future of the faith-based initiative under President Obama. Monsma and Carlton-Thies outline five “encouraging signs” and one “major concern.” The encouraging signs include the naming of the office executive director (Joshua DuBois) and advisory council (including “recognized evangelicals”...
PBR: On Faith
In response to the question, “What is the future of the faith-based initiative?” Perhaps taking a cue from this week’s PBR question (or perhaps not), the On Faith roster of bloggers have been asked to weigh in on the following question this week: “Should the Obama Administration let faith-based programs that receive government grants discriminate against those they hire or serve?” Notable responses include those from Chuck Colson, Al Mohler, and Susan Brooks Thistlewaite, the latter of whom has these...
PBR: Public Good and the Faith-Based Initiative
In response to the question, “What is the future of the faith-based initiative?” I have little confidence in the future of the faith-based initiative because conservatives who gain office are unwilling to take any fire at all in order to advance the cause beyond concept. At the same time, liberals will be unable to make productive use of the idea because of giant fissures regarding public religion in their movement. In theory, President Obama would make an ideal person to...
PBR: A Genuine Challenge to Religious Liberty
In response to the question, “What is the future of the faith-based initiative?” Jordan Ballor kindly asked me to offer a few words in response to this question, as I made it an area of expertise during the previous Administration. I’ve been working up to writing something more formal, but I’ll begin by thinking aloud here, as well as at my my home blog. Without further ado, here’s what I posted over there: By now, you’ve probably heard about the...
Dr. Andrew Abela Receives 2009 Novak Award
Maltese-American marketing professor, Dr. Andrew Abela, is the winner of the Acton Institute’s 2009 Novak Award. Dr. Abela’s main research areas include consumerism, marketing ethics, Catholic Social Teaching, and internal munication. Believing that anti-free market perspectives seem to dominate discussion about the social impact of business, Dr. Abela is working to explore Christian ethics further to show how these issues can be resolved more humanely and effectively through market-oriented approaches. To aid this work, Dr. Abela is currently preparing a...
Kaarlgard Declares ‘Failure of Morality, Not Capitalism’
In a Forbes blog post titled “Failure of Morality, Not Capitalism,” Rich Kaarlgard counters the critics of supply-side capitalism by pointing to an absence of morality. Kaarlgard declares: Many people do blame capitalism for bringing us to this low moment in the economy. Do they have a point? They do if capitalism, as they define it, is devoid of any underlying morality. True enough, it is hard to see any underlying morality when one surveys the present carnage caused by...
Acton Commentary: Choosing a Prosperous Future
“Focusing on education is not a distraction from the pressing business of economic recovery,” Kevin Schmiesing writes. “It is vital to ensuring it.” This focus should advance school choice and a reduction of administrative red tape. Read mentary at the Acton website, and share ments below. ...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved