by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700

Copyright March 7, 2015
All Rights Reserved.

                One on the most puzzling questions is understanding how the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria dupes hapless members into what amounts to a doomsday suicide cult.   ISIS recruiters on the Internet and social media have a seductive pitch:  Join the “caliphate” for adventure, jobs, housing—and, yes, love.  Young recruits from all over the globe, whether from failed states or from prosperous countries, can’t resist ISIS recruiters promises of utopia in what amounts to a new Islamic world order.  Like Jonestown, where a charismatic hellfire-and-brimstone Christian con artist minister Jim Jones lured hundreds of followers to their graves in the jungles of Guyana, ISIS does the same.  When Jonestown mass-murder-suicide surfaced Nov. 18, 1978, 913 Peoples Temple lost their lives.  In cities and towns in Iraq and Syria, the same fate befalls recruits looking to join the new Islamic fantasy world.

             Using the best advertising techniques available, ISIS promises the world to recruits before entering the quicksand of radical Islam.  Recent reports of ISIS luring teenage girls from the U.K. to Syria and Iraq underscores how vulnerable various groups are to ISIS brainwashing.  “IS [Islamic State] sells its Islamic utopia to these young and women,” said Lina Khalib, head of the Carnegie Endowment’s Middle East, exposing the insidious techniques used by ISIS to convert innocent young people into the Islamic cult.  “It tells them that this is the only real state in the world, and that they can become important figures in it,” completing the irresistible appeal to individuals who lack the reasoning skills to resist the con game.  Once in the cult, recruits find out quickly the promise of utopia are rarely redeemed, giving way to buyers’ remorse, prompting some recruits to try to get out.

             Recruits find out quickly that the only way out is martyrdom because the ISIS lets no one leave without torture and execution.  “We don’t pay rent here. Houses are give for free.  We pay neither electric nor water bills.  We are given monthly groceries.  Spaghetti, pasta, canned foods, rice, eggs,” wrote Aqsa Mahmoud, a woman from Glasgow, Scotland who traveled to Syria via London, Istanbul and Syria to marry an ISIS fighter.  “Til martyrdom do us part,” reads the  “Diary of a Muhajirah” [Diary of a Traveller], a propaganda tool for recruiting women into ISIS.  Like Jonestown, once in ISIS, no matter how disillusioned, there’s no escape other than a bullet in the head.  Living in various conditions around the globe, ISIS recruits are intrigued by joining a mass movement, getting out of their humdrum life to find new excitement in building the first true Islamic caliphate since the Ottoman Empire.

             Like the Nazis before and during WWII, there’s no escape other than automatic obedience to ISIS fearless leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, named after the father-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed.  ISIS gives newly married couples “seven days off “ for wedding celebrations, getting Kalashnikovs for wedding gifts.  “Newly married couples are given $700 as a gift,” wrote Mahmoud.  “We don’t have fireworks but we celebrate the wedding my gunshots and lots of “takbeer” or shouts of “Allahu Akbar” [God is greatest], showing the kind of fervor like prophetic dystopian novelist George Orwell wrote in his “three minutes hate” in “1984.”  Shouting party slogans, constant praying on mats to Abu Bakr al-Baghadadi, keeps recruits sufficiently anesthetized by the coercive persuasion, leaving recruits incapable in independent thinking, turning once rational folks into obedient automatons.

          Once recruits wake up and get cold feet, realizing they’ve made the worst mistake of their lives, there’s no turning back, other than an early grave.  Appealing to the unloved and disenfranchised souls seeking a new life, Mahmoud shares her personal journey leaving her boyfriend and joining ISIS.  “I promise, that one day someone will hug you so tightly and fix back all the broken pieces—yes, it’s your Halal [Islamic Kosher] husband,” said Mahmoud, appealing to the beaten down abused, neglected and hopeless souls looking for salvation. U.S. and European Union officials have no answers, inside or outside their countries, for how to stop the abysmal appeal for love, protection, identity, purpose and money.  ISIS has learned the same language of military recruiters of various services branches around the globe.  Appealing to youthful idealism, but more importantly, ISIS recruits, converts and captures its victims.

              Western nations have a hard time stopping ISIS’s misleading, deceptive and corrupt marketing techniques.  “These girls join this organization looking for adventures—and some of them live in an imaginary world, dream of marrying fighters,” said Hassan Hassan, author of “ISIS:  Inside the Army of Terror,” told the AFP.  When Hassan talks of ISIS recruits living in a fantasy world, he’s referring to the disproportionate numbers of mentally ill folks joining religious and secular cults.  Disenfranchised, marginalized and maladjusted folks are ripe for the picking for ISIS or other Islamic terror groups.  With so many failed states around the Middle East, ISIS has a bountiful supply of young recruits having no better option other than joining Sunni and Shiite terror groups.  By the time ISIS recruits wake up, it’s already too late, murdering them for changing their minds..

About the Author 

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.

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