Jihad is very popular because it reaches youthful needs.
Recruits are usually normal people who have instability in their lives. While recruits are typically stereotyped as overly zealous, the U.S. Institute for Peace has shown this is not always true. In fact, many recruits have an inadequate understanding of Islam. This allows the jihadists to skew recruits toward radical interpretations because the recruits have less basis to dispute these radical teachings.
Furthermore, poverty is not the primary reason for joining. Rather, recruits mostly join for purpose, direction and identity and come from all wealth classes.
The U.S. Institute for Peace therefore outlined five key types of recruits which include “[r]evenge seekers [who] need an outlet for their frustration, status seekers [who] need recognition, identity seekers [who] need a group to join and thrill
seekers [who] need adventure.” Jihadists see the West as violent perpetrators against Muslims, and they view Muslim nations’ lowly position compared to Western nations in global standing as shameful.
Jihadist networks radicalize their recruits by fostering rage and victimhood through propaganda and media. They show recruits violence against Muslims, blaming the visual atrocities on various groups to foster hatred against them.
Additionally, Muslim nations are not spared from the ruthlessness of jihad. Jihadists accuse Muslim nations of being Western puppets, stations for U.S. military presence, too liberal, the wrong Islamic branch and other reasons such as educating women. Lastly, many jihadists hold the ideological aim to replace nation-states with a global caliphate to unite believers.
ISIS is strong because it captures all the needs and ideological arguments for recruits to join.
For example, ISIS's global caliphate goals across the Muslim and former Muslim world reduce nation-states below Islam creating a larger, hypothetically more powerful and purposeful identity. This allows members to strive to revive Islam to its strongest era, even creating plots to retake the Iberian Peninsula. The glorification of martyrs across their vast media empire adds to the personal status one wishes to achieve, and their activities capture the thrill seekers' desires perfectly with violent video game-like tasks.
Founded in 2014, ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K) is a provincial branch corresponding to a historic term for Afghanistan and parts of Iran and surrounding nations. The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 has contributed to its greatest growth as most American intelligence and fighting capabilities there are nonexistent now. Combined with the Taliban's lack of control and plenty of expensive machinery lying around for any to steal, Afghanistan has truly become a jihadi haven again.
Recently, ISIS-K has shifted focus to four main enemies: the Taliban and Hazaras, Iran and Russia. ISIS-K attacks the Taliban to take over Afghanistan and establish its global caliphate. They attack Iran and the Hazaras (Afghanistan) because both are Shia-majority. ISIS-K attacks Russia because Russia is aligned with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and fights ISIS in Syria. They further allege that Russia discriminates against their Muslim minority. Therefore, ISIS-K recruits Russian and former Soviet Central Asian Muslims with access to Russia.
Acknowledgment: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author.