The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has become particularly adept at recruiting impressionable westerners into its sect.
In the past week, three girls skipped school to allegedly join ISIS, according to a CNN report. This is the same terrorist organization made famous by its violent video executions.
It seems that ISIS is targeting the one kind of person most likely to succumb to pressure. There’s no easier target than impressionable teens caught in the midst of the adolescent identity crisis.
They all fit the same kind of surface-level profile: a disillusioned young person who really only wants to be included.
It’s strange to think that someone living in the United States or England would want to join a hateful and violent extremist regime, but on the other hand, ISIS seems to offer what our culture holds in esteem. However, after viewing the girls’ online history, it became clear that ISIS promised them, and possibly other young girls like them, a roof over their heads and a caring husband.
And in America, that’s often what young people aspire to attain in life. What they did not realize, and what police fear, is that those promises may have been referring to “jihadi brides.” It’s not hard to imagine the violence such a title might entail.
It’s a direct stem of the message many young girls are taught: no matter how successful you’ve become, if you’re alone, you’ve failed in life.
ISIS promises young men that they get to kill and use their frustrations in an epic fight for justice.
Kids aren’t complete idiots. Some recognize that they’re fortunate to have parents who love them, but for a lot of kids, it creates a bubble: mom and dad care about me, but that’s it. If, as a society, we appropriate engaging young people strictly for school activities and dinner parties, then we’ve failed our youth.
How can we expect them to discern good from bad, moral from immoral, when the only meaningful interaction they receive are from people who, in their minds, are designated to care?
It’s not a shock that America has problems engaging its youth. The real shock comes from a socially abstracted society exclude our young people and then can’t understand why they would want to join an extremist group.
You don’t have to have kids to make a positive impression on them. Instead of asking a kid to expound on a particular emotion or expression, the subject gets changed to what we think the kids should be ?focusing on.
We have an obligation to engage with the youth of today not because of threats like ISIS but because engaging a young mind to think, consider and reflect is one of the greatest gifts you can give away at any time.
I’m sure ISIS is extremely effective at warping the perspectives of young, malleable minds, but let’s not put all of the blame on them.
If you think the tactics ISIS uses to recruit are sad, consider why the disillusioned youth of western nations are desperate to join them.
?michoman@indiana.edu
