The Islamic State (ISIS) is actively recruiting British women to join the militant movement to become "jihadi brides,"
The Washington Post reported.
"They are going for adventure, just like the young men," Melanie Smith, a research associate at King's College London told the UK Guardian. Smith is tracking 21 women who have been lured to join ISIS by monitoring their social media activity.
She described the young women who marry into the movement as "fan girls," comparable to groupies for a boy band, whose commitment to violent fanaticism is mixed with a teenage exuberance, according to the Post.
The developing trend marks a new theme in the group's propaganda and recruitment campaign, which has attracted an estimated 500 British citizens and at least 100 Americans who have traveled to the Middle East to fight alongside the extremists.
"Given the choice of a fairly mundane life in a second-tier job in the West, and this rather heroic and romantic image of jihadi life being portrayed by Islamic State propaganda, which is very well crafted, in a paradoxical way this gives women a sense of agency and empowerment," Sasha Havlicek, founder of the London-based Institute of Strategic Dialogue, told the Post.
Female recruitment is intended to help ISIS shift its image away from violence to focus more on its political goal of establishing a Muslim caliphate, according to Havlicek.
Another expert, Kalsoom Bashir, co-director of Inspire, a British Muslim education organization, told the Post that joining ISIS also gives recruits a sense of belonging that may have eluded them in British society.
"When they still feel as part of the other, and they have religious ideologies telling them that this [is] a way to have purpose and duty, that provides a breeding ground for the next step," Bashir said.
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