Want to Understand The Appeal of ISIS? Think Like a Young Muslim Outsider

Defections by British citizens to Islamic State typically inspire an entire cycle of reactions. Security-minded commentators demand tougher measures to restrict travel and suppress online propaganda. Others argue that clampdowns are counterproductive, and urge mosques and families to take the lead. The families themselves, while expressing bafflement and grief, turn the spotlight back on to the authorities, attributing their loved ones' estrangement to either state surveillance or (confusingly) to inadequate attention by the state.

The arguments are divisive but important in view of the lives blighted and threatened. Attempts to fix blame risk blurring a fundamental issue, however: why individuals up sticks and go to a war zone in the first place. The three sisters missing with their children from their Bradford homes, like the 17-year-old Dewsbury boy who reportedly detonated a suicide bomb in Iraq last week, doubtless thought they were fulfilling an Islamic duty, but devoutness alone explains little.

All lived in deeply traditional Muslim communities, and though such places nurture some insular forms of behaviour, the abandonment of husbands and suicidal murder aren't among them. As with many previous extremists, Isis's latest British recruits seem to have been maladjusted misfits: estranged from co-religionists rather than bound to them.

That points to a more general observation. Although the number of British Muslims who have travelled to northern Syria and Iraq is substantial (700, according to the most recent official estimate), it isn't disproportionate. They get noticed because their facility with English makes them effective propagandists - terrifyingly so, in the case of the murderous "Jihadi John" - but Muslims from several other countries have actually been more likely to go there. Norwegians have been twice as enthusiastic, and rates are even higher in Belgium, Ireland, Denmark and (at the top) Finland.

As that unlikely list implies, forces other than faith are at play. One of them is the dynamic that draws young men elsewhere towards gangs: some reports indicate that foreigners fighting with Isis often come from families where fathers were abusive or absent. Growing up in isolated immigrant communities, they might be more likely to view the group's macho hierarchy as a force for stability.

The group's appeal to women - thought to comprise more than one in six of all foreign recruits - reflects similarly contingent factors. Finland hasn't earned its place in the vanguard because its small Muslim population consists of psychopaths, but because an unusually high number of female Finnish converts have pledged allegiance to Isis - and though their motives can't be known, they're probably not entirely pious. Isis blogs and Twitter accounts (which are numerous) are filled with questions from women curious to meet and marry fighters - because an eagerness among good Muslim girls to hook up with bad jihadi boys is a strong part of the group's appeal.

Although bloggers forewarn potential arrivals of hardships, the promise of personal liberation is ubiquitous

For all Isis's talk of submission to God, its attractiveness, therefore, owes little to humility or self-denial. Although bloggers forewarn potential arrivals of hardships - squat toilets and a lack of contact-lens solution are two they have flagged up - the promise of personal liberation is ubiquitous. A 26-year-old Malaysian doctor who posts under the name Bird of Paradise happily tells female readers that they'll live rent-free in a room of their own, pay no bills or taxes, and receive a monthly stipend.

A Londoner calling himself Paladin of Jihad is even more effusive.

Ordinarily inclined to post doggerel, slangy hashtags or jokes about rape, his descriptions of Isis-land are lyrical. On arriving, he recalls, a stranger with a smile in his eyes hugged him in the light of a full moon, making him feel that "at long last, I 'belonged' to something, to a project, to a cause". Reflecting on that cause makes Paladin feel even better. "You don't have to fear the [non-believers], you don't have to hide yourself nor your beliefs ... [instead, you have] the freedom to finally be yourself and be who you're supposed to be."

None of that is exactly convincing. Isis punishes a lot more behaviour than it permits, and the happiness it apparently brings some people has been paid for by thousands of refugees, rape victims and corpses. Narcissism can obscure such things, however, and that also helps explain the group's persistent appeal to outsiders. Whatever precisely turns out to have spurred the most recent departures from Dewsbury and Bradford, the organisation offers a way of escaping stifling familial expectations, the low-level racism of wider society, and communal customs that many British Muslims themselves don't value.

In exchange, it promises a godly cause - the defence of victimised co-religionists - that draws similarly passionate people from all over the world. Troubled young men thereby imagine a land where they can start anew, commanding respect as upholders of God's law. Unhappy women dream of attaining happiness for the first time - or the second or third, if husbands they take are lucky enough to achieve martyrdom. The fantasies ignore a very vicious reality, of course - but as long as thwarted personalities imagine that Isis can make them true, people will kill and die in their pursuit.