The Appeal of ISIS to Foreigners: Not Politics, but Meaning

All the bombs falling on ISIS are not deterring people from joining their cause.

A new report on the growing appeal of ISIS to foreign fighters has come out. That report (by a security consulting firm) shows that the number of foreigners streaming into Iraq and Syria to fight for ISIS has more than doubled over the past year.

A Washington Post article summarizes:

Between 27,000 and 31,000 people from at least 86 countries have traveled to the Middle East to join the extremist movement, according to the report, by the security consulting firm The Soufan Group, founded by a former federal official who investigated the 2001 terrorist attacks. By comparison, a June 2014 by the firm issued identified approximately 12,000 foreign fighters from 81 countries who had traveled to Iraq and Syria.

The uptick in foreigners joining ISIS has come primarily from European nations, Russia and central Asia (Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Turkey).

According to the report:

The appeal of the Islamic State appears to be as strong as before, despite—or in some cases because of—the multiplying examples of its horrific violence and increasing totalitarianism.

And then, the line that especially caught my eye:

A search for belonging, purpose, adventure and friendship appear to remain the main reasons for people to join the Islamic State just as they remain the least addressed issues in the international fight against terrorism.

In other words, it seems to be the search for meaning, or what Ernest Becker has also categorized as the quest for self-esteem, that is fueling the power and rage of ISIS. For people who often have experienced various forms of marginalization, or even a kind of cultural and social death, ISIS offers them a profound alternative: significance, meaning, and transcendence.

But it’s pretty surprising when you realize that the primary motivators for people joining ISIS are those that figure least prominently in discussions about how to defeat ISIS.

The policy to bomb the hell out of them doesn’t seem to be working very well. The highly charged, anti-Muslim discriminatory rhetoric from certain Republican political candidates will surely not help either.

Actually, retaliatory bombs (whether physical bombs, verbal bombs, or policy bombs) will only drive more of the disaffected into the arms of those who promise them meaning, significance, friendship, and transcendence. It all plays right into their hands.

Shouldn’t we be having an in-depth, serious conversation about what’s really driving all this?

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