The fascination of the 'Islamic State': Perceived iInjustice and crises of identity - why German citizens join the extremist organization

Throughout the Syrian conflict, a new extremist organization became increasingly visible to the public due its use of extreme violence and continuous threats to the entire world living outside of it. The self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) attracted the highest number of foreign fighters in the history of Islamic social movements, and continues to recruit from foreign countries. While the majority of the foreign fighters come from neighbouring countries to the conflict region in Syria and Iraq, it is estimated that around one quarter of the recruits stems from Western countries. Although ISIS managed to attract both men and women to voluntarily join their extremist organization, the vast majority of foreign fighters are men. Due to the recent occurrence of this phenomenon, the motivations of foreign fighters to join ISIS remain greatly under-researched. Taking various attacks and threats towards Western countries into consideration, it might appear paradox that people leave their home countries to fight for ISIS abroad. However, the number of people leaving for this purpose has summed up to around 800 in Germany in 2016. Therefore, this thesis analyses the motifs and causes of German men to travel to the conflict region to become a member of the extremist network. Contrary to the widely-spread assumption that socio-economic circumstances lead young men into violent extremism, this thesis studies their paths to radicalization from a socio-psychological perspective