Jihadi Brides: Why do Western Muslim Girls Join ISIS?

ABSTRACT: This paper deals with the issue of why young Western women from stable families and egalitarian, female-friendly states, are choosing to leave their family and country behind to join IS’ misogynistic society. Since the outbreak of the civil war in Syria in early 2011, and increasingly with the growth of IS in the region, European men and women have travelled to the area to join the fighting. According to the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence almost 4000 Western European citizens had joined Sunni militant organizations fighting in Syria or Iraq as of January 2015. A surprisingly large number of these migrants are women. This paper examines the reasons for how these women get radicalized and why. Whether warrior or victim, or neither, the women who migrate to the Islamic State are searching for a meaning in their lives that did not exist in the Western world