Curiouser and curiouser
by Tom Sullivan
Sen. Ted Cruz is enough to grok before the second cup of coffee, but this may take some espresso:
A Philadelphia woman was arrested Friday on charges she tried to join the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group, a day after two women in New York City were charged with plotting to build a bomb and use it for a Boston Marathon-type attack.
Keonna Thomas, 30, was preparing to travel overseas to fight with the armed group and hoped to make it to Syria, authorities said. Instead, she was arrested at her home, which has three small U.S. flags adorning the porch. If convicted, she could face 15 years in prison.
This woman’s arrest comes on the heels of the two New York women arrested Thursday:
“The defendants allegedly plotted to wreak terror by creating explosive devices and even researching the pressure cooker bombs used during the Boston Marathon bombing,” said Assistant Director in Charge Diego Rodriguez, of the FBI’s New York Field Office.
The justice department said the two women have plotted to build an explosive device since at least August of last year and studied chemistry and electricity.
They did not have a specific target but at one point considered Herald Square in Manhattan, according to the court documents.
Ms Velentzas apparently criticised a US Air Force veteran who was recently arrested for attempting to travel to Syria engage in violent jihad.
She questioned why people would try to travel overseas when there were targets in the US that provided opportunities for “pleasing Allah”, the justice department said.
A grain of salt, of course. American authorities are not above entrapping people on terrorism charges. Yet these three join Jihad Jane and young women from England, France, and Austria (among others) willing to turn on, tune in, and check out. They are about “10% of those leaving Europe, North America and Australia to link up with jihadi groups,” according to the Guardian.
George Packer wrote in the New Yorker in February:
There’s an undeniable attraction in this horror for a number of young people around the Middle East, North Africa, and even Europe and America, who want to leave behind the comfort and safety of normal life for the exaltation of the caliphate. The level of its violence hasn’t discouraged new recruits—the numbers keep growing, because extreme violence is part of what makes ISIS so compelling. Last year, Vice News shot a documentary in the Islamic State’s de facto capital of Raqqa, Syria, and what was striking in the footage was the happiness on the faces of ISIS followers. They revelled in the solidarity of a common cause undertaken at great personal risk. They are idealists—that’s what makes them so dangerous.
Packer told PRI’s “The World”:
“People who leave their comfortable lives to join ISIS might actually find the ultra-violence of ISIS exciting and somehow fulfilling, and it might almost prove to them that ISIS is serious,” Packer says. “It satisfies the more apocalyptic longings that ISIS and its members have to purify the world of non-believers and apostates, and to galvanize and lift the hearts of the believers.”
Packer says calls for “purification” are key for any extremist group when they call for ridding “the world of these contaminants — whether it’s the Jews, whether it’s the Christians, whether it’s the Slavs, whether it’s the seculars, whether it’s the intellecutal [sic] Cambodians.”
Still, it’s tough to see what in ISIL propaganda is attractive for young women. Their reasons for joining are complex, no doubt, but as with most propaganda, the reality is a tad less glossy, as the manifesto released in January, “Women of the Islamic State,” reveals.
But the motivations for joining terrorist groups tend “not to be different between men and women,” according to researcher Mia Bloom, Professor of Security Studies at the University of Massachusetts. The social media recruiting savvy of these groups is far superior to al Qaeda or the Tamil Tigers. She discussed the manifesto with Euronews in February:
Bloom: “I think the reason this document was not intended for an English-speaking audience is that it contravenes almost completely this Disney, idealised version that ISIS has portrayed for women, when they’re addressing women in the UK, Canada or Australia by saying, ‘It’s a wonderful life and you’re going to come here and have everything taken care of for you, and you’re going to have excitement and you’re going to be able to make this contribution,’ whereas the Arabic document makes clear that you’re going to be married off and there’s a good possibility you’re not going to be able to leave the house, but you’ll still be able to do more in the caliphate than you will in your home societies.”
euronews: “How can Western countries try to counteract this type of propaganda?”
Bloom: “For example, I’ve seen on Twitter a British jihadi who said, ‘I came here to be a hero and a martyr, and they have me cleaning toilets.’ It’s one of the things that I have to think about when we are very concerned about returning foreign fighters, that perhaps if we could have these individuals who are disillusioned address the public and talk to people who are on the fence and at least plant the seeds of doubt.”
The recruiting strikes me as the little different from that of other apocalyptic death cults around the world. The Kool-Aid comes in different colors, but it all tastes the same.