With this idealism, I thee wed…
According to government estimates, and found in this Washington Post Article, roughly 250 Americans have attempted to join ISIS Jihadists in Syria with one in six of those being women. So if my math skills don’t fail me, one in every six out of 250 total defectors is about 40 women. 40 women (since the article was written in 2015) chose to leave behind the freedoms we enjoy as Americans to join a terrorist organization in the middle east. How does this happen? By the way, that is just American women. Taking a look at Western-aligned women in total, those numbers at least double, warranting a look at how modern networks, including social networks and the basic understanding of human connections through various degrees of separation, create an ease of access between young women and evil people supposedly a world away.
I will quickly outline a few assumptions about this demographic to limit this discussion to the principle points. That is, some of these Western women are Muslim Americans, some are recent converts to Islam, and some have ties, whether family-based or from personal travel to the middle east. Aside from the probable existence of an affiliation network, whether built based on “push” from radical extremists targeting impressionable teens, or “pulled” from these Western citizens joining online groups, the sheer proximity of every one of us to a foreign terrorist is staggering.
This post will focus on another aspect of their defection – the root social necessities we seek as humans and the decisions we make when those connections are not present. This Huffington Post article says, “Some women launch their passage to ISIS driven by a youthful sense of adventure, secrecy, a romantic rebellion against the establishment. Others become indoctrinated by the war Islam wages against “American/European corruption.” ISIS recruiters allure young women by marriages and marital bliss.” In some cases these women seek out a sisterhood aligned with their religious beliefs. In other, more disturbing instances, ISIS recruiters manipulate these women with promises of luxury. Making the decision to join ISIS is one step. Why is it that these women can then so easily locate and build relationships with these people?
Not belonging to a social network with many, if any, strong ties (outside of family) may lead these women to ditch their lives of liberty and freedom for false promises of happiness in a perceived utopian society. One could further posit the desire for the emotionally neglected to throw a weak tie out into the world like a grappling hook to see what kind of attention, belonging, and acceptance they can latch on to. The only problem is that ISIS is waiting on the other end to grab hold and recruit these women. Social media is the platform for which the universal, physical handshake of an acquaintance has been replaced with a digital handshake created between two separate worlds, miles apart. A naïve curiosity can quickly morph into a new idealism, especially at the hands of skilled manipulators.
Access to ISIS propaganda is the key to recruiting. In the giant component included in the global map of social media connections, the technology available to update a photo stream for my family to see is also the technology that puts me less than six clicks away from an Islamic Extremist (or so one would theorize based on a more modernized view of “six degrees of separation”). In fact, Facebook proved that the average degrees of separations between users are now roughly four.
The access that exists today – the access that ISIS has to the world’s population through digital propaganda, and the access that American youth have to receive and digest that propaganda, is clearly one of the most dangerous realizations of social networking in modern society. And these evil players not only have access to communication with these impressionable Americans, they have access to all of the personal data needed to influence and manipulate their decisions. No longer can an anonymous chain letter connect the world – our profile pictures tied to our family data, hobbies, interests, and career info creates a path from an American teenager in Alabama to a Terrorist in Syria.
This isn’t a new security threat in the eyes of the government, but it might be a new threat in the eyes of the public. Our world is becoming more digital every day and there needs to be some awareness of the danger that exists from the connectivity that social media and online social networks created.
Forget about trying to connect yourself to Kevin Bacon, you should be concerned with how close your daughter is to receiving a friend request from Abu Mohannad al-Sweidawi.
