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‘Till Martyrdom Do Us Part’
Interestingly, groups of female migrants finding sisterhood within ISIS territory are often based on nationality and language. English speakers from the UK and Australia tend to find camaraderie together while there seems to be limited interaction between female migrants from diverse nationalities. This highlights the reality of migrant communities living in a foreign territory, who are often unable to speak Arabic or the other languages of fellow international recruits.
Pull Factor 3: Romanticising the Adventure of Joining ISIS The final major pull-factor ISIS propaganda provides, attracting both male and female recruits from the West, plays heavily on romantic notions of adventure and finding romance in the form of a husband or wife. The sense of adventure in leaving home to travel to new places is influential particularly for the younger women. It is worth remembering that a large number of Western women joining ISIS are very young. The females in the ISD-ICSR database range in age but a majority are in their late teens to early twenties, with the youngest known female migrant being only 13 years old.21 Others equally as young have been stopped by airport security from a number of Western countries, most prevalently in the UK and France. The other adventure is one based on the promise of meaningful romance as a prize for making the journey. Analysing the types of imagery shared on social media, such as the image below, shows the union between female migrant and jihadist to be highly glorified. Online, images of a lion and lioness are shared frequently to symbolize this union. This is symbolic of finding a brave and strong husband, but also propagandises the notion that supporting a jihadist husband and taking on the ISIS ideology is empowering role for females. The purpose of marriage, and as such, the transition from childhood into adulthood, is judged to be a major factor in migration for the younger migrants. Unmarried women intending to travel to Syria without planning on marriage upon arrival are openly dissuaded online and encouraged to think fondly on the husbands they will have and the role they will take on.22 These women are also openly encouraged to view the death of their prospective jihadist husband as an honour and as will be demonstrated in a number of profiles, this privilege of becoming a martyr’s widow is often