Why are some Western women converting to Islam?

recedite

Some of the comments here are a bit sexist, regardless of context. There is an assumption that girls go to IS to meet boys, and are foolish doing so because they don't realise when departing that they will be treated badly when they get there.
The fact is that some girls who went earlier are reporting back via social media that they are getting on well, and thereby encouraging others.

Also it is a fact that most girls who have joined other extremist or terrorist organisations in the past in Europe, including here in Ireland, did so for ideological reasons, and in a spirit of adventure, ie the exact same reasons as their male colleagues.

Even though western media portrays Islamic State as just a bunch of terrorist fighters, it portrays itself as an emerging and nascent state. This is backed up by facts; it has a territory, an administration, a capital, it exports oil and collects tax for state revenues. The fighters themselves are well paid and equipped. IS is setting up schools and calling for colonists from around the globe. In many respects it is similar to Israel in the early years; founded by terrorists who cleared the land by ethnic cleansing and then sent out the word to co-religionists around the world to come and join their brave new idyllic world.
IS will not be stamped out by outside forces. Obama has said that he only intends to harass them and "degrade" their capability (that is, their capability to spread to the neighbouring sunni Gulf State monarchies of Saudi and Jordan where they enjoy significant support).
It suits a particular US and Israeli backed agenda to maintain the whole Arab/Persian region in a state of chaotic in-fighting, and IS are a valuable part of this strategy, so long as they are kept inside their allocated box.

As for images of Putin, why shouldn't Russians be proud of their leader? At least he is their own Russian president. There was a time not so long ago when every second house in Ireland had pictures of JFK and the Pope facing each other in the hallway; two guys who were the head of foreign states.

robindch

recedite wrote: »

As for images of Putin, why shouldn't Russians be proud of their leader?

Because he's a paranoid, chekist maniac with apparently sole control of nuclear weapons and willing to invade and destablize neighbouring countries, steal their territories and murder their inhabitants by the thousand?

recedite wrote: »

At least he is their own Russian president.

I don't quite know what you mean by the peculiar "their own".

VVP was not chosen in any real or fair sense by the Russian public. Since shortly after his appointment as president by Yelstin, he has poisoned everything he touched and bent the state to his bidding and his own paranoid interests. Since Bolotnaya Square, he has used his sole control of Russian media to radicalize the Russian public with a train of predatory propaganda which would have impressed Joseph Goebbels - and before you accusing me of godwinning the thread, let me assure you that I choose my comparisons carefully. At few, if any, points over the last fifteen-odd years has he acted in the general interest of the Russian public or the Russian Federation, but instead has acted in his own unstable, dangerous and short-term interests. At this point, he has destablized the country of which he's arguably dictator to the point at which a palace coup (at best) and widescale civil war (at worst) are realistic possibilities.

VVP is Russia's "own" president in the same sense as an STD is one's "own" - yes, the two are now hard or impossible to separate, but the larger is far, far better of without the diseased smaller - and the latter may yet manage to lead to the unpleasant death of its lumbering, naive host.

DavidRamsay99

strobe

I'm a very busy man... no not busy, what's the other one? Lazy! I'm a very lazy man. So I'm gonna copy and paste a post I made in another thread about this.

"Offer people a new creed with a costume and their hearts and minds will follow."

People want to belong to... something. They want to feel like they have some kind of purpose. Most people find this in their work or family or group of friends but some people don't. They feel like they are missing something, like there is a hole that needs to be filled. Religions, not just Islam. Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, all claim to know your purpose, to know why the hole is there and to be the one thing that can fill it.

Introduce someone that feels like they don't belong or don't have a purpose, at a particularly fragile time in their lives, to someone with a bit of a talent for shifting snake oil, and they will buy it and gulp it down. A friend of Muhammed Ali once said (paraphrasing) "I say only half jokingly that if I had of really tried back then, I could have converted Cassius to Judaism". Take someone that converts to Islam and introduce them to a talented Scientology recruiter, at the time they began to take an interest in Islam, and there is a good chance they would be sitting on Abbey St a few months later asking if you want to take a free personality test.

It's nice to feel like you belong, like you are part of something. For some people that feeling is the most important thing in the world. People have killed and died for it over the centuries. Hitler (godwined) mobilised the most dedicated and grateful and committed force the world had ever seen on the back of the principle.

Islam is the 'in' thing in media land right now, so there is a lot of exposure to it, particularly online, and so a lot of exposure to what are essentially recruiters for the religion. Plus it's different and foreign and exotic and the grass could well be quite green over there, all these guys say so, not like this withered browny grass that's here in my average 9-5 run of the mill life.

MaxWig

strobe wrote: »

People want to belong to... something. They want to feel like they have some kind of purpose. Most people find this in their work or family or group of friends but some people don't. They feel like they are missing something, like there is a hole that needs to be filled. Religions, not just Islam. Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, all claim to know your purpose, to know why the hole is there and to be the one thing that can fill it.

Ideologies, not just religions, hold up answers to your problems. They nurture you and 'protect' you. They instill in you a warm feeling, convincing you that the way you're living your life is probably (definitely) the best way to live it. I think it's inaccurate to land religion alone with that attribute.
We live in a time/place that says we need 'stuff' to fill that same hole. All sorts of stuff. Buy this, be better! etc.
I'd be careful in feeling too different/superior!

It's nice to feel like you belong, like you are part of something. For some people that feeling is the most important thing in the world. People have killed and died for it over the centuries. Hitler (godwined) mobilised the most dedicated and grateful and committed force the world had ever seen on the back of the principle.

Every army in the history of humankind used that principle. Without it, no one would go to war! I mean, why would they?

Islam is the 'in' thing in media land right now, so there is a lot of exposure to it, particularly online, and so a lot of exposure to what are essentially recruiters for the religion. Plus it's different and foreign and exotic and the grass could well be quite green over there, all these guys say so, not like this withered browny grass that's here in my average 9-5 run of the mill life.

Heard someone (might have been Chomsky) comparing Islamic State to the creation of Israel. Not very informed about geo-political history so I won't agree/disagree with that contention, but it made me think.

I think people can have too rigid a fixation on religion's role.
People's motivations are always complex, regardless of their faith or lack thereof.

the_monkey

DavidRamsay99 wrote: »

The phenomenon is absolutely bewildering to me.
Women who enjoy unprecedented freedoms in the West decide to convert to this violent lunatic religion which crushes their individuality and freedom and expects them to essentially become breeding mares.
Apparently a number of white European women have not only converted to this backwards faith but have joined ISIS.
What is the attraction?
This reminds one of the beautiful educated articulate young girls who were seduced by Charles Manson and somehow became his willing sex slaves before buying to his racist apocalyptic fantasy of Helter Skelter leading to the deaths of at least 7 people including Sharon Tate who was hung by the neck and stabbed to death.
How is it possible for educated intelligent people to buy into mind rotting superstitious garbage like Islam?
Is the thread of sanity so weak?
Were these women already psychotically deranged or psychopathic and only needed an outlet for their deranged minds?
Has it something to do with left wing denial of Islamic extremism and the suicidal pacifism of opponents of the war on terror who are opposed to any military action whatsoever against ISIS?
Are the jaw dropping idiots who call any critic of Islam "Islamophobes" at one end of a spectrum of appeasement and these moronic converts to Islam at the extreme end of the appeasement scale?
What is the psychology behind this profoundly disturbing and terrifying plague of conversion?

Mentally Ill

Simple as that.

But I guess that makes me a fascist and misogynist..

MaxWig

the_monkey wrote: »

Mentally Ill

Simple as that.

But I guess that makes me a fascist and misogynist..

No, just a shallow thinker.

Mentally ill?

How so?

the_monkey

MaxWig wrote: »

No, just a shallow thinker.

Mentally ill?

How so?

Just of the top of my head - eh to join a religion that classes women as property and below men ... that has a large proportion that condone FGM .. I mean, Do I need to go on ??

MaxWig

the_monkey wrote: »

Just of the top of my head - eh to join a religion that classes women as property and below men ... that has a large proportion that condone FGM .. I mean, Do I need to go on ??

A large proportion that condone FGM?

the_monkey

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs241/en/

• More than 125 million girls and women alive today have been cut in the 29 countries in Africa and Middle East where FGM is concentrated (1).
• FGM is mostly carried out on young girls sometime between infancy and age 15.
• FGM is a violation of the human rights of girls and women.

I never said Majority - I said a "large proportion".

shruikan2553

the_monkey wrote: »

Just of the top of my head - eh to join a religion that classes women as property and below men ... that has a large proportion that condone FGM .. I mean, Do I need to go on ??

Being thought as lesser often doesn't put people off joining a religion.

MaxWig

the_monkey wrote: »

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs241/en/



I never said Majority - I said a "large proportion".

OK - So the first thing that comes to mind when you hear that a Western woman has converted and become a Muslim is Rape and FGM?

I don't know, do you think you can read too much propaganda?

pauldla

shruikan2553 wrote: »

Being thought as lesser often doesn't put people off joining a religion.

Indeed, it's the whole point, is it not?