The Killing Game

Martyrdom, Murder and the Lure of ISIS

ON JANUARY 21, 2015, a pro-ISIS Twitter account reported that John Maguire, a 23-year-old university drop-out from the Ottawa Valley town of Kemptville, had been killed fighting Kurds in the Syrian city of Kobani. A few weeks before, Maguire had starred in a YouTube video threatening Canada for bombing ISIS forces in Iraq. He is one of several young people from the West who have chosen to fight in a vicious conflict that really had little to do with them.

Why do young people choose to fight in other people’s wars, especially one as bloody and cruel as this one? Why has ISIS become so good at attracting foreign fighters?

This book examines the lure of this radical Islamist movement: its religious beliefs, sophisticated propaganda and vast social media networks. ISIS is now a go-to cause for alienated young people in the Islamic World and the West. Does it offer answers to troubled young people? Are ISIS’s crimes – slavery, murder, rape, repression and the destruction of heritage sites – an attraction in and of themselves? What do we do about the people who take up ISIS’s cause but stay in their home country? What do we do with the ISIS recruits who come home?

The Killing Game examines what draws young men and women to join violent social/political movements. It looks at the psychology of young men and women today and the propaganda used by all sides in the Middle East conflicts, as well as the security laws and the political initiatives that have been designed to stop people from being radicalized.