‘Islam for Dummies’: IS recruits have poor understanding of faith

Associated Press

PARIS

The jihadi employment form asked the recruits, on a scale of 1 to 3, to rate their knowledge of Islam. And the Islamic State applicants, herded into a hangar somewhere at the Syria-Turkey border, turned out to be overwhelmingly ignorant.

The extremist group could hardly have hoped for better.

At the height of Islamic State’s drive for foot soldiers in 2013 and 2014, typical recruits included the group of Frenchmen who went bar-hopping with their recruiter back home, the recent European convert who now hesitantly describes himself as gay, and two Britons who ordered “The Koran for Dummies” and “Islam for Dummies” from Amazon to prepare for jihad abroad. Their intake process complete, they were grouped in safe houses as Islamic State imams came in to indoctrinate them, according to court testimony and interviews by The Associated Press.

“I realized that I was in the wrong place when they began to ask me questions on these forms like, ‘When you die, who should we call?’” said the 32-year-old European recruit, speaking to the AP on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. He said he thought he was joining a group to fight President Bashar Assad and help Syrians, not the Islamic State.

The European went to Syria in 2014. He said new recruits were shown IS propaganda videos on Islam, and the visiting imams repeatedly praised martyrdom. Far from home, unschooled in religion, having severed family ties and turned over electronic devices, most were in little position to judge.

An AP analysis of thousands of leaked Islamic State documents reveals most of its recruits from its earliest days came with only the most basic knowledge of Islam. A little more than 3,000 of these documents included the recruits’ knowledge of Shariah, the system that interprets into law verses from the Quran and “hadith” – the sayings and actions of the Prophet Muhammad.

According to the documents, which were acquired by the Syrian opposition site Zaman al-Wasl and shared with the AP, 70 percent of recruits were listed as having just “basic” knowledge of Shariah – the lowest possible choice. Around 24 percent were categorized as having an “intermediate” knowledge, with just 5 percent considered advanced students of Islam. Five recruits were listed as having memorized the Quran.

The findings address one of the most-troubling questions about IS recruitment in the U.S. and Europe: Are disaffected people who understand Shariah more prone to radicalization? Or are those with little knowledge of Islam more susceptible to the group’s radical ideas that promote violence?

The documents suggest the latter. The group preys on this religious ignorance, allowing extremists to impose a brand of Islam constructed to suit its goal of maximum territorial expansion and carnage as soon as recruits come under its sway.

Islamic State’s most-notorious new supporters appear to have an equally tenuous link with religion. Mohamed Lahouaiyej Bouhlel, who killed 85 people by plowing a truck into a Bastille Day crowd in Nice, France, was described by family and neighbors as indifferent to religion, volatile and prone to drinking sprees, with a bent for salsa dancing and a reported male lover.

Unlike Omar Mateen, the Orlando attacker, Bouhlel did not make a public declaration of allegiance to Islamic State, much less prove he had direct ties to extremists in the war zone. Still, the group was quick to claim both as foot soldiers.

The AP analyzed the IS entry form documents of about 4,030 foreign recruits who crossed into Syria when the group was expanding and seizing territory in Iraq and Syria in 2013 and 2014. At that time, the CIA estimated the group had between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters across Iraq and Syria.

The trial of longtime friends Mohammed Ahmed and Yusuf Sarwar, from the British city of Birmingham, revealed the 22-year-olds had ordered “The Koran for Dummies” and “Islam for Dummies” books in preparation for their trip to join extremists in Syria. They were arrested on their return to Britain and convicted in 2014 of terrorism offenses.

Patrick Skinner, a former CIA case officer with extensive experience with Mideast extremist organizations, said some people claim allegiance to IS out of religious belief, but that most who join, including those from the West, are people “reaching for a sense of belonging, a sense of notoriety, a sense of excitement.”

“Religion is an afterthought,” said Skinner, the director of special projects at security consultancy the Soufan Group.

Those who truly crave religious immersion would go to Al-Azhar in Cairo, he added, referring to the thousand-year-old seat of learning for Shariah and Quranic studies.

The recruits’ Shariah knowledge is important because IS not only needs soldiers and suicide bombers, but administrators and Shariah officials to oversee its local courts and judges, who in turn promote IS ideology.

It also matters because those who’ve claimed advanced knowledge in Shariah on the IS entry documents were less likely to want to become suicide bombers, according to a study by the U.S. military’s Combating Terrorism Center, an academic institution at the U.S. Military Academy.