Most of the 4,000 Western Muslims who have gone to fight in Syria and Iraq have joined the Islamic State. These recruits could have joined other militias that are less illegal, less hated or less demanding. Yet they flocked to the Islamic State rather than its competitors.
The Islamic State’s success at recruiting Western Muslims makes sense once you know that most of them are under the age of 35. Youth the world over are drawn to countercultural movements because they want to break with convention, and nothing is more countercultural for Muslim youth in the West than the Islamic State. The more hated it is and the more demands it places on its members, like turning over their passports, the more its countercultural allure increases. Similar to Neo-Nazi groups, the Islamic State’s pariah status is its selling point.