The Birth of the Islamic State and its Impact on European Youth

Abstract

Since 2013, a major event occurred in the Middle East. A jihadi group founded a new state in June 2014 with a territory that was, at its heights, as vast as the United Kingdom under the name of the Islamic State in Syria and Sham (ISIS), and later on, simply the Islamic State (IS). Chapter 1 reveals how this event was a sea change in jihadism, not only in the Middle East but also in Europe and, more generally, worldwide. IS brought about a great transformation in the minds of European jihadis. European societies had not undergone major ruptures between the years 2000 and 2014, but the number of young people who became jihadi warriors, either internally (the so-called homegrown terrorists) or externally (the so-called Foreign Fighters) grew disproportionately between 2013 and 2016 in comparison to the pre-IS period. A key element was holding a territory as a state. It fundamentally changed the capacity of this jihadi organization. One essential characteristic of IS was its apocalyptic nature. The creation of the new caliphate in 2014 after a ninety-year interruption aroused new hopes in many parts of the Sunni world, traumatized by the failure of nationalism and pan-Arabism and eager to rekindle its lost glory. The attraction of radical Islamic utopias promising revenge against inhospitable European societies pushed a tiny minority of them toward violent action in the name of Allah, in particular after the creation of IS that galvanized them in that sense.