Jihadi Actors

IS jihadism attracted several new categories of male and female actors, sometimes newcomers (European teenagers, for instance). During the crucial years of 2013–2017, when IS was born, established, thrived, and then declined, most of these actors identified with the new State that epitomized in their minds the rebirth of the caliphate and the dawn of a new world. The main link between them was the aspiration to a future other than the one they had come to expect in their society as well as a sense of a meaningful and sacred mission, which consisted in fulfilling the utopia of a universal Islamic State. An unbridled imagination, often with contempt for reality, but in search of a new world, inspired them. Chapter 3 describes the wide variety of jihadi actors, the main group being disaffected youth, but also a minority of middle-class youth, young women who represent a specific group (the majority being jihadi brides rather than jihadi agents), converts, and recruiters and preachers.