How Alienated Youth Fall Prey to the Militant Allure of Islamic State

Paris suspects were a group of guys turned from drugs to terrorism by a potent movement

By Stephen Fidler, WSJ
Dec. 4, 2015 12:01 a.m. ET

The profiles of the suspects behind the Paris terrorist attacks reflect a pattern often seen among perpetrators of previous atrocities—a group of guys who turned from drugs and petty crime to terrorism. What’s new is the potency of the movement that mobilized them.

To many in the West, Islamic State represents a medieval-style death cult. To its sympathizers, estimated to number in the thousands or even tens of thousands in Europe, its radical message of reviving the Sunni Muslim caliphate is strengthened by the fact that it already rules over territory.

Scott Atran, a Franco-American academic who has interviewed hundreds of radical Islamists over years, likens the rise and allure of Islamic State to the ascendancy of the Bolsheviks in czarist Russia and the National Socialist Party in Weimar Germany.

It wasn’t police, intelligence services or military that finally defeated the anarchist movements that sprang up in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, he says, but the Bolsheviks. Similarly, he says, Islamic State is eclipsing older jihadist movements including al Qaeda, in large part because of its hold on territory in Iraq and Syria.

(More here.)