“Our training camps are open; so are our battlefields. Come on youths of Islam! Let’s take Baghdad together.” So expresses the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in one of the group’s many online recruitment videos.  This call to fight has resonated with people from all around the world as the Islamic State calls Muslims to serve Allah. Unlike its predecessors, the Islamic State pervades the Internet and therefore possesses the ability to grow its cult-like terrorist organization at an exponential speed. According to Adrian Furnham, a professor of psychology at the University College London and the Norwegian Business School, the majority of cults begin by inducting members and remaking them as one of them. This evolution begins the second someone hits play.

Intelligence experts estimate that 12,000 foreign fighters have joined the Islamic State’s ranks—among them some 3,000 Westerners, 100 from the United States. According to the Daily Beast, an astounding number of Islamic militants come from countries like the Netherlands and Belgium. 

Together, these countries have a Muslim population of only 1.5 million out of some 28 million. In the last two years, 450 to 500 men and women have traveled from Belgium and the Netherlands to join the ranks of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. 

Volunteers in the Netherlands have even set up the Dutch Radicalization Hotline in an attempt to quell the number of teenagers and young adults becoming radicalized. It aims to provide psychological support to relatives of those who fall under the influence of jihadists and Islamic State. Their greatest challenge comes from the Moroccan-Dutch population: nearly 70 percent of calls made to the hotline come from this population of around 371,825. 

An offshoot of Al Qaeda, Islamic State aims at creating a single Islamic state or caliphate. It has recruited young, second-generation immigrants in the Western world through a propaganda machine—the Internet. According to Halima, a Dutch teacher and volunteer at the Dutch Radicalization Hotline, “It always starts this the same way. They start watching a lot of Islamic State videos online. Social media has an enormous impact on radicalization.”

Although the Dutch Radicalization Hotline hopes to stem potential terrorist attacks, it cannot properly end the permeating influence that these jihadists have. This is because the Hotline seems like an afterthought. Although the work of these volunteers may prevent young people from joining terrorist groups, they do not adequately address the problems in society that lead people to radicalize in the first place.

Professionally filmed and edited, the videos shared by the Islamic State are oftentimes accompanied by videos from the Islamic State militants from around the world, recruiting Sunni Muslims with messages in their own languages. The media wing of this organization understands how to leverage social media in a crafty way. At one point, a simple app could be downloaded on an individual’s phone, and it would automatically tweet official Islamic State messages on their Twitter account. They all trend on Twitter, going rather unnoticed. The Islamic State will always be on the Internet, but the Dutch community must take forward steps to stopping this message from reaching the people most vulnerable to it.  

Many second-generation immigrants feel no stable identity in their families’ new home, and they gain an aura of self-confidence from being a part of a larger community. 

According to Edwin Bakker, a professor of counter-terrorism at the Leiden University, these young people never feel fully familiarized by the Muslim community, and they never feel fully Dutch because their country fails to foster a strong nationalist identity. 

In other words, there is no organized religion in the region, and if it is organized, it is often radicalized.

Additionally, in the Netherlands, there are no Muslims who wield significant power in politics, pop culture or other fields. Left without direction or identity, it appears these young, impressionable people feel inclined to turn to radical groups like the Islamic State for inspiration. A former head of counter-terrorism at M16, Richard Barrett shared the story of a seemingly normal Florida man who committed a suicide attack in Syria last May. He expressed:  “It’s potentially quite alluring because it’s an opportunity that won’t appear again and, if you are at that age when you are attracted to go and do that adventurous unknown, and engage in a foreign war… it doesn’t get any better than this. I think more people will go and fight for whatever reason.” If a well-adjusted adult man can fall under the Islamic State’s influence, then who is to argue that the young and the impressionable cannot fall victim to the same influence? 

These individuals believe that their suffering is minute in comparison with that of the ummah—the global Muslim community. 

It seems much simpler to die a martyr than to face their individual struggle. Therefore, they turn to jihad.

The Dutch community must promote something in addition to the hotline—access to adequate education. These young individuals are lured into the concept of martyrdom because they want to defend the ummah and connect to some sort of community, but they never fully understand the implications of the choice to join radical terrorist groups as they seem all too willing to end their own lives.  Obviously, schools should not provide the individual student with a prescribed way to live life but instead open their eyes to Muslims who have shaped the world in a positive light. The names span from Muhammad Yunus, the founder of microcredit, to Raif Bawadi, the Saudi Arabian blogger who created an open forum for debate on religion and politics and was recently sentenced to 1,000 lashings for his actions. 

Although this perhaps is a rather idealized social movement, those in the Dutch community can make changes on an incremental scale. First, parents should share their stories of why they chose to move to the country. Then, the community can promote imams who espouse the true spirit of the religion of Islam and makes its students excited about learning. 

If parents and relatives devoted a greater amount of time to these children then maybe they could fix the societal problems that lead them to embrace jihad. 

They must teach them why they must be invested in their community and also have pride in their state—the Netherlands.  

They must provide them with a community that reconciles their Dutch identity with their Muslim Moroccan identity. Then there would be no need for the Dutch Radicalization Hotline but instead a community of young hopefuls promoting the true identity of the Dutch, Moroccan Muslim community.