Joining ISIS is often based on personal circumstances and motivations

The argument

Proponents of this position accept that religion is part of the story of ISIS recruitment, but argue that it is rarely the decisive part. Many of these potential recruits may be initially drawn to joining ISIS due to religion, but the majority of these recruits are actually drawn to ISIS due to political and personal reasons — that is, because of the circumstances of the lives they are leaving rather than the doctrine they are joining. The Iraqi case is offered first. Many ISIS recruits from Iraq grew up during the United States occupation after 2003, under Nouri al-Maliki's sectarian Shia government, a formative period in which they experienced the political order as something imposed on them and arranged against them. ISIS offered these young recruits an opportunity to channel that rage and humiliation, and to defend their dignity. What the organisation supplied, on this reading, was not a theology that persuaded them but an outlet for a grievance they already had. A parallel account is given for recruits from Western countries. Many of these recruits were compelled to join due to the high level of Islamophobia they experienced in the West, while also finding a sense of purpose fighting for their perception of Islam. That last phrase carries the weight of the argument: underlining this point is that many ISIS fighters are generally ignorant of Islam as a whole and are committed only to the brand of Islam ISIS promotes. If religion were the primary driver, proponents argue, recruits would be expected to arrive religiously literate; instead the pattern is one of people with little grounding in the faith adopting a version of it supplied to them at the point of recruitment. Both routes converge on the same thing. Ultimately, ISIS offered recruits an opportunity for feelings of empowerment against perceived injustice through violence — a phenomenon primarily political and not religious. Because joining ISIS is so often based on personal circumstances and motivations of this kind, politics, not religion, is the primary factor.

Premises

Counter-arguments

These motivations are fueled by attacks against Islam as a whole, ranging from the 2003 invasion of Iraq to the everyday Islamophobia these recruits see on an everyday basis across the West. Joining ISIS is an opportunity to honor the duty to defend Islam.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The premise concedes the point at issue. If recruits "may initially be drawn by religion", religion is operating at the moment of recruitment, and the argument would then need to show that it drops out afterwards rather than combining with the political grievance. [Rejecting P2] Grievance explains anger but not its direction. Iraqis marginalised under a sectarian government and Muslims facing hostility in Europe had many available outlets — nationalist, criminal, sectarian but not jihadist, or none — and the premise does not explain why this organisation, with its explicitly theological programme of a restored caliphate, was the one that absorbed it. [Rejecting P3] Ignorance of a religion is not evidence that religion is not the motivation. Someone can act on a shallow or idiosyncratic reading of a tradition and still be acting on religious grounds; the premise's own phrasing — committed to the brand of Islam the organisation promotes — describes attachment to a doctrine rather than its absence. The counter presses the same point from the other side, that a perceived religious duty is what converts grievance into action.