Chopping off heads and killing children for ISIS is the ‘new cool’ among American and European youth

Is chopping off heads, raping and pillaging villages, killing unarmed civilians en masse, brutalizing women and children and fighting alongside brutal Islamic terrorists the “new cool” for American and European youngsters? You might think so these days because, as the extremist group Islamic State continues to gain ground in Iraq and Syria, more young men from the West are making their way to the Middle East to sign up with IS, as evidenced by the increasing number of them being killed in battle.

As noted by The Daily Beast:

This week, U.S. officials announced that an American citizen had been killed inside Syria while fighting for the extremist group ISIS, which has bedeviled the region by declaring a Muslim caliphate, snatching up territory in Iraq, and sowing terror through forced conversions and beheadings. Experts estimate that dozens of U.S. citizens have flocked to the Middle East’s jihad du jour—this summer, ISIS released a propaganda video with a fighter claiming to be an American, while another video supposedly showed an American suicide bomber burning his passport. Yet these self-anointed jihadis are just the latest in a line of tormented souls who have joined up with foreign terror groups post 9/11.

One of the most recent Americans to die in the service of the Islamic State was Somali-born American citizen Abdirahmaan Muhumed, 29. What is especially disturbing about this American jihadi is that before he left for the Middle East, he was cleaning commercial airliners for Delta Airlines while working at the international airport in Minneapolis. 

According to local reports, Muhumed had security clearances that gave him special access to the airport for the purposes of his employment. He left the city and his nine children late last year to go fight for the IS, which has since beheaded a pair of American journalists and has slaughtered thousands of innocent civilians as the brutal fighters filling its ranks won control over large swaths of real estate that once belonged to Syria and Iraq.

Meanwhile, in the words of Mark Steyn, the “TSA theater” continues unabated, embarrassingly patting down grandmothers with colostomy bags and three-year-old toddlers while making every airline passenger shuffle through a gauntlet of agents shoeless, as Muhumad – fighter for ISIS – gets a security clearance.

In all, U.S. authorities say at least 15 men and one woman have traveled from Minneapolis to Syria to fight for ISIS, most of them from the city’s large Somali population. But they are not the only ones – not by a long shot.

Last month, U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., told Newsmax TV that “well over 100″ Americans and Europeans had left their countries to fight for ISIS. Worse, they all have passports.

“There are over 115 Americans, American citizens with passports, who are part of ISIS, and there are several thousand Europeans from France, from England, from Germany, from Scandinavian countries, who are fighting with ISIS,” he said. “In fact one of them who went over to fight was from Florida, came back, went back, said hateful things on the Internet, and was killed in a suicide bombing. So this has potential to come to the homeland.”

Slate.com laid out the potential threat:

Armed with Western passports and “clean skins,” these Western volunteers can more easily get past security measures to threaten commercial aircraft or carry out other terrorist operations in the West. When these battle-hardened veterans come marching home, will they seek to bring the violent jihad with them?

Europeans, by the way, can travel to the U.S. without visas.

And there is this ABC News story, from July:

A suburban Denver teen fell in love with an ISIS fighter online, vowed to aid his cause in Syria, then was arrested at an airport, federal authorities said.

Shannon Maureen Conley, 19, of Arvada, Colorado, was charged with conspiracy to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization after FBI agents arrested her at Denver International Airport on April 8 as she tried to board a flight to Frankfurt, Germany, according to a U.S. criminal complaint and a supporting affidavit.

According to the report, Conley – a certified nurse’s aide – allegedly had connecting flights through Turkey, where she would have wound up about a two-hour drive from the Syrian border. According to federal documents, her suitor was a 32-year-old Tunisian man; she had promised to provide his camp with medical services and training, and he allegedly said that was a good thing because the camp was in need of more nursing personnel.

“Conley stated that she was aware that her plans were potentially illegal and she could possibly get arrested, and therefore she has no intention to return to the U.S.,” the account read. “Conley mentioned an incident where an individual was arrested for attempting to go fight in Syria. She told [investigators] there was nothing they could do to change her mind and that she was still going, although she admitted, ‘I know things can go terribly wrong.’

“When asked if she would engage in actual combat on the battlefield, Conley said, ‘If it was absolutely necessary, then yes. I wouldn’t like it … but I would do it,'” according to the affidavit.

Fighting for ISIS appears to be the ‘new cool’ for an increasing number of American and Western youth, but why? What do YOU think makes the organization so appealing to our youth? TELL us!