ISIS Fighters - Living the MRA Dream?

The only men I trust are my dad and my husband....every other man I just distrust. But back to the topic....I do think you are onto something CK. So many men seem to be devoid of anything except that which gives them pleasure, to hell with everyone else. They seem dead inside. Naturally they will be attracted to something like IS.

aiming to be doctors were clever girls

I was always told it was the clever people who seemed more susceptible to this sort of thing years ago when talking about why people get involved with cults.

I agree I think it seems glamorous, daring, gives bored young men something to do, a purpose, allows them to act out brutal sides of their natures.

The styling of it, the uniforms, the flags, all reminds me of Nazi.

I don't know what MRA is but I can certainly see the appeal to these young men, of basically indulging their every fantasy like living out one of these vile computer games.

I can see where you are coming from CK. It resonates with young men rushing out to join wars throughout human history to prove themselves to themselves.

My personal opinion: young men are actually really vulnerable people. They are awash with testosterone and make some very regrettable decisions for themselves and others. Not to mention that neither sex's frontal lobe (the bit of our brain that organising and uses logic) is finished developing until they are about 25 years old. Add a few romantic notions and some religious zeal and you have a dangerous brew.

Oh, that's bad, CaptChaos

I think people use religion as an excuse. The messages in the Koran can all be interpreted differently (same as the bible etc), but not all Muslims are extremists so I doubt it does say 'feel free to murder women and children' as most are peaceful.

Strangely enough I had a similar thought this morning (this is in response to the opening post), interesting to know I wasn't the only one.

But I am of the thought that most religions support the abuse of women, I don't say all, I don't know enough about all the religions in the world but the ones I'm familiar with do, some more subtly than this but still the same women haters

As an aside I do wonder/worry about these young girls and women who have gone out there, I really don't think they could have released what they were getting in to, and little to no way out.

No, the ones in the Guardian were awful enough. Apparently women just have to accept that it's actually us that are the abusers, always. There were a couple which suggested that men only hit us when they've had enough of our emotional abuse. Which was nice.

Interesting thread. I think you're probably right, although I would caution that there are quite a lot of reasons why young men join jihadist movements, not all of which are tied to gender or notions of masculinity.

It's also worth remembering that some ISIS members will come from countries that are already a misogynist paradise (cough, cough, Saudi) so to go off and risk your life probably means something else is at play too.

Very much so. Did you see the comments on the BBC?

AICM Where did this quote come from?

The first half was a direct quote from NeoFaust's post, the part after the dots was a misquote from NeoFaust's post. Not of you, sorry.

And young Muslim men are still young men, there's no real difference however, the ones who join IS and other extremist groups of that ilk tend to exhibit some equally extreme views on the role of women. These views seem to lead to them kidnapping large numbers of young girls/women and selling them into forced marriages, forced conversion, rape and other violence against women. The OP has several parts of it which pertain to how IS treats women, and how similar that is to how MRA culture likes to see women.

Being a Muslim doesn't give anyone a main line into misogyny. Elliot Roger was a misogynistic murderer and iirc, he was also a nominal Christian. Fritzl - Christian. Leiutenant Governor of Texas - Christian. Micheal Higgins - Christian. Being a Muslim doesn't make you a misogynistic twat, being a misogynistic twat makes you one.

And yes, LadySybilLikesCake some of the responses to that announcement have been eye opening haven't they?

Violence is mainly a gender thing though. Women talk, men fight. ISIS are men.

To be fair, Islam is only tangentially associated with ISIS

I completely agree that ISIS and groups like it are, among other things, male supremacists.

I was reading a different board on Tuesday when the Gov announced the new changes to the UK domestic violence laws and I was shocked to read all of the MRA posts on there. I think there's a lot of people, all over the world, who don't like the way in which society is evolving, and how the status of women is changing from something to own and abuse to an equal. It's depressing.

I do agree with you about ISIS. They view women in a certain way and have become violent now that their 'way of life' has been changed. 2014 and it's still not safe to be female.

'Young men' or 'young Muslim men'. There's a difference.

But the initial post was not about how ISIS is treating women.
It was about her theory about MRAs.

People believe what they want to believe; religions don't tell them anything.

Someone who has an aggressive or bigoted world view will interpret a religion as telling them they must hold those aggressive and bigoted views. Someone who has a peaceful and loving world view will interpret religion as telling them they must have peaceful and loving views. There are plenty of both types held be people of all religions.

What is more interesting is to look at why people have those outlooks in the first place.

I believe this is an issue about the Islam not MRAs.