In response to these posts a while back:
It has an internal logic to it which makes sense, like somehow it all holds together
Does it ? To me it make no sense whatsoever - totally unbelievable. Who is meant to be benefitting from this kind of regime?
As others have pointed out even the men don't seem to be getting much from it - off fighting at some far away war, standing around on guard for hours or living a horrible existence but just thankful to have a job...
Sounds very similar to Daesh in Syria, so completely believable. Shit for women, naturally, but it doesn't look much fun for anyone, even the religious apocalypse fans at the top, really (at least not day to day).
The following, from the Guardian, explains how many of the Syrian-born fighters were far from being ideologues (unlike the sorely misguided ones that went from the UK with big ideas and ended up finding it all a bit much) but, as you say, were indeed glad of a job:
“Radicalisation is not an explanation for joining a violent extremist group per se,” said the study by International Alert (pdf). “For many young Syrians, belief in extreme ideologies appears to be, at most, a secondary factor in the initial decision to join an extremist group. Religion is providing a moral medium for coping and justification for fighting, rather than a basis for rigid and extreme ideologies.”
Vulnerability is driven by a combination of extreme trauma, loss and displacement, lack of alternative ways to make a decent living, the collapse of social structures and institutions, including education, and the desire to take revenge against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, the report says.
Its findings about the causes of extremism are broadly in line with a recent wider survey of Arab youth, which situated the causes of radicalisation in a lack of jobs and opportunities. In eight of the 16 countries surveyed, employment problems were a bigger pull factor for Isis than extreme religious views.