The entire world has been contending with radical, jihadi Islam for decades. The phenomenon was turbo-charged by the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution, and Iran has been the world's greatest state sponsor of Islamic terror ever since. In the organization of the various jihadi groups, there is quite a dichotomy between leaders and shooters. The "leaders," such as they are, are the only ones with any traces of brains, and they keep themselves well away from danger. They run their organizations from luxury homes in Qatar and France, where they live the lifestyles of the rich and famous. The shooters tend to be the very definition of useful idiots.
Worse, a lot of them are teenagers and even younger children.
In March 2024, a 15-year-old Swiss teenager stabbed an Orthodox Jew in the immediate vicinity of a synagogue in Zurich after pledging allegiance to the Islamic State and being an active member of a decentralized online network supporting the group. Two months later, a 14-year-old girl was arrested by authorities in Graz, Austria, for plotting an Islamic State-inspired attack with a knife and ax, intending to target “non-believers” at a supermarket or a square, or a priest.
The young age of the suspects is striking, yet these examples of minors involved in jihadi terrorism in Europe are not outliers. Rather, they are indicative of a relatively new phenomenon. Some experts claim that the surge in jihadi terrorism in Europe since the outbreak of the war in Gaza following the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas and other Palestinian jihadi factions has been spearheaded by minors.
A 14-year-old girl, by rights, should be worried about friends, clothes, and her schooling. Instead, organizations like the Islamic State are inciting them to murder. Radicalization of teenagers is a global problem, and while it's not just Islamic radicals that are radicalizing youths, the Islamic groups are by far the most murderous.
But in recent years, there's a new and disturbing trend; teenage jihadis are no longer just spear-carriers in the ranks. They are involved in plotting and planning attacks.
An even more serious concern is that youth radicalization is increasingly turning into attack plotting. A recent analysis by Dino Krause warned about this development, highlighting that the frequency of Islamic State-related plots involving minors has increased notably since 2022, confirming Peter Neumann’s recent analysis with the same conclusion. An overview of the Islamist terror threat landscape in Germany in this publication also found that the average age of both attackers and plotters has decreased, with half of the thwarted plots being planned by suspects aged 18 or younger.
In this, online recruiting and information transmission are taking advantage of the existing online presence of the younger generations. Younger people are spending more time online with nearly every generation; all one needs to do to realize this is to go outside and observe the glued-to-the-smartphone-screen behavior of any number of present-day teenagers. This is one of the primary tools being used to radicalize teens and even children.
Analysts link this development to changes in jihadi online propaganda as well as societal trends. Krause explains the proliferation of young plotters as the aftermath of the pandemic that introduced psychological distress and uncertainty into the lives of European youth. These challenges coincide with the recent publications tied to the Islamic State—particularly Voice of Khurasan replacing Dabiq and Rumiyah—being increasingly tailored to Western audiences with frequent calls for lone-actor attacks.
This is a warning: The leadership of the various jihadi groups may be evil, but they are not stupid. The shooters are not particularly smart, as a rule, but the leaders, sheltered safely away from any danger, sitting on huge, fat Swiss and Cayman Islands bank accounts, are not stupid.
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This isn't just a problem with Islamic radicals, either. America's radical left is using similar tactics to recruit teens to their causes, including, as we have just seen so horribly demonstrated, political assassinations. President Trump has even signed an executive order to crack down on leftist indoctrination in our nation's schools.
Aristotle wrote, "Give me a child until he is 7, and I will show you the man." As was so often the case, the old Greek makes an excellent point. But the process can work in the malleable brains of teenagers as well. Islamic radicalization of the youths of the developed world could be a very serious problem in the next few decades. The spread of pernicious online content advocating for radicalism and jihad is nearly impossible to deal with. Individual sites and contacts may be able to be identified and blocked, but that will be a lot like fighting the Hydra of legend.
What can be done is to make it abundantly clear, as Israel is doing in Gaza even now, that every jihadi attack will be dealt with harshly. Every attack will receive an overwhelming and violent response. What can also be done is to locate and block the financial assets of the jihadis' leadership.
And, again, this is the conflict of our time: Civilization vs. barbarity. Recruiting children to jihad is an act of barbarity.
The lines are drawn.
