Jihad as a lifestyle

Pop-jihad as a lifestyle’, so the Dutch Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism opined, when expressing his worries about the appeal of jihadist symbols to young Europeans.1 Starting in 2012, many thousands Europeans have travelled to join jihadist groups in Syria, in particular the so called Islamic State (aka ISIL or ISIS). Numbers vary from 3,400 to 5,000. By July 2015, from Belgium alone some 440 individuals have gone to the region (included are the 50 or so who never made it to Syria). But looking into the motivations and backgrounds of this relative large group from a small country might help to shed a light on the journey of Westerners to “a country they do not know, in a culture they are not familiar with, and where a language is spoken that they do not understand.”