As the frequency of atrocities committed by ISIS both in the Levant and around the world increases, for me one question continues to dominate. Why doesn’t the saturation news coverage of these events dissuade the not insignificant numbers – hundreds – of British Muslims from travelling or attempting to travel to Syria to join ISIS? Why aren’t these events, collectively, the equivalent of the Communist Party of Great Britain’s Hungarian Uprising moment (where a third left the movement due to Soviet tactics) for some British Muslims and their attitude to ISIS? How are ISIS able to successfully radicalise so many and what further measures can we take to stop them?

Jessica Stern, from her excellent book Terror in the Name of God, sets the scene:

“We learn… how leaders exploit feelings of alienation and humiliation to create holy warriors; and how demographic shifts, selective reading of history, and territorial disputes are used to justify holy wars…. We learn, through the terrorists’ stories, that the benefits they receive are partly spiritual, partly emotional, and partly material.”

Given that many of the British Muslims who have joined or sought to join ISIS are well-educated and with good language skills it is difficult to believe that news of ISIS’s medieval modus operandi hasn’t got through. This suggests, I think, that there is a sufficient sense of historical grievance that the tactics seem justified to those susceptible to radicalisation. Jessica Stern’s ‘selective reading of history’ chimes with this recent piece by Akil N Awan and A. Warren Dockter in History Today magazine: ISIS and the Abuse of History.

The Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 and the Iraq War both feature in ISIS propaganda, but the Crusades are perhaps the bedrock of perceived historical injustice. It helps that we in the West seem to have conceded almost entirely that they were an unjustified act of aggression on our part. But there seems to be a reasonable counter-narrative that, while it might not completely reverse a potential jihadi’s sense of historical righteousness, at least gets across that there is another side to the story. Here’s Jonathan Riley-Smith:

“We are today subjected to a religio-politico hostility, erupting in acts of extreme violence, and a war of words in the course of which the Crusades feature prominently. We cannot hope to understand the circumstances in which we find ourselves unless we are prepared to face up to the fact that modern Western public opinion, Arab Nationalism, and Pan-Islamism all share perceptions of crusading that have more to do with nineteenth century European imperialism than with actuality. The Crusades themselves were deeply embedded in popular Catholic ideas and devotional life. They were not thoughtless explosions of barbarism. The theory of force that underlay them was relatively sophisticated and was considered to be theologically justifiable by a society that felt itself to be threatened. It is hard now to conceive of the intensity of the attachment felt for the holy places of Jerusalem, the concern aroused by heresy and physical assaults on the church, and the fear Westerners had of Muslim invaders, who reached central France in the eighth century and Vienna in the sixteenth and again in the seventeenth. The men and women who took the cross seem mostly to have been pious and well-intentioned.” The Crusades, Christianity, and Islam – Jonathan Riley-Smith.

Or, as Thomas Asbridge puts it (The Crusades): “A charged and vexatious question remains: did the Muslim world provoke the crusades, or were these Latin holy wars acts of aggression? This fundamental enquiry requires an assessment of the overall threat posed to the Christian West by Islam in the eleventh century.”

My guess is that a total acceptance of ISIS’s crusader narrative is a necessary but insufficient condition for radicalisation. Interpretation of the Koran is also important, but is it the principal issue? Asbridge, again: “In an attempt to define the role of warfare within Islam, Muslim scholars turned to the Koran and the hadith, the traditions or sayings associated with Muhammad. These texts provided numerous examples of the Prophet advocating ‘struggle in the path of God’.” Perhaps, but a radical interpretation of the Koran doesn’t seem a strong enough case on its own. A genuine sense of grievance, though, an eye for a historic eye? This seems more likely as the primary mover.

To counter this effect, though, we don’t need a revised history of the Crusades to triumph. We simply need to restore a sense that there is a credible historical debate on the issue. Against that background, signing up to commit atrocities to ‘right’ historic wrongs becomes more difficult, however you interpret the Koran. The material is out there, as Jonathan Riley-Smith’s and Thomas Asbridge’s books and documentaries, for example, demonstrate. But I’m not sure we’re getting any traction at all within key parts of the British Muslim community, principally those who are easily radicalised. If so we need to work out how we can reach those in the community who apparently seem sure that the history of Islam and Christianity justifies holy war.