Abdel Majed Abdel Bary, the rapper suspected of murdering American journalist James Foley somewhere between Syria and Iraq, is the product of a British youth culture that has managed to merge two seemingly contradictory lifestyles: gangsta rap and jihad. Like Douglas McAuthur McCain—an American hip-hop fan who was recently killed fighting for the Islamic State—Abdel Bary represents a new and very scary evolution in modern jihadi history.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel recently described the Islamic State as a threat “beyond anything we’ve ever seen.” Yet we are only just beginning to grasp what is different about this group. One reason is that it includes men in its ranks whom you might expect to see in a nightclub rather than fighting in the desert for an organization that would, traditionally, whip you for listening to music.

As a result of this cultural elasticity, the Islamic State has succeeded in attracting supporters outside its natural recruiting pool. Both McCain and another Westerner, Denis Mamadou Cuspert, a German citizen who died fighting with the Islamic State—and had a previous life as rapper Deso Dogg with three albums to his name—became converts as part of this broader appeal.

I first began to look into this hybrid phenomenon in 2008 when I was a journalist researching a subculture that had fused the extremism and violence of gangsta rap with that of al Qaeda—or at least a version of it. During a months-long investigation for British television station Channel 4, I met dozens of young men across London who tended to have three things in common: a history of criminal activity, an ambition to be a gangsta rapper and a fixation with the terrorist group begun by Osama bin Laden.

In a fried chicken shop in the south London district of Brixton—which saw mass riots against the police in the 1980s—I met with several young men who were walking examples of the powerful effect of al Qaeda’s ideology. None came from Muslim backgrounds. Aged between 16 and 20, they were members of a gang that identified itself around their local postal code, SW16. Their activities revolved around crime and self promotion. So, when they were not carrying out muggings, extortion rackets, or dealing drugs, they were targeting rivals perceived to be encroaching on their area for beatings and “tagging” — using graffiti to stamp the name of their gang on local landmarks. As a gang or “crew,” as they called themselves, they produced rap songs and videos about their exploits. By linking actions and communications– making their criminal exploits the focus of their rap songs – they were extremely effective in the way they projected their power to rivals and authorities. There are similarities with the way IS seamlessly integrates its media efforts and its military activities.

But what the gang was missing was a big vision beyond local turf wars. A few weeks before I met them, they had decided to convert as a whole to “Islam,” which they were drawn to because they understood it to be the enemy of the “system,” as they also saw themselves to be. Crucially, they were attracted to the idea that this “Islam” would allow them to continue carrying out street robberies, break-ins and extortion of other local gangs with the added benefit of association with a movement that was fighting Western forces on the world stage. The money their activities brought in was used to buy time in recording studios to further their ambitions to become rap artists.

Their worldview was a mashup of what they called “thug life,” gleaned from the music of their U.S. gangsta-rap heroes along with selective borrowings from classic left wing and race-based conspiracy theories. It promoted a do-anything approach to accumulating money and getting ahead, with a focus on violence and intimidation. The title of rapper 50 Cent’s debut album “Get Rich, or Die Tryin’” was regarded as an article of faith. Al Qaeda offered a bridge that allowed this intensely local worldview to connect with the grand narratives of global war. They already saw themselves as soldiers in an endless urban conflict. Now, they could become warriors in an epic, global struggle. Bin Laden would have struggled to recognize their views as Islamic, even accordingly to his own warped definition. But the twisted genius of his ideological creation was that they did not need his approval to sign up.

On the face of it, it’s difficult to imagine two lifestyles more diametrically opposed than rap and Islamism. On one side is the “bling” culture of ostentatious consumption, alcohol, drugs and easy sex. On the other is an austere and unforgiving worldview that seeks to recreate seventh-century Arabia. What is frightening is that the Islamic State has been able to bridge these two very different worlds because of the ideology it inherited from al Qaeda, which is uses to attract young men motivated by a vague sense of injustice and anger at the West.

In many ways, the world of hip hop runs parallel to and mirrors the place of Islam in many urban communities in the Western world. Hip hop provides a cultural frame of reference that allows followers to share social experiences they feel are not appreciated by wider society—whether that is poverty, racism, discrimination or dysfunction within their own community. It is, in some ways, the most significant social-protest music of our era. At the same time, followers develop and appropriate language, interactions and dress codes – whether traditional Pakistani tribal attire or low-riding jeans and bandanas of urban East Coast America — that they feel are more in keeping with an “authentic” expression of their identities. Both are often forces for good. But at the same time, both have extremes. Hip hop and genuine Islam can help people find community and direction in a confusing world; in some ways hip hop is the modern descendent of the social protest music of the past. Gangsta rap and Islamist extremism, on the other hand, are both a dark reflection of their respective mainstream expressions.

The most obvious similarity between them is a sense of grievance towards wider society. Both focus on vengeance and fetishize violence as a way of redressing the balance. Both also take their audiences on similar journeys. Followers and listeners are made to feel they are at the center of an unfolding, dangerous epic that will require guts and determination to survive. But if they do, they will achieve some sort of everlasting fulfilment. Among the albums of Tupac Shakur, who was killed in a feud in 1996 but remains a huge influence among many of the young men I met, are such jihadi-inspiring titles as “Me Against the World” and “Until the End of Time.”

While taking their adherents on similar, almost parallel, journeys. Gangsta rap and Islamist extremism also feed off each other. So while gangsta rap might celebrate violence, the ideology of al Qaeda provides the intellectual justification to undertake those actions.

Abdel Bary, or L Jinny and Lyricist Jinn as he called himself in his Youtube videos, is part of a subsection of a subsection of British youth culture in which Islamist extremism and gangsta rap do not just run in parallel, but fuse together. In my 2008 investigation, I met several other young men like him who also lived in west London. Some had family connections to Algeria, others Morocco, Iraq or the Gulf. Without exception all their families had Islamist political leanings. Abdel Bary’s father, who was extradited by British authorities to stand trial in the US for al Qaeda’s 1998 bombings of embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, would be the most extreme. Others had family members who were members of non-violent political groups while some had fathers who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s, but opposed al Qaeda’s targeting of civilians.

The young men I met — who would have been Abdel Bary’s neighbors — used the currency of East Coast gangsta rap, the language, clothes and mannerisms, to give themselves personas that allowed them to fit into west London street life. All – like Abdel Bary – spent time in a local recording studio making videos of themselves rapping, or “spitting rhymes.” Also like Abdel Bary they drew their material from their experience struggling to adjust to inner city London while still surrounded by the battles “back home” that their parents were still fighting. Circumstances were difficult for them all. Like the Brixton gang, some resorted to crime.

Abdel Bary’s lyrics echo 50 Cent and Tupac Shakur’s progression from victimhood and violence to redemption. “I’m trying to change my ways but there’s blood on my hands and I can’t change my ways until there’s funds in the bank,” he raps in a track from 2012.

In later videos he refers to his anger at his father’s treatment: “I swear the day they came and took my dad, I could have killed a cop or two.”

It was the ideology of al Qaeda and the opportunity created by IS in Iraq and Syria that provided him an outlet for the grievances that he faced in London.

Abdel Bary came from a family that was already somewhat familiar with the idea of violence for Islamist causes. McCain and Cuspert, however, did not. All three found in the ideology of al Qaeda a path offering the vengeance and redemption that they were looking for. And the latest and most arguably violent incarnation of al Qaeda, the Islamic State, provided the opportunity.

IS’s ability to attract these men to its cause means that the ideological wheels set in motion by bin Laden are reaching new audiences and converting sympathy into participation—a dangerous development in the world of Islamist extremism.

We should not forget that the presence of young men from Western countries in foreign wars is a long-established tradition that includes British volunteers in the Spanish civil war—George Orwell, for one—and American pilots fighting in the Battle of Britain. In these and other conflicts, the volunteers were motivated by what they saw as injustice happening to others. And now, the Islamic State is using al Qaeda’s ideology to link injustice abroad with the potential recruit’s own sense of grievance—in essence, uniting personal and collective suffering under one worldview. At the same time, it has managed to bestow on its struggle a counter-culture sense of subversive “cool” that mainstream political parties and even commercial brands might envy.

I have spent most of my career living and working in the Middle East and until June, I was a British adviser to the Syrian Coalition, the internationally recognised and supported Syrian opposition still fighting for the goals of the original popular uprising against the Assad regime. It is clear to me that one of the main reasons that al Qaeda’s ideology is so powerful is that there is little else to counteract it. The majority of the Syrian opposition, activists and sympathisers as well as fighters, are still moderates seeking a state that respects the rule of law, protects the rights of its people and does not differentiate on the basis of ethnicity or beliefs. But these principles have not yet been developed into an ideology that can inspire, motivate and mobilise. Until there is an ideological alternative, military action will be limited in what it can achieve against IS.

The only time I have seen al Qaeda’s messages fall flat was when the Arab uprisings of 2011 first broke out. It was clear from its hesitant, defensive statements that the group felt challenged by the idea of young people in Muslim countries rising up against dictators and demanding freedom and good governance. But that moment was all too brief; now the Arab Spring has given way to a battle between autocrats and Islamist militias—much more comfortable terrain for radical extremist groups like the Islamic State.

True, al Qaeda’s actions, and the reactions of its enemies, have so far failed to create a global popular uprising. The organisation itself is being eclipsed. But al Qaeda was always about bin Laden’s ideology of cosmic war rather than allegiance to the group itself. The Islamic State still very much follows “al-Qaeda-inspired” ideology, even though the two groups have fallen out over tactics and strategy. Bin Laden’s most significant achievement was establishing his brand of Islamist extremism as an overarching narrative of suffering and redemption that a wide array of Muslim grievances could latch on to.

Today, we see in Iraq and Syria an insurgent organisation that can mobilize people from vastly different backgrounds—people held together not just by old grievances but by a very modern, and scary, sensibility.