Last week BuzzFeed broke the story of Ariel Bradley, a 29-year-old woman who was raised in a fundamentalist Christian homeschooling family and is now the wife of an ISIS fighter in Syria. BuzzFeed writes that Ariel’s mother was “prone to religious outbursts” and that the education Ariel received at home was sorely lacking. Ariel ran away from home as a teen and tried out a variety of beliefs in a search for stability and meaning. She got tattoos, tried drugs, and became a socialist and then an atheist. After she got a job at a restaurant run by a Muslim, she began researching Islam and ultimately decided to convert. Not long after this she married a Muslim man living overseas and traveled with him and their two small children to Syria to join ISIS.

This story is sure to leave many people scratching their heads, but I’m not one of them. To me, this story makes an awful lot of sense. Like Ariel, I grew up in a conservative Christian homeschooling family. Like Ariel, I know what it is like to search for stability and meaning on the rubble of a family background that fell apart and stopped making sense. I ended up in a very different place from Ariel, but if a number of things had been different, I could have been her.

When we try to understand why someone does something we find unfathomable, we tend to start looking into their background in an effort to understand what made them do it, and how this could have happened. Growing up in an evangelical home, I was taught to see Islam as gravely in error and even demonic. I was taught that Islam was a false religion, a religion of works, and completely different from Christianity. But when I look at Ariel’s story, I can see moments where her conservative Christian upbringing influenced her to become a radicalized Muslim.

Adrift and Searching

Ariel was raised in a strict fundamentalist home and given a lacking homeschool education. Her home life was bad enough that she ran away as a teen. Without an education and without a supportive family, Ariel was adrift. And drift she did, for a time. I know many homeschool alumni who also received a lacking education, had an abusive or neglectful home life, and found themselves adrift. My own story is somewhat different—I received a good education and found a strong support system in college—but I am familiar with the basic story.

Coming to adulthood without a basic education or a supportive family is bitterly difficult. Realizing that everything you were taught as a child is suspect and that you must rethink every belief you were raised with is also bitterly difficult. The Buzzfeed article suggests that Ariel did find friends, but also that she struggled with her inadequate education and with finding beliefs that felt like they fit. She moved from thing to thing, looking for something to hold onto. Islam offered her the stability she was looking for.

A Fundamentalist Approach to Religion

When Ariel began looking into Islam, she approached it in a very literal way.

Ariel was suspicious when her Muslim friends would try to talk to her about how their religion had changed with the times over the years. “She had to follow exactly what the Qur’an said, and the hadiths, the prophets and stuff, what they said,” her Muslim friend said. According to friends, Ariel wanted to follow the religion the way that the prophet’s wives had worshipped thousands of years ago.

Growing up in a strictly religious homeschool family, I was taught to approach Christianity this same way. The idea that religion should change with the times is heretical. The ideal was always to bring our practice and our understanding as closely in line with that of the early Christians as possible. When I was in college, my evangelical friends and I would pour over the Bible, working to understand it as it would have been understood by Paul or Timothy. Ariel was very likely raised to approach Christianity in the same way, and used this approach as her default when looking into Islam.

You have to understand that I was always taught that liberal Christians—or progressive Christians, or moderate Christians—were doing it wrong. They were lukewarm, and God would spit them out of his mouth as written in Revelation. I didn’t see liberal Christians’ approach to religion as legitimate in any way. For me, it was all or nothing—either every verse of the Bible should be taken literally, as written, or the entire Bible should be thrown out. Today I have many liberal and progressive Christian friends, and I have come to understand their approach as a legitimate way to practice religion.

It is very likely that Ariel did not see progressive or liberal ways of approaching religion as legitimate. It is also likely that she never considered such approaches to begin with, so foreign they would have been to her. Given that she was almost certainly raised to view fundamentalism as the only legitimate approach to religion, I don’t find it surprising at all that she approached Islam as a fundamentalist. Again, she may not have even considered any way of doing so, as she likely would have found liberal or progressive approaches to religion foreign and viewed them as illegitimate.

Looking for a Religious Husband

Ariel actively began looking for a husband as soon as she converted. “She wanted somebody that was religious,” her friend said. “She wanted somebody that was actually a practicing Muslim.”

Good conservative Christian homeschool girls learn early that the first thing on their list to look for in a prospective husband must be practicing Christian. We were taught to look for husbands who were not simply religious but also devout, husbands who would be spiritual leaders, who took Christianity seriously and made religion the most central thing in their lives. Ariel’s desire for a husband who was a religious and practicing Muslim has to be understood in that context.

Purity and Holiness

Have a look at this entire section:

As soon as they were engaged, Yasin began to talk to Ariel about what he expected from her as a wife. “He wanted her to change the way she dressed,” the friend said. “He did not want her listening to music” — a particularly sad change for friends to observe, because Ariel played guitar and was a talented singer. “Jesus Christ, her voice,” said one friend. “When she sang, there wasn’t anything else you’d want to listen to but her.” Yasin also didn’t want Ariel to talk to any men who were not immediate family members and, friends say, Ariel abided by his wishes. “If we went to a restaurant and the waiter was a guy, she would not talk to him. She would make me order her food for her,” her close Muslim friend said. “This was even before she got married. It was that bad.” . . . After a few weeks in Sweden with her new husband, Ariel flew back to Chattanooga so her Swedish residency application could be processed. To her friends’ surprise, Ariel returned wearing the abaya, the robe-like overdress worn by more conservative Muslim women, explaining, “that’s what [my] husband wants.” She also returned eating meat, explaining that her husband thought her vegetarian diet was making her unhealthy. Ariel briefly resumed her job at the restaurant upon her return from Sweden, but Mohamad soon urged her to quit and cut ties with all her Chattanooga friends, including her Muslim friends. “He made her go through her Facebook and delete every guy she knew on there and make sure that there were only girls,” Ariel’s close Muslim friend said. Mohamad also told Ariel to remove all images of herself from the website — even those that had been posted by other people. If photos weren’t removed promptly, Ariel would send frantic follow-up Facebook messages and emails asking friends to remove the pictures, explaining that it was an expression of her faith, and she didn’t want men to see her.

Growing up in a conservative Christian homeschool family, I was taught to expect to obey and submit to my future husband. I was taught that submission as beautiful, and freeing. I was also taught to observe strict modesty standards in order to not lead men into lustful thoughts. My friends and I talked about things like head coverings and I dressed even more conservatively than I was required to, because modesty and purity and godliness and holiness all blurred into each other. By dressing differently, and keeping my body from men’s eyes, I could be somehow better than other women, closer to God and more pure.

Ariel was likely raised similarly, taught that it would be her duty to obey her future husband and encouraged to dress modestly so as not to lead men astray. While she rebelled against these requirements and ran away from home and even called herself a feminist as a young adult, these teachings would have felt familiar when she encountered them in Islam. Growing up in a conservative Christian homeschool community, I knew a family where the wife would not leave the home without checking with her husband first. My mother found this a bit much, but others disagreed. Obeying God meant obeying one’s husband, after all.

Even now, I can understand the appeal here. There were times in my life, even after leaving my parents’ beliefs, when I was briefly sucked into what could quickly have become religious extremism. I explored Catholicism after leaving evangelicalism, and initially was very strict in my interpretations of it. I found the Latin Mass appealing, and wished confession were held more regularly. I read the catechism and the lives of the saints religiously. At another point I became involved in a college group that veered in a cult-like direction. I was swept up in the religious euphoria of it all. What Ariel did is more extreme, for sure, but the feelings behind it aren’t all that different.

Concluding Thoughts

I grew up thinking of Islam as diametrically opposed to Christianity. Christianity was a religion of grace, I was taught, and Islam was a religion of works. Christianity was a religion of forgiveness, and Islam a religion of vengeance. But as I look at Ariel’s story, fundamentalist Christianity and fundamentalist Islam don’t feel all that different. Both strive to return to the practices of the earliest believers and adhere strictly to a literal interpretation of their religions books. Both encourage followers to structure their entire lives around religion. But require female followers to obey their husbands and to dress mostly.

Even the radicalization Ariel experienced doesn’t feel that unfamiliar. Ariel and her husband joined ISIS, which has gained followers by promising to create a truly Muslim caliphate. My involvement in conservative politics as a youth and young adult had similar motivations. I don’t want to overstate the similarities here—the radicalization that occurs within fundamentalist Christianity tends to be far less violent—but I do want to point out that the feelings are often similar. And it is perhaps because I remember those feelings that I feel like I understand Ariel, however much I may disagree with her.