The teenage girls are lured online, seduced by video testimonies, text messages and a romantic notion of living in Syria and Iraq as wives of warriors — a portrait of domestic bliss starkly different from videos of beheadings and the repressive rule of the so-called Islamic State.

Three Toronto girls of Somali heritage, aged between 15 and 18, fell prey to this recruiting drive and recently left Canada bound for Syria, part of the growing trend of young women joining the terrorist group.

Security and community sources familiar with the case told the Toronto Star that two of the girls were sisters. Along with a third teenager, they flew to Cairo and then Istanbul, from where they planned to head for the border.

But the girls’ parents discovered their plans and alerted authorities. In what is being hailed as a good example of co-operation between the security services and Toronto’s Somali community — whose relations have been strained in the past — the girls were intercepted by Turkish authorities and sent home.

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“The parents felt comfortable in contacting police to prevent the young girls from ruining their lives,” said Hamilton lawyer Hussein Hamdani, who has worked in the past to help bring together Muslim communities and the police. “This is something we want to encourage and keep building those bridges.”

Hamdani had tried to help another Canadian family who discovered this summer that their son had left for Syria — but intervention came too late. By the time the RCMP and CSIS were working with relatives of Mohamud Mohamed Mohamud, the 20-year-old was fighting in Syria. He was killed a few months later.

The recruitment of Canadians and other Westerners into foreign wars in the name of jihad is not a new phenomenon. But the numbers now joining the Islamic State (also known as ISIS and ISIL) are far greater than in past conflicts.

What makes the Islamic State unique is the group’s ability to appeal to young people. There have been other well-known orators who have encouraged Westerners, including New Mexico-born Yemeni preacher Anwar Awlaki, who was killed in a U.S. drone strike two years ago, and the elusive Canadian Fadumo Jama, known as “Mama Shabab,” who ran a safe house for foreign fighters in southern Somalia and whose current whereabouts are unknown.

But none of the other groups fighting for Al Qaeda’s vision of a caliphate had such a widespread and savvy social media campaign. Messages blend passages of the Qur’an with smiley emoticons; gruesome images of the dead with kitten pictures.

Most startling is the aggressive outreach to female recruits, a small group of whom are becoming fighters themselves. The majority, however, are being enticed by the prospect of becoming “ISIS wives” and mothers to populate the new world order.

Aqsa Mahmood, a young woman from Glasgow who left for Syria last year and goes by the name Umm Layth, has become a famous online recruiter. “Sometimes it would be easier for you to accept your parents disowning you and wanting nothing to do with you,” she writes on tumblr, saying it is difficult to hear mothers and fathers crying and begging recruits to come home. “But as long as you are firm and you know that this is all for the sake of Allah then nothing can shake you.”

Umm Haritha is also a popular figure, and has identified herself as 20-year-old Canadian who went to Syria to marry a Palestinian fighter from Sweden. He was later killed and Umm Haritha reportedly began living with other young widows in a town near the Turkish border.

Mia Bloom, a professor of Security Studies at University of Massachusetts Lowell, who has studied the phenomenon of female recruits, says young, impressionable women are especially vulnerable to romantic notions and promises given by the Islamic State. “They’re told you’re going to get benefits in this world and in the next, they’re combining all the permutations of what these women might find appealing,” said Bloom.

Bloom says many of the women who have left Western societies complained that they were tired of permissive environments, citing their disdain for a culture where homosexuality is accepted. But many of the women — especially the recent converts — also complain of Islamophobia.

“You have these two completely different dynamics. On the one hand, the West is too permissive, and on the other hand, the West is too racists and non-inclusive,” said Bloom. “Society generally is not both, but this is the narrative.”

There are other contradictions — the professed desire to eschew the modern world — a message communicated on social media apps on smartphones.

A large aspect of the recruitment seems to be the promise of romance — relationships that begin with online dating but with promises of being devoted to a greater cause.

Shannon Conley, 19, pleaded guilty in Colorado last month to one count of conspiracy to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, after being intercepted before she travelled to Syria. FBI agents arrested her on April 8, before she boarded a flight to Turkey, and she is reportedly co-operating now with authorities.

According to her guilty plea, Conley met a man online named Yousr Mouelhi in early 2014. Mouelhi professed to be a member of Al Qaeda and after weeks of communications the two decided to marry; Conley was to join Mouelhi in Syria. Before she was arrested, Conley travelled to Texas to be trained in military tactics and the use of firearms with the U.S. Army Explorers.

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Perhaps the most perplexing case is that of Sally Jones, a British mother of two and former guitarist in an all-girl punk band, who fled to the Syrian town of Raqqa, where she married a fighter she reportedly met online. The 45-year-old convert to Islam told The Sunday Times last month that she now goes by the name of Sakinah Hussain and has branded Britain and the U.S. as “terrorist” nations. On Twitter, she threatened to behead Christians with a “blunt knife.”

Two young French girls, Sahra Ali Mehenni and Nora El-Bahty, were just 15 and 17 when they made elaborate plans to sneak off to Syria earlier this year before their parents could stop them. El-Bahty’s family told The Associated Press she was recruited on Facebook, videos of veiled women firing machine guns and images of Syrian children killed in the warfare striking a chord. She pretended to go to school one day and never returned.

Their parents now believe the girls are being held against their will.

That may also be the case of two Austrian girls, wanted by Interpol since they left Vienna in April, but who now say they want to come home. Samra Kesinovic, 17, and Sabina Selimovic, 16, have told family that they are tired of the bloodshed and fighting, according to Austrian media reports.

Although the Toronto girls could also be charged with terrorism offences under Canadian law, Hamdani and Somali community leaders say they are happy the RCMP has not prosecuted them and hope instead they will glean intelligence from the case to stop others.

While women joining the Islamic State are coming from many different countries and backgrounds, there is fear that Somali communities, already vulnerable from years of recruiting from the East African-based Al Shabab, are at a high risk.

The FBI is investigating the cases of three girls of Somali heritage from the Minneapolis-St. Paul area who have been missing since August, according to community leaders.

Osman Ahmed, co-author of a University of Maryland report looking at how to counter violent extremism, said much work has been done in the last five years to try to bring Minneapolis-St. Paul’s Somali community closer to authorities.

“I think we helped educate parents, who used to be scared to come forward and are now ready to inform authorities if they see anything suspicious,” said Ahmed, who became involved in community advocacy in 2009, after his 17-year-old nephew was recruited by the Shabab and left the U.S. for Somalia. He was later found dead in Mogadishu, shot in the head.

Follow Michelle Shephard on Twitter @shephardm. Contact her at mshephard@thestar.ca

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