The Australians who joined ISIS and al Qaeda are frighteningly ordinary: typically young men from the suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne, from stable homes, married and with good jobs and no criminal record.

Key points: The majority of Australian jihadis are not refugees but second generation Australians, says a paper from the Lowy Institute

The majority of Australian jihadis are not refugees but second generation Australians, says a paper from the Lowy Institute Ninety per cent of the jihadis are from suburbs on the outskirts of Sydney or Melbourne

Ninety per cent of the jihadis are from suburbs on the outskirts of Sydney or Melbourne In the assessment of judges in 40 trials, only 10 per cent of jihadis have displayed genuine remorse

And if they're caught, few show genuine contrition about their actions.

A new paper from the Lowy Institute gives us the most thorough analysis yet about the 173 Australians it classes as 'jihadis': those who joined radical Islamist terrorist organisations or who've been charged with terror offences. It gives crucial background on 105 who left Australia to fight, or to live in ISIS's caliphate.

The study "Typology of Terror" provides hard evidence against misconceptions such as a link between refugees and terrorism: just six per cent of Australia's jihadis are refugees or the children of refugees. The majority are second generation Australians.

And the report gives us the background of the extremists: 90 per cent are from the suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne, and they're concentrated in relatively small areas within those cities: Sydney's western suburbs and north Melbourne.

Who is a typical Australian jihadi? Although there is no such thing as an 'average' Australian jihadi, if we were to construct one from the aggregated data, they would likely have many of the following characteristics: Male

Male Mid 20s

Mid 20s Lives in Sydney

Lives in Sydney Is or has been married

Is or has been married Born in Australia to overseas-born parents who are still married (with one or both from Lebanon)

Born in Australia to overseas-born parents who are still married (with one or both from Lebanon) No prior criminal record

No prior criminal record Completed high school at a government school

Completed high school at a government school Employed in a blue-collar job

Employed in a blue-collar job No mental health issues

No mental health issues Not contrite and judged to have relatively poor prospects of rehabilitation

Forty per cent of them were either born in Lebanon, or have a parent from Lebanon. And most of the Lebanese contingent are from the city of Tripoli, in the country's north.

"More than twice the number of jihadis have Lebanese background than the proportion of Lebanese Muslims in Australia," says report author Rodger Shanahan.

That could be because of geography, and Lebanon's proximity to Syria, or because of family connections — the Australian jihadis include 19 sets of siblings.

Sydney man Hamza Elbaf was one of four brothers who went to Syria in 2014. Omar, Bilal and Taha were killed, and Hamza was captured in Baghouz in March.

Hamza Elbaf and his three brothers had fallen under the spell of an Islamic State recruiter. ( North Press Agency )

Australia v the rest

The study says that Australian jihadis are better integrated into society than those from western Europe or the UK.

Two thirds of the Australians in the study have no prior convictions. If you discounted driving offences, said Shanahan, almost 80 per cent have not been in trouble with the authorities.

A member loyal to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria waves an ISIS flag in Raqqa in Syria on June 29, 2014. ( Reuters )

That's different to Europe, where jihadis typically have criminal records and are jobless.

"(The Europeans) believe they've been left behind by the society that their parents brought them into, so they don't have that much loyalty to the society, so it makes it easier for them to be attracted to the jihadist message, which makes it more curious for the Australian context," says Mr Shanahan.

"Because by and large they're educated at Australian high schools, they're employed, largely at blue collar jobs, they're married, and they come from households that have two parents at home.

"By and large you think the Australian cohort is much better integrated than western European jihadis."

Australian terrorists also include fewer Muslim converts. Just eight per cent of jihadis are converts to Islam, while 20 per cent of US and European extremists are converts

What's happened to them?

More than 50 per cent of the 105 Australian adults who travelled to Syria and Iraq to join ISIS and al Qaeda are dead.

Mariam Dabboussy has had to endure the al-Hawl camp. ( Four Corners )

The fate of one in five is unknown, and 22 are in the custody of Syria's Kurds: 10 men held among 12,000 ISIS suspects in crowded prisons in northern Syria, and 12 women in the al Hawl camp, including Mariam Dabboussy and Zehra Duman, both of whom have spoken publicly about their plight.

There are 65 Australians in al Hawl but the majority were either born in the ISIS caliphate or were taken there as children.

Mr Shanahan says he's included the adult women as jihadis because they had the same motivation to going as the men.

"If you look at some of their social media posts in Australia they were fully committed to the ideology before they left these shores," he said.

"Saying you just mysteriously turned up in northern Syria, you were manipulated into going, that's a kind of convenient excuse, but you find if you look deeper into their profiles they have the same kind of ideological orientation as their husbands or parents."

Among ISIS's tens of thousands of victims are the Australian children born to jihadi parents. The Lowy study says thirty-six (66 per cent) are held at camps in Syria, nine children have been returned to Australia and another 10 were killed during fighting in Syria or Iraq

The Lowy study said 36 Australian children are held at camps in Syria.

The Australian government says it won't put Australians at risk to rescue the children of ISIS parents from al Hawl camp, even though the United States has repeatedly offered to bring the women and children out of Syria and deliver them directly to Australian officials in another country.

Contrition a rare thing

The report says less than 10 per cent of the jihadis have displayed genuine contrition. Shanahan says this is based on the assessment of judges in 40 trials, who've are best placed to assess contrition because they've had access to all the reports and evidence during the trial.

"Very few are truly contrite for their actions, and the judges have got a pretty pessimistic view overall on their prospects for rehabilitation. It doesn't augur very well for the jihadis once they've been prosecuted on their return to Australia," says Mr Shanahan.

The Australian men held in Syrian jails all deny fighting for Islamic State. Mahir Absar Alam says he worked in ISIS hospitals helping wounded civilians.

"Everyone is saying they're not a fighter. I wasn't an actual fighter," he told the ABC earlier this year.