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When Anna Erelle, a young journalist, goes undercover online to discover how today’s most ruthless terrorists use social media to recruit disaffected young women like the girls from Bethnal Green, her investigation spins into a harrowing nightmare.
In this extract, Erelle creates ‘Mélodie’ – a twenty-year-old convert to Islam on Facebook – who is immediately Skyped by a man named Bilel, in Syria. Bilel is the French right-hand man of the most dangerous militant in the world, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Caliph of Islamic State. He offers Mélodie a way to fill the boredom in her young life: he cares about her, offers beautiful things, spiritual purpose and, in less an idyllic life. Bilel’s seduction is honey-tongued and forceful – and all Mélodie must do is join him and ISIS in their Syrian jihad. Every day he gives more detail, telling her how he drives a jeep filled with guns and bottles of the chocolate milk he loves for hundreds of miles on murderous missions of execution. Every night he lures, seduces and manipulates this vulnerable young woman.
A riveting page-turner In the Skin of a Jihadist is a shocking inquiry into how technology is spreading radicalism, the lure of ISIS propaganda, and the factors that motivate young people – including many British teenagers – to join extremist wars in Syria and elsewhere.