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Western foreign fighters in the conflict in Syria and Iraq: a critical reflection on the role of Muslims’ identity and integration in the West

The current conflict in Syria and Iraq has attracted a large number of foreign fighters (FFs) from Western countries. The main question of this thesis is why these countries do not have a similar pattern for their proportions of FFs. This thesis explores this question in nine Western countries with varying proportions of FFs: Finland, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, England, Canada, Australia, and America. Through a case study of Islamic State’s online FF recruitment campaign, it will be shown that common religious identity is the main part of the group’s recruitment message. However, comparing the identified countries on factors related to Muslims’ identity and integration uncovers that common Muslim identity itself is not capable of answering the question; instead, it is Muslims’ integration into their surrounding societies that correlates with proportions of FFs from identified countries. / Graduate / 0615 / 0616 / 0750 / mhashemi@uvic.ca

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/7142
Date20 April 2016
CreatorsHashemirahaghi, Seyedmehdi
ContributorsWatson, Scott D.
Source SetsUniversity of Victoria
LanguageEnglish, English
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis
RightsAvailable to the World Wide Web, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ca/

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