Foreign Correspondent: May 19

On Tuesday night Foreign Correspondent presents “Brides of ISIS” -a look at how radical Islam is seducing young British women online.

They’re mostly young, educated and middle class – yet more than 60 British women and girls have chosen to move to Syria and live in the so called “Islamic State”, under a deeply repressive regime. According to Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, so have a number of Australian women.

This BBC investigation reveals how the women marry fighters, and become part of a powerful army of online recruiters, persuading other young girls on social media to join them and about 500 other Western women thought to be living in the self-declared caliphate.

What draws a liberated young woman educated in the West to run away to the Middle East to live under a regime that has some of the most rigid controls over women of any state in the world – restricting dress, thought and behaviour and making them completely subservient to men?

An extremely slick and seductive marketing campaign may be part of the answer, according to a young British journalist who has investigated the phenomenon.

Journalist Khaleda Rahman uncovered the identity of one British woman who is allegedly a major recruiter for ISIS – Aqsa Mahmood. Mahmood’s family came to Glasgow from Pakistan in the 1970s and enjoys a successful, middle class lifestyle.

Aqsa planned to study medicine, but instead was seduced into radical Islam by online preachers, including Australian Feiz Mohammed. She didn’t need to leave her bedroom.

Mahmood moved to Syria, married a fighter and began blogging and posting to other young women, using a mix of teenage chit chat about clothes and boys, funny videos, and political and religious issues. ISIS has more than 45,000 social media accounts.

By talking to friends and family, and re-creating an online seduction using real life posts and tweets, Brides of ISIS reveals how, through their mobile phones and laptops, radical Islam is seeping into the minds of Western teenagers.

May 19 at 8pm on ABC.