The teenage terrorists of the 'Islamic State'

The Austrian teenager who was shot dead last week after firing a vintage rifle at German police in Munich is thought to have been influenced by Islamist extremism. But 18-year-old Emrah I., from a small town in the Salzburg region, hardly attended his local mosque, nor did he grow a beard or wear a long gown. 

The only clue that might have predicted his behavior in Munich was in early 2023, when Austrian police, investigating complaints about a fight at his school, found videos from a computer game on his phone. In these, he had decorated scenes with anAl Qaeda flag.

But after finding nothing else, police now believe that in the intervening months, the teenager was radicalized online.

Numbers of teen terrorists growing

He is not alone. Between March 2023 and March 2024, researchers at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy counted 470 relevant legal cases related to the extremist "Islamic State" (IS) group. Teenagers or minors were involved in at least 30 of those, with the report adding that "this number may be significantly higher given that many nations do not release age data for arrestees."

Another study, led by Peter Neumann, a professor of security studies at King's College in London, looked at 27 recent IS-related cases and found that almost two-thirds of the linked arrests in Europe were of teenagers.

Over the past week, a 14-year-old was arrested in Uruguay after he identified himself online as a "lone wolf" terrorist, and an 11-year-old boy was arrested in Switzerland last Friday for spreading extremist messages on social media.

Deliberately targeting Western teens?

Although it was defeated militarily by 2017, the IS group still exists. Its presence includes a worryingly large, increasingly brutal resurgence in African nations and a branch based in Afghanistan known as the "Islamic State Khorasan Province," often referred to as IS-K or ISIS-K. Observers say that the latter has increasingly been focused on external communications.

Since January this year, IS-K has encouraged followers to commit "lone wolf" attacks in Europe and target large events like the Olympics, concerts and football matches.

But experts don't think those messages are meant explicitly for European teenagers. They believe the growing number of teen attackers has more to do with the way social media and messaging platforms allow teens to access IS content.

Attacks by teenagers tend to be "inspired" by the IS group, as opposed to being ordered directly by somebody in Afghanistan. That's a very different dynamic from 2014 when the IS group took over large parts of Iraq and Syria. Back then, potential recruits were often in direct contact with a handler in the Middle East who encouraged them to leave home and come to the "caliphate."

Aspects of the current movement are less centralized, confirms Lucas Webber, a research fellow at The Soufan Center, a New York-based security think tank. "There's more of a sustained, organic online community apparatus."

"You still have a central media service and a central command that directed, for example, the attacks in Russia. But right now I think there is a much more diverse network recruiting these young people," says Pieter Van Ostaeyen, an analyst who has been researching the IS group for over a decade and also monitors it for the Counter Extremism Project, an international think tank.  

"It's more of a diffuse network where you have kids in their own online circles, in these communities, who want to be the influencers," confirms Moustafa Ayad, executive director for Africa, the Middle East and Asia at the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which investigates extremism of all kinds.

"The ideology still plays a role — you can't discount that — but the meme-ifying or the 'Tik-Tok-ification' of Islamic State content in shorter videos [and] in local languages opens the idea up to younger people more easily."

Ayad notes that the videos also have a distinctive aesthetic. "It's dark and brooding and, for lack of a better term, it has this new aspect of 'jihadi cool.'"

Faster radicalization?

There are plenty of examples of those kinds of networks, Ayad explains.

In the case of the potential attack on the Taylor Swift concerts in Vienna, Austrian police looked through the main 19-year-old Austrian suspect's digital networks. German police then detained a 15-year-old in Brandenburg who was suspected of encouraging the Austrian.

A similar situation came to light after an Australian bishop was stabbed in April. After looking through the 16-year-old perpetrator's digital networks, a further six teenagers were charged. They had all been in touch via the Signal messaging app in a chat group they set up called "Plans."

The networks are diffuse and organic, and nobody knows how big they really are, Ayad notes. He also says that platforms are not doing enough to remove extremist content.

There's another problem, too. According to the heads of the French and Swiss federal security services, the process of radicalization is faster. 

"I can't speak to the speed [of radicalization] but I can speak to the amount of content and the number of individuals interacting on more platforms," Ayad explains.

Why do teenagers fall for this?

The basic message the IS group has always pushed is still the same: the world persecutes Muslims, but if you join us, we will be strong together. Alienated or marginalized teenagers looking for something to belong to, or a set of rules in a complicated world, may find this kind of message appealing, psychologists say.

There are also political factors playing a part in the growing number of radicalized teenagers. Experts say the IS group is using the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza as evidence that the "rest of the world hates Muslims" and that its supporters should take revenge.

"The civilian death toll [from Gaza] caught on camera, readily available to everyone and highlighting death and destruction, is going to have an effect on children too," Ayad explains. "We know that sort of violent content makes kids either pull back or become more aggressive."

The rise of the far right in Germany, as well as the current debate around immigration and Islamophobia in the country, is also likely to have an impact on marginalized teenagers from those communities.

"More extreme right causes more jihadist behavior. It's as simple as that," Van Ostaeyen, the Counter Extremism Project analyst, told DW. "Both of these groups are strengthening each other."

So, how worried should we be about what some tabloids are already calling "Tik Tok terrorists"?

"There's a lot of posturing from Islamic State affiliates, a lot of threats," Ayad says. "But I don't think we are at the same levels we were in 2015 and 2016. When it comes these kids, their plots are typically not really thought out. But they could have massive implications, if they actually succeed. It only takes one successful attack."

Edited by: Davis VanOpdorp