ISIS Releases Parenting Guide Instructing Mothers to Indoctrinate Babies on Jihad, Radical Extremism

By Samuel Smith, Deputy Managing Editor Friday, January 02, 2015

Children being trained to be child soldiers by the Islamic State. | (Screengrab: The Daily Mail)

The Islamic State has released a new guide informing mothers within the caliphate how they should properly raise their babies to be fully prepared to fight in the Muslim extremist jihad.

The publication, called "Sister's Role in Jihad," surfaced online and is designed to encourage mothers to begin training their children at an infant age to take on a radical mindset in order for the kids to be prepared for battle when they reach the appropriate age to join ISIS' fighting ranks, the Daily Mail reports.

The publication, which was translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute in a report they are conducting on the indoctrination of children, asserts that the most important job for women in the ISIS caliphate is indoctrinating their children into Muslim extremism "while they are babies."

"Don't underestimate the lasting effect of what those little ears and eyes take in during the first few years," the guide states. "Don't wait until they are seven to start, for it may be too late by then!"

The guide offers a list of activities that mothers can do with their babies that will get their children more comfortable with the idea of killing and martyrdom.

The list suggest that mothers should read their children jihad war stories at bedtime and also suggests that mothers should share brutally graphic images of the terrors of jihad on the internet in order to desensitize the children to ISIS' brutality and atrocious nature.

Since ISIS doesn't want the caliphate children to get any ideas from Western children TV shows, the guide also advises that mothers ban their children from watching TV as it "it mostly teaches shamelessness, anarchy, and random violence."

Instead, the guide says mothers should encourage their young to participate in activities like darts to improve their aim, skiing to help with fitness, and camping to teach them survival skills. The publication also advises mothers to let their kids play with toy guns and practice target shooting. The mothers should reinsure that their child knows "who their target should be, and who their target should not be."

As the Islamic State has gone through great lengths to indoctrinate, train and use children as soldiers, researchers at MEMRI believe that the group is using documents like this to help make sure that the children in the caliphate are being raised to their caliph's standards.

"They have been trained on the battlefield and know how to create bombs and suicide belts and to behead and crucify the innocent," Steven Stalinsky, executive director of MEMRI, said. "This is something that we must be prepared for and understand."

"No matter what happens in Iraq and Syria in the near future, the next generation — the children of Baghdadi and grandchildren of bin Laden– have already been brainwashed to hate the west and to strive for jihad and martyrdom," Stalinsky added.

The indoctrination of the youth has become a pretty standard practice among many other extremists groups, not just ISIS, he noted.

"As we move into 2015, Al-Qaeda and its affiliates, ISIS, and other jihadi groups worldwide continue to invest a lot of effort in indoctrination of the next generation of fighters," he said. "It is important for the West to understand that all these groups want the world to know that this indoctrination is taking place."