Europe tries new tack to keep young women from joining IS

(The Christian Science Monitor) While the self-described Islamic State continues to attract many young European men with its sophisticated social media campaign and mesmerizing brutality, the extremist group has also demonstrated eye-catching success with a less-visible group: young Muslim women.

An estimated 550 Western women are believed to have travelled to Syria and Iraq to join Islamic extremist groups. The propaganda arm of IS has appealed to them with everything from online cookbooks for the wives of mujahadeen to parenting guides for raising future jihadists.

But across Europe, concerned observers from teachers to family counselors, are striking back with their own set of gender tactics. Counterterrorism experts now see such a tailored strategy as central to detecting girls who could fall prey to IS propaganda. And they are pointing in particular to mothers, with their outsized influence in Muslim households, as forming one of the best lines of defense.