JAFFA, Israel – A Saudi government adviser has warned that even when the Islamic State is vanquished, many other “Islamic States” will follow.
“Organizations like IS will always exist, because they distort the interpretations [of the scriptures] to their own needs and affect young people,” Nasser al-Shatri said in a lecture at Bin Abdel Aziz University.
Part of the struggle against them, he said, “is to understand who these people are, what motivates them, and what religious orientations serve their purposes.”
Meanwhile, Al Arabiya Network reported on IS’s women recruiters in Saudi Arabia.
The report said that many of them are wives of wanted terrorists, some of whom were caught trying to cross the border into Yemen in order to join al-Qaeda.
One of the protagonists of the report, a Syrian woman named Rima Jerish, the wife of a jailed al-Qaeda militant, is a leading figure in the organization’s propaganda effort on social media.
She joined Al-Qaeda in Yemen but soon crossed the lines and pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of IS.
In a rare move for a religious fundamentalist, she married an IS activist without having completed her divorce from her husband, who is jailed in Saudi Arabia.
Her personal history features in her posts in which she tells potential members why IS is better than al-Qaeda.