Why would a "normal" American teen convert to Islam and then try to join a terrorist organization, and how do terrorists seduce women over the Internet and lure them into traveling thousands of miles to become their wives? These are the questions that internationally respected counter-terrorism expert and Georgetown University Adjunct Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Security Studies asks in her book Bride of ISIS.
Based upon a composite of actual cases and inspired by the true story of Shannon Conley, an American teen from Denver, Colorado who converted to Islam, took the niqab, and who ultimately ended up in the clutches of ISIS, Bride of ISIS follows Sophie Lindsay-another "girl next-door" as she is seduced over the Internet.
Shannon Conley was arrested in 2014 while trying to board a flight to Turkey with the alleged goal of traveling to Syria to join and marry an ISIS extremist she had met online. Conley believed her Internet mentors that "defensive jihad" was not only permissible, but her duty. She told FBI agents that she believed U.S. military bases; government facilities and personnel; public officials and law enforcement were all legitimate terrorist targets. Trained as a nurse's aide and in firearms, Conley hoped to either fight jihad in Syria and Iraq, or if prevented from entering a combat role, to assist jihadi fighters. Lured by a romance that she carried out via Skype with an ISIS fighter, Conley was on the road to destruction-until her father turned her in to the FBI.
Sophie Lindsay follows a similar path to Shannon Conley's but in this book we get an inside look on how she enters the terrorist trajectory and moves steadily toward carrying out a terrorist act. Will FBI agent, Cathy Chambers and Homeland Security analyst, Ken Follett sort through all the "wannabe" ISIS and al Qaeda extremists on the Internet to discover who is the true terrorist? And will they be able to stop Sophie in time to save her and the lives of countless others?
Could you be living next door to a future bride of ISIS?
Anne Speckhard, Ph.D., is an Adjunct Associate Professor of Psychiatry in the School of Medicine and of Security Studies in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She is also a research psychologist and counter-terrorism expert and has interviewed more than four hundred terrorists, their family members and close associates and is a sought after expert on the subject of terrorism, frequently appearing on CNN, BBC, NPR, Fox News, MSNBC, CTV, and quoted in Time Magazine, New York Post, London Times and many other publications. She is the author of Talking to Terrorists, Fetal Abduction and coauthor of Undercover Jihadi: Inside the Toronto 18 and Warrior Princess: A Navy SEAL's Journey to Coming out Transgender, Amazon hardcover bestsellers.
