Those attracted to ISIS may be less drawn to its religious ideology than to the spectacle and glorification of its violence.

THE most harrowing thing I have ever witnessed in the course of my field research on religious and political violence was the sight of young boys being made to watch a video of someone being decapitated and dismembered in a religious school in a South Asian country.

That the video was gory was upsetting enough; but even more disconcerting was the fact that the children who were made to watch it were unmoved, even jaded, by the spectacle of violence that was enacted before them.

… The writer is associate professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University.