When you’re trying to create the next generation of jihadis, presenting instruments of violence as a normal part of every day life is presumably an important part of the process.
This explains why an ISIS-produced mathematics textbook for children unearthed in the Iraqi city of Mosul teaches them to add and subtract using pictures of guns and tanks rather than harmless objects like apples and oranges.
The book – believed to be for 6-year-olds – was reportedly found in an elementary school in the Al Muthana district of the city. It invites its young readers to solve arithmetic problems and equations featuring Kalashnikov rifles, Isis flags, tanks and military aircraft.
The school was occupied by ISIS militants who apparently took over the curriculum and told teachers to use the textbooks when teaching classes.
Photos of other books supposedly used by ISIS to brainwash schoolchildren have previously been shared online. Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, a Syrian opposition group of journalists against Isis, have posted some of these online (pictured).
Nikita Malik, from the London-based counter-extremism think tank the Quilliam Foundation said the indoctrination of children by ISIS “is a three-stage process”.
She said: “First of all, they normalise violence for them, and then they expose them to things like executions and beheadings, and then get them to do physical training. They see children as assets you invest in, so that you can turn them into ‘pure soldiers’.”
This month the Quilliam Foundation also warned that hundreds of young people who have successfully sought asylum in Britain are going missing from care homes, leading to suspicions that they have been targeted for radicalisation by extremist groups during their journey to the UK.
