How Two Mississippi College Students Fell in Love and Decided to Join a Terrorist Group
The day she left to join the Islamic State, Jaelyn Young took a floral backpack with clothes, craft supplies, and a scrapbook. Muhammad Dakhlalla, whose friends call him Moe, packed a bar of soap, gray sweats, and a pack of Starburst minis. She was organized: Her wallet held bank cards and insurance cards, plus a Sonic receipt tucked inside. He loved video games: His only t-shirt featured the robots of Portal 2. On that hot August day, they were headed to Turkey, on their way to Syria.
Moe, 22, had graduated from Mississippi State University in Starkville a few months earlier, in the spring of 2015, and had been accepted into a psychology master’s program there for the fall. He has a friendly, slightly dorky demeanor in conversation, ever the goofy baby brother of an expressive Muslim family. Jaelyn, just turned 20, was a sophomore in chemistry, working in a lab on nanoparticles. High-school friends describe the tiny Vicksburg native as a “spunky, smart robotics chick” from a strict black family, with a Navy veteran and police officer for a father and a school superintendent for a mother. The two started dating in November 2014; she converted just a few months later. By June, they had wed in an Islamic ceremony, although they never obtained a marriage license. Moe and Jaelyn were both academically talented, but neither planned to return to school. God willing, Jaelyn allegedly told their online recruiter, they would be overseas by summer’s end.
The weeks dragged on. They applied for passports, waiting impatiently for them to arrive by mail. Moe wondered whether they’d be assigned a city or could pick one. She wanted to be a medic. He yearned to be a fighter. They asked questions about religion classes and wondered if they would be tested on their knowledge of Islam.
She was nervous about traveling, she allegedly told her recruiter—she had never been outside the United States. He asked about basic training and whether ISIS follows Islamic law. “I am not familiar with sharia,” he allegedly told the recruiter. “I am excited about coming … but I feel I won’t know what all I will be doing.”
Finally, it was time to leave. They used her mom’s credit card to buy tickets on Delta, with a connection in Amsterdam. She carried $367.50, more than enough for a taxi or train to the famous Blue Mosque in Istanbul, where they planned to meet their recruiter. They would stand out, she wrote, because of her “big bushy curly hair,” but she asked the recruiter to bring a head scarf for her to wear during the rest of their journey; she was ashamed to go uncovered but scared to wear a hijab while traveling for fear of drawing attention to herself. Early on a Saturday morning, they drove about half an hour to Columbus, Mississippi, expecting little security trouble at their small regional airport as they departed for their new life.
They were arrested while preparing to board their flight. Jaelyn and Moe weren’t actually talking to ISIS recruiters. Their contacts had been undercover FBI employees the whole time.
Extremist ideas have never been easier to access. Propaganda videos, like the ones Jaelyn and Moe were watching around the spring of 2015, are on YouTube. Extremist communities can be found through Twitter and Facebook; pseudonymous accounts can be opened with just a few clicks. The vast majority of people who watch and read propaganda never act on it. But some begin to believe that the American media offer only a “thick cloud of falsehood” about ISIS, as Jaelyn put it.
In the past three years, the FBI has invested significant resources in tracking and arresting these ISIS sympathizers in the United States. Between March 2014 and April 2017, 125 people have been charged with ISIS-related crimes. But in February 2015, FBI Director James Comey said there were terrorism investigations happening in all 50 states, and later that year, he said more than 900 were open. ISIS, said Comey, is “putting out a siren song through their slick propaganda, through social media, that goes like this: ‘Troubled soul, come to the caliphate. You will live a life of glory; these are the apocalyptic end times. You will find a life of meaning here, fighting for our so-called caliphate. And if you can’t come, kill somebody where you are.’”
The FBI closely monitors online communities that, notes that online investigations have “previously resulted in resources being wasted by investigating or collecting on FBI online identities,” or employees working undercover. The Bureau also takes tips from a network of sources—from security firms to random vigilantes—who monitor these communities.
