Opinion

Why football is an ideal recruiting ground for jihadists

From French suburbs to Moroccan towns and Egyptian cities, study after study shows how terror groups have continued using the world’s most popular sport to find new fighters

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Maher Farghaly
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Why football is an ideal recruiting ground for jihadists

Maher Farghaly
last update on

Ignorance, poverty, and illiteracy are thought to help foster Islamist jihadism, but sports, and football in particular, also offer an ideal channel for manoeuvrings on the margins of society.

Jihadist groups clocked this years ago. They know that football is an incubator for connection, recruitment, and the formation of armed groups. The recruits are often young and have distinct views and motivations. For this reason, jihadists use football games to move through society’s fringes, create hubs, and mobilise. Each recruit is then deployed to a suitable role.

Referring to a French intelligence report, researcher Scott Atran illustrates the relationship between Islamists and football stadiums. Titled The Closure of Societies in Popular Neighbourhoods, it documents activity in clubs in French suburbs, where some players spread out prayer mats to pray during half-time. His interviews show that football was a common hobby among some who later joined terrorist groups.

Al-Qaeda’s Messi

Researcher William McIntosh sheds light on how Baghdad’s Hajj Zeidan Mosque in al-Tubji enabled Islamic State’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to pursue his favourite pastime. According to McIntosh, “The mosque had a football club, and al-Baghdadi was its star, the team’s Messi”.

In Iraq’s Bucca prison camp, al-Baghdadi’s impressive skills on the pitch even drew comparisons to Maradona, and according to a fellow inmate, he used the friendships he formed through football to recruit in prison.

Jihadists use football games to move through society's fringes, create hubs, and mobilise

Former Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, an Arsenal Football Club fan, was similarly influenced by football. In The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda's Road to 9/11, author Lawrence Wright describes how he wore long pants while playing and divided his friends into teams named after the Sahaba (companions of the Prophet). 

Wright also highlights the involvement of the Egyptian Abdullah Mohammed, a key figure in Al-Qaeda, who previously played for Egypt's Ghazl al-Mahalla club and was later linked to the 1998 US embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi.

Drawn to networks

Jihadist networks also use football to infiltrate sports networks, such as the violent Ultra groups, creating recruitment clusters. In Egypt in 2014, authorities discovered that Ultras networks had been used to recruit fighters. This came from the confessions of Ahmed Arafa, an alleged Ansar Beit al-Maqdis member, who said several had already been sent to Syria to join Ahrar al-Sham.

The emergence of the Al-Ahrar movement, rooted in Hazimoun, was first observed on 24 November 2012, when its members demonstrated alongside the White Knights League outside the Egyptian Judicial House. Several were found with Al-Qaeda publications, including Knights Under the Prophet's Banner by Al-Qaeda's deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri and The Call of the Islamic Resistance by Al-Qaeda member Abu Musab al-Suri.

In his 2017 study, Moroccan Jihadists in Syria, Moroccan researcher Mohamed Mesbah distinguishes between face-to-face recruiting that relies on pre-established social networks and online recruiting. In his book The New Martyrs of God: The Sociology of Suicide Operations, Farhad Khosro discusses how young male football fans often became radicalised, progressing from initial ideological shifts to full participation in terrorist activities, suggesting a notable link between jihadist networks and sports culture.

Jihadist groups use football to infiltrate sports networks such as the violent Ultras groups, creating recruitment clusters

Similarly, researcher Scott Atran, in Religion, Brotherhood, Creating and Dismantling Terrorists, conducted interviews in football stadiums and on the streets in countries like Indonesia, Spain, Palestine, and Morocco. 

He found that many Islamists actively engaged in football before joining jihadist groups, and concluded that modern jihadist organisations increasingly rely on human networks like kinship ties to mobilise recruits. 

"Terrorists do not commit terrorism because they are exceptionally vengeful, indifferent, poor, uneducated, lacking in self-esteem, radicalised as children, or brainwashed," he concludes, "but because they are morally radicalised, influenced, and drawn to a foolish hope."

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Related topics terrorism jihadists terrorist groups Football