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Turks leave for “family-friendly” Islamic State

CORRECTS MIDDLE NAME - In this Friday, Sept. 19, 2014 photo, Turkish academic Ahmet Kasim Han speaks during an interview at his office at Kadir Has University in Istanbul, Turkey. Han was describing the puritanical pull of the Islamic State group, the self-styled caliphate straddling Iraq and Syria that has sent shockwaves around the world with its bloodthirsty campaign. In Turkey - one of the most modern and prosperous of the Muslim countries - entire families are dropping everything to find salvation in what Han described as a “false heaven.” (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel)
CORRECTS MIDDLE NAME - In this Friday, Sept. 19, 2014 photo, Turkish academic Ahmet Kasim Han speaks during an interview at his office at Kadir Has University in Istanbul, Turkey. Han was describing the puritanical pull of the Islamic State group, the self-styled caliphate straddling Iraq and Syria that has sent shockwaves around the world with its bloodthirsty campaign. In Turkey - one of the most modern and prosperous of the Muslim countries - entire families are dropping everything to find salvation in what Han described as a “false heaven.” (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel) CORRECTS MIDDLE NAME - In this Friday, Sept. 19, 2014 photo, Turkish academic Ahmet Kasim Han speaks during an interview at his office at Kadir Has University in Istanbul, Turkey. Han was describing the puritanical pull of the Islamic State group, the self-styled caliphate straddling Iraq and Syria that has sent shockwaves around the world with its bloodthirsty campaign. In Turkey - one of the most modern and prosperous of the Muslim countries - entire families are dropping everything to find salvation in what Han described as a “false heaven.” (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel)

By Associated Press 6 min read

ISTANBUL (AP) – Asiya Ummi Abdullah doesn’t share the view that the Islamic State group rules over a terrorist dystopia and she isn’t scared by the American bombs falling on Raqqa, its power center in Syria.

As far as she’s concerned, it’s the ideal place to raise a family.

In interviews with The Associated Press, the 24-year-old Muslim convert explained her decision to move with her toddler to the territory controlled by the militant group, saying it offers them protection from the sex, crime, drugs and alcohol that she sees as rampant in largely secular Turkey.

“The children of that country see all this and become either murderers or delinquents or homosexuals or thieves,” Umi Abdullah wrote in one of several Facebook messages exchanged in recent days. She said that living under Shariah, the Islamic legal code, means that her 3-year-old boy’s spiritual life is secure.

“He will know God and live under his rules,” she said. As for the American bombs being dropped on the Islamic State group, she said: “I only fear God.”