LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Analyzing social media accounts, the Quilliam Foundation said female supporters of the Islamic State were using sites like Instagram, Twitter, Ask.fm, VK and Facebook to lure others with "the promise of an Islamist utopia". "While other groups like Al Qaeda have had women supporters before, Islamic State has recruited females and is getting women to go out to live in the caliphate," Charlie Winter, programs officer at the Quilliam Foundation, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.Islamic State declared a caliphate across vast swathes of Syria and Iraq earlier this year, after sweeping into the conflict-ridden region and driving out Christians, Shi'ite Muslims and other communities.

Determined to re-draw the map of the Middle East, the group are engaged in nation building and are calling on people from all over the world to help them create a new society. "They call for lawyers, doctors, engineers and people who can help form a working administrative state and among those are women as they need wives for their fighters," Winter said.

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