Growing up Abu Muslim lived the proverbial middle class dream. He was a typical Canadian who played hockey and enjoyed the outdoors spent summers at his family cottage away from the city and enjoyed a strong network of family and close friends. Living at home his job as a street janitor paid him over $2 000 a month — not enough to make him wealthy but certainly enough to afford him a comfortable life. “Even though I wasn’t rich beyond my wildest imagination I was you know making it ” said Abu Muslim a healthy-looking 20-something with clean-shaven cheeks and a short goatee. “Life was good. I always had family to support me I had friends to support me.” If Abu Muslim’s childhood sounds comfortably unremarkable that’s because it was. He wasn’t a social outcast. He had lots of friends. He was never attracted by wild social movements or anarchy. He was never out to destroy the world or to kill. He was surrounded by a loving family and was well integrated. It should be noted however that Abu Muslim did not speak to Mishpacha magazine for this article and with good reason: He was killed several months ago fighting on the front lines for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. The quotes and descriptions presented here are taken from an ISIS recruiting video entitled Al-Ghuraba: The Chosen Few of Different Lands starring none other than this self-described “ordinary Canadian.” The story of Abu Muslim a well-adjusted middle-class Western kid who becomes interested in Islam and eventually finds his way to the world’s most infamous terror group could well go down not only as the major international news story of 2014 but of the second decade of the 21st century. How does a clean-cut kid from Toronto or Vancouver suddenly come to describe life in Canada as da’at al-kufr the religion of the heretics? How does he abandon any and all inklings of basic human morality in favor of life in an Islamic state known best for its brutal massacres marked by beheadings its kidnapping of women into slavery and threats to export its violent jihad to London New York Melbourne and elsewhere?