The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the United Kingdom. British citizens have fought as members of the group, and there has been political debate on how to punish them. On 26 September 2014, Parliament voted to begin Royal Air Force airstrikes against ISIL in northern Iraq at the request of the Iraqi government, which began four days later, using Tornado GR4 jets. On 2 December 2015, the UK Parliament authorised an extension to the Royal Air Force airstrike campaign, joining the US-led international coalition against ISIL in Syria. Hours after the vote, Royal Air Force Tornado jets began bombing ISIL-controlled oilfields.
British people in ISIL William Hague, then Foreign Secretary, estimated in June 2014 that 400 British citizens were fighting in Syria, some for ISIL. Khalid Mahmood, a Labour MP, estimated that there were at least 1,500 Britons in ISIL. A more accurate source from the BBC estimates around 850 people from the UK had traveled to Iraq and Syria to support or fight for jihadist groups. Former MI6 counter-terrorism head Richard Barrett raised concerns about the potentially large number of radicalised fighters that had returned to Britain from Syria and Iraq. In August 2014, activists in London handed out leaflets in support of ISIL outside the busy Oxford Circus branch of Topshop.
Beginning in 2012, dozens of girls and women travelled to Iraq and Syria to join the Islamic State, becoming brides of the Islamic State fighters. While some travelled voluntarily, including three British schoolgirls known as the Bethnal Green trio, others were taken to IS-controlled territories as minors, either by their families or through coercion. The youngest ISIL bride known to have voluntarily travelled to Syria was 15. Three British families with young children, the Mannans from Luton and the Dawoods and the Ameens from Bradford, all traveled to Syria to join ISIL in 2015. Another British family with four small children left their home in England and attempted to reach ISIL in Syria but were stopped in Turkey. Several British sibling groups are also known to have joined, as did dozens of students and recent graduates, most of them British citizens, from a medical school in Sudan.
Between 2016 and 2017, UK Counter Terrorism Policing discovered and monitored an ISIL-inspired plot by four women, three of whom were family members, to carry out terrorist attacks in London, in what was described as Britain's first all-female terrorist plot. On 24 October 2017, it was announced that a British man who had been fighting against Isil with the Kurdish YPG in Raqqa had been killed whilst trying to clear land mines. This took the total number of British volunteers fighting ISIL in Syria to six.
Amira Abase Amira Abase, age 15, left her home in London to join ISIL in February 2015 with two school friends from Bethnal Green Academy: 15-year-old Shamima Begum and 16-year-old Kadiza Sultana. The three girls were collectively known as the Bethnal Green trio. They had been recruited by a friend, Sharmeena Begum (unrelated to Shamima), who travelled to Syria before they did. All three of the girls in the Bethnal Green Trio married shortly after arriving in Syria. Abase married an 18-year-old Australian jihadist, Abdullah Elmir, who in July 2016 was reported by Australian intelligence agencies to have been killed in coalition airstrikes. Abase is also believed to be dead. Her nom de guerre was found online, on a document titled "In loving memory of the shahada", a collection of English-language obituaries of ISIL members, along with those of Sultana and her husband. Per the document, during ISIL's last stand at Al-Baghuz Fawqani, Abase was killed by artillery fire while in a trench with other ISIL women and children after they refused to surrender.
Nasra Abdullahi Abukar Nasra Abdullahi Abukar was a Somali-born British citizen who left her home in Lewisham, South London for Syria and ISIL on June 3, 2014, when she was 18. Her mother described her as having been "groomed through the internet" and said before her disappearance she had not been particularly religious. A week after her disappearance from London, Abukar called her mother to say she had gone to Syria to "help the women and children". Abukar married Aseel Muthana, a Welsh jihadist, and they had two sons. They lived in Raqqa, ISIL's Syrian capital. She created multiple Twitter accounts and posted ISIL propaganda under the nom de guerre Umm Faris, praising life in the caliphate and cheering on the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris. Her mother stated that within a year of arriving in Syria, Abukar said she regretted having left and wanted to return to Britain.
Abukar had her British citizenship revoked in October 2017 for joining ISIL. She was sent to the Al-Hawl refugee camp with one of their sons, then age three, after the 2019 fall of the ISIL caliphate. Abukar's other child was killed in an airstrike which also injured her husband. Abukar's mother said she wanted to go to Somalia, where her father lived.
Ameen family: Rehan, Imran, Farzana and five children Eight members of the same British Pakistani family, the Ameens, left the Bradford in United Kingdom for Turkey in 2015 and disappeared; they are believed to have travelled to war-torn Syria and were speculated to have joined the ISIL. First to disappear was 30-year-old Rehan Noor-Ul-Ameen, in June 2015; he traveled to Turkey and is thought to have crossed into Syria after that. In October that year, Rehan's brother Imran, his brother's wife Farzana and the couple's five children aged between 5 and 14 left their home in Bradford and also travelled to Turkey, like Rehan had. None of them ever returned. The Ameens were the second family who disappeared from the city of Bradford in 2015 and were believed to have travelled to Syria; the other family was the Dawoods, who went missing in May. There did not appear to be any links between the two families. In January 2016, the police launched a fresh appeal for information as to the whereabouts of the Ameen family and the Dawood family, who had still not returned. In August, both families were confirmed to still be missing.
Talha Asmal Talha Asmal was a 17-year-old boy from Dewsbury, West Yorkshire who travelled to Syria to join ISIL with his 17-year-old friend and next door neighbour. On March 31, 2015, the boys took a flight to Turkey. In early April, the British media reported the boys were missing and feared to have joined ISIL. Both their families issued a statement, appealing for anyone with information to contact the police. In June 2015, Asmal participated in a suicide attack in Iraq, detonating a vehicle fitted with explosives. He was the youngest suicide bomber in British history at the time of his death. At the time of his death, the whereabouts of the neighbour boy who accompanied him to Syria were unknown.
Shamima Begum Shamima Begum entered Syria to join ISIL at the age of 15. She went to Syria in February 2015 with two of her friends, Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana; they are collectively known as the Bethnal Green trio and had been recruited by a friend, Sharmeena Begum (unrelated), who travelled to Syria before they did. All three of the girls in the Bethnal Green Trio married shortly after arriving in Syria. Kadiza Sultana was killed in an airstrike with her second husband. Amira Abase is also presumed to have been killed. Shamima and her husband, Dutch ISIL fighter Yago Riedijk, survived but their children all died of malnutrition and disease. In July 2020, the British Supreme Court issued a ruling allowed Shamima to be repatriated to the UK for investigation of her case. But, on 26 February 2021, the Supreme Court declared reversing the decision for court appeal and her return to the UK. On 22 February 2023, Shamima also lost the legal case for her British Citizenship at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC). The case was dismissed for national security of the country. Sir James Eadie KC indicated that she poses a risk of National Security”.
Sharmeena Begum 15-year-old Sharmeena Begum left London to join ISIL in December 2014. She is known to have recruited her three school friends, collectively known as the Bethnal Green trio, to come to Syria after her. According to police, she was encouraged by two unidentified women to join ISIL. Members of her family were certain that she was targeted for recruitment by a group known as the Sisters Forum within the Islamic Forum of Europe, which met at an east London mosque. After the collapse of the Islamic State caliphate at the Battle of Al-Baghuz Fawqani, Sharmeena was taken to the Al Hawl refugee camp, from which she escaped and disappeared. In 2023, she was contacted online by the BBC, which reported she was in hiding in Syria, raising money for the ISIL through social media. In September 2026, Begum was arrested in northern Syria after German authorities investigating the 2026 Berlin Pride attack found messages between her and the attacker, Abdul Ballout, including a reported video in which he pledged allegiance to ISIL.
Boular siblings: Safaa and Rizlaine Three members of the same family were convicted in an all-female ISIL-inspired terror plot between 2016 and 2017. In 2014, Rizlaine Boular ran away from her family's home in Vauxhall, London and tried to travel to Syria, but was stopped in Istanbul and returned to the UK. In 2016, her younger sister Safaa met Naweed Hussain, an ISIL jihadist from Coventry, online and married him in a nikah ceremony conducted over a messaging app. She planned to go to Syria to join him and take Rizlaine, but the UK security police found out about the plan and confiscated Safaa's passport. When Hussain realized Safaa could not come to Syria, he suggested she launch a terrorist attack in the UK. The plot was discovered. Hussain was killed in a drone strike in Syria and Safaa, by then 18, was arrested. She encouraged her sister Rizlaine and their mother, Mina Dich, to carry out the terror attack in her absence. All three family members were convicted of terror offenses in relation to this plot, as was an unrelated woman, Khawla Barghouthi, a friend of Rizlaine's who had known about the plot and failed to inform police. At 18, Safaa Boular was the youngest woman to be convicted of plotting a terror attack in the UK.
Khadijah Dare and her son