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Australians aghast at boy's grisly photo from Syria. Are jihadis coming home?

The photograph shows a young boy holding a decapitated head and was published by Australian media. The incident has drawn attention to the ranks of Westerners joining jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq.

A primary school age boy holds up a severed head using both hands. The caption 鈥� tweeted by his father 鈥� reads, 鈥淭hats my boy!鈥�

The photograph, published in The Australian and other media over the weekend,聽. Mr. Sharrouf fled Australia last year to fight in Syria and brought his sons with him. The photograph is聽聽in late July in Raqqa, a stronghold of the self-declared Islamist State (IS).听

But the photo, and the uproar it has raised in Australia, highlights a growing concern among Western nations: that their citizens, particularly youth, are becoming radicalized in the violent crises of the Middle East.

The young boy in the photograph was raised in the suburbs of Sydney. Other photographs posted on Sharrouf鈥檚 Twitter account show him posing with his young sons and the IS flag; father and sons are all holding guns.听

Sharrouf, an Australian citizen, is a convicted terrorist and is wanted in Australia for crimes committed in Iraq and Syria, including the alleged execution of an Iraqi official. He used his brother鈥檚 passport to leave Australia last year after his own was confiscated.听

Mostafa Sharrouf, the brother, told The Sydney Morning Herald that聽, 鈥淗e鈥檚 gone, forget about it. He鈥檚 forgotten about youse [sic]. I鈥檓 sure you鈥檝e seen much worse than that.鈥�

Sharrouf was convicted in 2009 of possessing materials that could be used to build bombs and spent four years in prison. The court found that he had had a聽.

As the Monitor鈥檚 Sara Miller Llana recently reported,聽increasing numbers of volunteers聽from Western countries are going to fight with extremist rebels in Iraq and Syria. Many are drawn to the conflicts by social media and online recruiting.

Up to 500 youths from聽Britain聽have joined Syrian rebel groups, more than 300 from聽Germany, and at least 100 from聽the Netherlands. Many Belgian teens have fled, too, as well as dozens from the聽United States. An American from Florida was linked to a suicide bombing in Syria in May.

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Yet in the Digital Age, more than just curious young Muslim women can be recruited. Jihadis can now reach people from every demographic and social strata 鈥� from marginalized second- and third-generation immigrants to middle-class Europeans.

The Monitor followed the story of young Parisian woman, Salma, who faced mental handicaps in her youth that her family believes were exploited by recruiters to convince her to go to Syria.

Security cameras showed her walking out the back of the school five minutes after she arrived. She went to the airport, bought a ticket to聽Turkey, and then, with the help of an online jihadi recruitment network, crossed into聽Syria聽to join the civil war. It was a Frenchman on the Internet, already in Syria, who her brother says lured her abroad with heart-wrenching photos of children in the conflict.听

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It didn鈥檛 take long for them to discover where Salma had gone. They checked her phone logs and found a number in Turkey. They called immediately. A man picked up and shocked the family by saying she was en route to Istanbul and would soon be transported to Syria.听

In the first weeks they texted with her daily. Now correspondence has dropped off to once or twice a week. Salma assures them she is fine. The Frenchman who lured her there asked her father鈥檚 permission to marry her. He refused.听

Since then, they have found out she did marry the man. The family is crushed. They fear the jihadis just want her to bear a child for the next war. They feel their little 鈥渃h茅rie,鈥� who has overcome so much in life, may be lost.听

For the rest of the Monitor鈥檚 cover story on the changing face of Europe鈥檚 new jihadis, click here.听