Joni * is a young man from eastern Finland aged a little over 20. He went to Syria at the end of September with his only friend—a Latvian he only knew online. They had found each other on a gaming website a couple of years earlier, and both eventually converted to Islam.

“Joni” has now been a Muslim for about two years. A year after his conversion he found an English-language forum on his new religion which soon became his home online. There new converts would ask questions about Islamic teachings, such as whether Coca-Cola is halal (permitted), and how to tell your family about your conversion.

How long should your beard be? Can a good Muslim listen to music? Is Osama bin Laden the most important Muslim of the century? Is it already spring where you are? What do you call your Mum?

“I call her äiti,” answered Joni in English, telling his online friends the Finnish word for mother.

Good Muslim

Joni tried to be a “good” Muslim. He agonised about how to play video games online without sound, and whether he should take a summer job in a Christian cemetery.

These are difficult questions for a shy, friendless young man living with his parents in a small provincial town. He was open about his depression online, letting people know he had been seeing a therapist for years and admitting he is socially inept.

Joni kept his conversion from his parents for a year, and admitted before he left that he had not spoken with a Muslim in real life. He eventually told his mother of his new religion at Christmas 2013. He said that while his mother was relieved, as she’d thought he might be ‘crazy’, his father was immediately concerned that he might be leaving for jihad.

He said online that he was grateful for their reactions, and felt bad about his behaviour towards them.

Change in career plans

Joni began reading the Koran as part of his preparation for university entrance exams. He planned to study history or languages, and that eventually he ‘saw the light’ in Islam.

At first he wanted to live in a Muslim country after attending university, and was considering Malaysia. Then at the end of 2013 he first began discussing Abu Bakr al-Bagdadi’s new organization in Iraq and Syria. In spring 2014, during his Finnish military service, he changed his future plans.

He now didn’t want to go to university, but took the entrance exams at his parents’ insistence. Around this time he also met his Latvian friend in person for the first time in Helsinki. Joni, who had grown up in Finland’s countryside, wrote online that he had seen Muslim-looking people in the street but hadn’t dared approach them.

During his military service, things came to a head. Joni found military discipline difficult to handle, and was outraged that his commanders prevented him from praying and growing a beard.

One-way trip to Syria

He wrote online that he had been banned from approaching one individual after an angry outburst—but that one day, when he became a mujahid (Jihadist), he would be grateful for the military training he received in Finland.

After his military service, Joni sought work but did not get any response to his applications. At the same time, he was actively seeking contacts with ISIS supporters and fighters on Twitter.

In September, according to the available evidence and his own claims–we cannot be completely certain–he acted on his plans and left for Syria. In online chats with Yle reporter Sara Rigatelli, he says that everything is going well for him in Syria, but he has not yet joined the fighting–at present he is mainly on guard duty. Based on his Twitter account, it seems he has been in Hama, Homs and Raqqa, the capital of the self-proclaimed Islamic State.

His comrades-in-arms call him ‘al Finlandi’, but he himself says he has left behind his country of birth for good. He’ll only return, he claims, if and when Finland joins the caliphate.

* Not his real name.

YLE