S'porean girl, 15, had 8 romantic relationships with overseas ISIS supporters, wanted to move to Syria to fight

The Internal Security Department (ISD) issued a Restriction Order (RO) under the Internal Security Act (ISA) to a 15-year-old female student after she was found to be a supporter of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

She is the first female youth to be dealt with under the ISA.

The 15-year-old had aspired to marry an ISIS fighter and was willing to fight for the group in Syria.

Hoped to start a pro-ISIS family

The 15-year-old girl had encountered ISIS propaganda online in June 2023, where she became convinced that the group was a legitimate religious army defending Muslims in Iraq and Syria, within weeks of consuming such material.

The youth saw ISIS’s goal of establishing an Islamic caliphate as noble and supported their use of violence to “cleanse the world of kuffar (disbelievers)”, whom she identified as non-Muslims and Shi’ite Muslims.

She also took a virtual pledge of allegiance to an ISIS chatbot in July 2023.

She pledged her allegiance to ISIS’s former caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, as well after learning it was necessary before she could marry an ISIS fighter.

She aspired to support the ISIS cause through the message and hoped to start a pro-ISIS family, and raise sons who would become mujahideen (fighters).

After taking the pledge, the girl saw herself as an ISIS member.

She also sought romantic online relationships with overseas-based ISIS supporters, being in at least eight short-term romantic online relationships with overseas-based ISIS supporters, including an alleged ISIS fighter based in Syria, between July 2023 and December 2024.

The girl searched for flights from Singapore to Syria on three occasions between September 2023 and April 2024, and had considered saving money to fund her travel to Syria.

The youth was also willing to become a female mujahideen to fight for ISIS in Syria, hoping to receive weapons training from ISIS once she was in Syria, and wished to die a martyr.

Attempted to radicalise schoolmates

She also attempted to radicalise her schoolmates, sharing ISIS-related content with some of them and actively reposting extremist materials, including ISIS nasheeds (chants), on her social media accounts to display her support for ISIS.

None of her schoolmates took the materials seriously, and no one reported the extremist materials to their teachers, said ISD.

The government agency also said its investigation to date indicates that the youth had acted alone and was unsuccessful in radicalising her schoolmates.

Though the youth's mother was aware that her daughter was consuming pro-ISIS materials and had advised her against doing so, her mother did not think the youth’s behaviour warranted further intervention.

Families may not realise how far the radicalisation is: Shanmugan

Explaining that it was a "question of judgment", Minister for Law and Home Affairs K Shanmugam said that families may not realise how far the radicalisation went.

Shanmugam was speaking to the media at Masjid Maarof on Apr. 2, where he fielded questions regarding the threat of radicalisation in Singapore, particularly among youths.

"We have to educate people that you actually help your children, young people, by reporting." Shanmugan said, adding,

"If we report them early enough, we can help them earlier. They won't be so radicalised."

"If you leave it be, bad things can happen to the children. They might go out and kill somebody or be killed," he said.

Radicalisation targets everyone, regardless of gender

"I think...we need to understand that terrorism and radicalisation target everyone, regardless of background, regardless of gender," said Senior Fellow Mohamed Bin Ali at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) in Nanyang Technological University (NTU), whose research include religious extremism, inter-religious relations and rehabilitation of Muslim extremists.

Though the 15-year-old is the first female youth to be dealt with under the ISA, there have been previous cases of self-radicalised women in Singapore.

In July 2024, ISD revealed that a 33-year-old woman was self-radicalised in the past two months because of the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

In February 2025, ISD also noted that a 56-year-old Singaporean housewife was detained under the Internal Security Act (ISA) between December 2024 and January 2025.

The woman was self-radicalised after Hamas's Oct. 7, 2023, attacks against Israel, and would show her support by posting pro-Axis of Resistance (AOR) — a network of Islamist militant and terrorist organisations, including Hamas— content on her social media accounts, as well as being the the sole administrator of several pro-AOR social media groups.

"I believe the way forward to deal with the threat is to incorporate the family institution, because the family they are the first line of defense against radicalization," said Mohamed regarding the dominant threat of online radicalisation.

Top photo by Mahmoud Sulaiman on Unsplash