A Birmingham MP said the estimate of 400 – 500 Britons fighting in Syria was ‘nonsense’, claiming that more than twice as many British Muslims have travelled to Syria to fight for extremists. Ghaffar Hussain, managing director of the Quilliam Foundation an anti-extremism think tank, said that ISIS have plenty of Western recruits willing to partake in brutal violence. They were radicalised in the West before going to Syria. The ISIS message is slick and sophisticated. They’re the richest terrorist group in history with 2000+ European recruits. A former British diplomat in Iraq said British recruits originally travel with humanitarian ideals, but become brutalised by the conflict. He said, ‘They go out to try to protect civilians in Syria and enter into an underworld of violence. Others were impressionable young men escaping poverty and dead end jobs in the UK saying to themselves, ‘I could be a hero, or I could be a super villain.’