Australia needs to find ways to protect those susceptible to the siren song of extremism to keep the community safe, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop says.
Ms Bishop said this was a major challenge of our times as the self-titled Islamic State effectively used social media for propaganda and recruitment.
In our globalised, interconnected world, no nation was quarantined from this threat, she said in a speech to the Institute for Regional Security.
Ms Bishop said IS - which she referred to as Daesh, a name used by opponents of IS - needed to be confronted on multiple fronts.
"We have to do everything we can to strengthen social cohesion within our society and provide a counter-narrative to the messages of hate and division being spread by violent extremists," she said.
Ms Bishop said IS sought to convince the vulnerable and misguided that the apocalyptic battle if offered was more important than family and community and it trumped any existing ethical or religious beliefs.
She compared the approach of IS to that of Adolf Hitler, whose fanatical conviction that he was building a new world order that would last 1000 years convinced followers that they were in league with eternity.
She said Islamic State targeted the alienated who had lost faith in their lives and through its declaration of the Islamic caliphate, offered a role in the final battle of the Islamic apocalypse.
"To keep our community safe, we must ways to protect the vulnerable among us, and by that I mean those who are susceptible to the siren song of the extremists luring our people to stage attacks on our soil or encouraging them to a senseless death," she said.
Ms Bishop said it was especially difficult to understand why some young women joined an organisation notoriously vicious in its degrading treatment of women.
"Young women who have joined Daesh are being exploited in the most appalling way - forced into abusive marriages, used as sexual slaves, and manipulated for propaganda and recruitment purposes," she said.
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