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Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

Islamic State recruiting young, vulnerable women for jihad

Aug 23, 2014 11:17 pm By Robert Spencer

niqabisSlaves choosing slavery: “I always wanted to live under Sharia.”

“Young, vulnerable women 
being groomed for jihad,” by Carol Hunt, Irish Independent, August 24, 2014:

The social media messages the women post sound so appealing. They tell us about their trips to the Mediterranean for beach days, the wonderful spiritual and emotional fulfilment they experience, how everything they and their children need for a comfortable life is generously provided for them by the ‘Dawla’ (state), and they describe the affectionate domestic bliss they enjoy with their brave, loving, heroic husbands. These are the prizes being offered to young (mainly, but not solely) Muslim women who choose to leave the 
capitalist West and join the new Islamic State (formerly ISIS or ISIL).

On Twitter, a young British woman going under the handle @Umm_Ammar- 
described herself as a “British Muhajirah living under the Khilifah”. Last Friday, she tweeted: “I’ve never experienced true happiness and contentment until I stepped in Shaam [Greater Syria]”. The day before she had written: “Know that Jihad for the sake of Allah will never bring death earlier nor delay it. What is meant for you will never miss you.”

Last week, we saw the infamous tweet from 22-year-old Khadijah Dare (married to a Swedish jihadist) asserting her wish to become the first British woman to kill a UK or US citizen, in the wake of the video showing the horrific execution of James Foley by a terrorist with a British accent. Dare (who tweets under the handle Muhajirah fi Sham (immigrant in Syria) appeared in a Channel 4 video on IS where she told her interviewers that she studied media, film and psychology at college. Her avatar shows her two-year-old son swinging an AK-47.

Are these women for real? We can’t be sure. But what we do know is that increasing numbers of very young western women are heeding the calls of their jihadi “sisters” and heading to Iraq and Syria, not just as wives to the militants but also as fighters. Last month, greater Manchester Police Chief Constable Peter Fahy warned young women against becoming brainwashed by “perverted messages” and travelling to the Middle East to become “jihad brides”.

Melanie Smith, a research associate with the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation said that most women travelling to join IS fit into two groups: those who travel with their husbands to jihad and those who travel to Syria or Iraq to get married. “The latter is certainly a trend,” she said. “Many questions flood the male foreign fighters on social media about the possibility of marrying them or even becoming their third wife. [These women] tend to be extremely pious and have been IS ‘fangirls’ for the duration of the Syrian conflict, active on social media,” she added.

And yet we know from the actions and ideology of IS, that women in their newly imagined Caliphate (let us be clear, what these terrorists preach has no connection with the peaceful Islam of millions of people around the globe) are accorded lesser status than cattle. Soon after taking over the city of Raqqah, IS issued a statement declaring that women must be entirely covered, face and body at all times; that make-up, jeans and sweaters were banned; that women were not allowed sit on chairs; that women were not to see a male gynaecologist. And on it goes.

In captured Mosul, the city charter now says that women are to remain in the home except in cases of emergency. And why would they risk going out? Earlier this month the UN Women’s executive director, Phumzile Miambo-Ngcuka, said that UN Women is “outraged by the deliberate targeting of women and girls in Iraq [and Syria] and reports of kidnapping, rape and forced marriages by militants”.

So why then do educated western girls, with good families and from stable communities, suddenly decide – as 18-year-old Khadija [not her real name] from the Netherlands did at the end of 2013 – to join an ideology which so discriminates against them?

Khadija told Al Jazeera journalist Brenda Stoter that, “I always wanted to live under Sharia . . . Besides, my Muslim brothers and sisters over there need help”. Another Dutch girl, Sara, said that she went to Syria, “to follow God’s rules” and to “help people”. In April, two Austrian girls aged 15 and 16 disappeared before turning up in Syria and in May two British 16-year-old twins, Salma and Zahra Halane sneaked out of their beds in Manchester and travelled to Syria to become Jihadi brides. They telephoned their parents to say, “we’re not coming back”.

Montasser Al De’emeh, a researcher studying jihadist figures, believes that there are several reasons why European women join radical Islamist groups: the rise of right-wing parties in Europe is one factor,

Again the victimhood posturing. “Right-wing” parties wouldn’t be rising in Europe were it not for jihad and Islamic supremacism.

as is the girls’ experience of childhood. “The girls feel that there is no place for them in society”, he says, “as they are being rejected by everyone, including Muslims. By contacting Muslims who feel the same way, they try to fulfil needs such as love, recognition and sisterhood”. Whatever their reasons, what these women seem to have in common is that they are generally young, quite vulnerable and active on social media….

On social media, a recruiting woman calling herself Umm Layth warns the girls she is “grooming”: “Even if 
you know how right this path and decision is . . . the first phone call you make once you cross the borders is one of the most difficult things you will ever have to do . . . when you hear them sob and beg like crazy on the phone for you to come back, it’s so hard,” she writes, adding, “many people in present day do not understand . . . why a female would choose to make this decision. They will point fingers and say behind your back and to your families’ faces that you are taking part in . . . sexual jihad.”

Dear God, as if parents didn’t have enough to worry about.

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Filed Under: Islamic State (aka ISIS, ISIL, Daesh), women's rights in Islam


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Comments

  1. Dungenessdragon says

    Aug 23, 2014 at 11:43 pm

    This is simply a death cult.

  2. Jay Boo says

    Aug 24, 2014 at 12:01 am

    When their bloodbath in vanity dries up they will say they long for death.
    Islam is not the way
    Islam is not the truth
    Islam is death

    Oh Happy day

    • Jae M says

      Aug 24, 2014 at 12:57 pm

      You have that right! In Arabic, “hamas” means enthusiasm, in Hebrew “hamas” means violence. It is amazing to me that people think this violent group is powerful. They kill and slaughter children, women and men that have NOTHING to defend themselves with, no weapons, no army. How is that powerful? Anyone could do that. Their only power is from no armies taking them down.

  3. ECAW says

    Aug 24, 2014 at 4:39 am

    This picture has it about right I think:

    http://www.tarekfatah.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Hijab-process.jpg

  4. David from England says

    Aug 24, 2014 at 9:38 am

    They are all mad as a box of frogs!

  5. RonaldB says

    Aug 24, 2014 at 9:56 am

    It’s a mistake to think that simply because women are systematically oppressed under Islam, that Muslim women, or any women, are natural allies of the opposition to Islam. Many feminists don’t have a clue what goes on under Islam, and don’t care.

    So, the only real allies against Islam are…the people who are against Islam. Why should young women be any more resistant to the siren call of Islam nihilism and supremacism than young men?

    Eventually, the Islamists will learn to put lipstick on a pig, and disguise their women with western clothes and makeup. So, appearances will be deceiving. Experts on the Muslim Brotherhood note that Muslim Brotherhood agents are trained to act mild and moderate, so they don’t appear to be a threat. Women can, and will, and likely already have, been trained in the same way: act moderate, Western, and non-threatening as they carry out subversion against our country and our form of government.

    • Shane says

      Aug 24, 2014 at 4:51 pm

      Yes, white women wearing western clothes will be the last persons that anyone would think of as suicide bombers or jihad fighters; they will make very good warriors for Islam in the West. Feminists need to tell the truth about how Muhammad and Muslim men treat women and little girls.

  6. hammar says

    Aug 24, 2014 at 11:47 am

    It seems clear that the United States is become tone deaf to the power
    of evil that is evolving out of the world today. The media is either liberal with political correctness it will not report or even say the word islam or they are
    actually routing secretly for islam like obama and his cronies. But the liberals love abortion which is killing the unborn. We are losing and can’t see that.
    The devil is clearly at work here while the lukewarm Catholics and Protestants,
    and can’t figure it out. Israel is alone in fighting the middle east. But even as they fight the little wars in Gaza, the main culprit is Iran sitting on the side slowly building nuclear power…Russia shoots down an airliner in the phony war and still no public outrage with the media…an airliner is shot down…the public is tone deaf and not listening or comprehending whats at stake. I will continue to Pray is all I can do.

  7. Bezelel says

    Aug 24, 2014 at 2:21 pm

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videodrome

  8. Semeru says

    Aug 25, 2014 at 5:40 am

    Mr spencer titles this article, Islamic State recruiting young, vulnerable women for jihad

    Poppycock. most of the women “muhajirat” who take off to the IS are already hardcore islamists.

    Robert Spencer and the Counter Jihad Movement are making a grave and dangerous mistake by portraying these “muhajirat” as Bimbos. Most of the women are just as dangerous as their male counterparts, and to dismiss them as sex slaves to the mujhadeen, reflects a lack of knowledge of islam, and expose many on this forum as dirty minded bigots.

    Since the early 2000,s Alqaeda have been targeting women for jihad, with online women’smagazines such as Al-Khansaa

    The Al Khansa Website says that a female “‘mujaheeda” must learn the Koran by heart, have basic first aid and be ableto prepare an emergency kit’in addition to knowing how to shoot,carry munitions, be willing to give her own money, and be content‘with what is strictly necessary.

    In a translated summarization of Al Khansa’s various articles, it is made clear that jihad is a ‘compulsory individual duty imposed by Allah’ that both men and women must participate in: ‘Women are at the same level as the men and for that they share the same
    responsibility in the continuation and the success of jihad’

    Another article focuses on the internal and external obstacles a woman may face in trying to Carry out jihad. Internal obstacles can be both personal (lack of religious knowledge, weakness of belie£ ignorance of physical Fitness) and social (famiily, husband, environment and society). External obstacles are politics, location, weather, and lifestyle, and health Sex and gender roles are notably absent from the list of obstacles.

    As Al Qaeda is no longer one centrally controlled organization, the reasons behind women’s involvement are complicated. For example, while Al Khansa makes it clear that Al Qaeda intends to train women fully to become martyrs for their cause. There are strategic reasons behind women’s involvement, women are used in attacks for four reasons:

    #1 it provides tactical advantage;

    #2 it bolsters the number of combatants;

    #3 it increases publicity and thus also recruitment;

    #4 it is a form of psychological combat

    This is not an ideological shift by the jihadis’ because ‘there are no islamic injunctions against women fighting on the frontlines.

    Mothers, Monsters, Whores: Women’s Violence in Global Politics
    Front Cover
    Laura Sjoberg, Caron E. Gentry

    Al Khansa Battalion

    In February, a group of women arrived at a roadblock in northern Syria, manned by armed members of the Al-Qaeda associated Islamic State. No physical security checks were carried out on the group because of a religious ban, and several minutes later, the IS members were hit with a veil of bullets fired from the womens’ concealed weapons.

    Following the incident, the IS, formerly known as the State of Iraq and Levant, decided to establish a unit of female jihadist fighters for the first time. The al-Khansa battalion is one of such units – named after Al Khansa, a devout Muslim who dedicated poetry and eulogies to jihad fighters after losing four sons in a war against Persia at the time of the Prophet Mohammed.

    In 2012, an anonymous fatwa was distributed, calling for women to join jihad fighters in Syria in their campaign for the country to return to ultra-conservative customs and a broader Islamic caliphate. Surprisingly, a significant response to the propaganda was noted in Tunisia – to the point where authorities intervened in an attempt to stop the phenomenon. (Issuing false reports that women going for sex jihad)…………………

    Yet female fighters for the al-Khansa battalion perform other tasks, including street patrols and public floggings for Sharia crimes. Others are recruited as roadblock guards, or carry out a violent coercion regime against women who fail to adhere to the strict Islamic ideology of IS.

    http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/islamic-states-women-warriors-how-fierce-al-khansa-battalion-was-borne-out-repression-1461016

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