Explaining the Modern Middle East - Here's What's Really Going On With Female Terrorism

Enough With the “Jihadi Bride,” It’s Sexist.

Here’s What’s Actually Going On With Female Terrorism.

How Western Media has oversimplified the perception of female terrorists, and how this mistake is going to cost us.

Shamima Begum was 15 years old when she left The U.K. to join ISIS in Syria. Three years later, she now wants to rejoin U.K. society. A similar case has occured in America . Hoda Muthana left Alabama to marry an ISIS fighter in 2014 and Muthana, now 24, would like to return to the U.S. Both girls had children while apart of ISIS, and now claim that they no longer agree with what the group stands for, though there is evidence of both girls participating in terrorist action. There is an ongoing debate about whether or not Begum and Muthana should keep their citizenships. Media coverage about these girls promotes outdated tropes and reflects outright bias in the way men and women are percieved in terrorism.

Western depiction of women in ISIS is misleading. Tales of “ISIS Brides” come and go but they rarely show the complex and evolving role of women in terrorist groups. Stories such as these are outright products of gender bias. In the media, female terrorists are sensationalized for the sake of press which is inherently problematic. This has muddled the understanding of what women actually do in ISIS. So when cases like Shamima Begum and Hoda Muthana are brought into the public eye the line between victim and militant is substantially blurred.

There is an assumption that the women involved with jihadists play more domestic roles rather than ones involving combat. This comes from a gendered perspective on terrorism and explains why we underestimate female terrorists so much. The current state of women in terrorism is complicated. There is a substantial difference between men and women when it comes down to how women are recruited, how they are handled by the justice system, and their role in Islamic militant groups. In order to grasp the topic of women in terrorism, it must be broken down.

What attracts women to terrorists groups?

The recruitment tactics used on women tend to exploit and reflect what Muslim women want, and what they don’t have access to. There are many women who strongly believe in the struggle for Islamic dominance and have a strong sense of Jihadi pride, Jihad being the islamic word that literally means struggle or effort and describes a muslims fight against sin. Jihad also represents the struggle to uplift Islamic society and to protect Islam from its enemies. The biggest pull factor is religious ideology. Women want to fight for what they believe just as much as men do. Many believe that the women fighting in these organizations have been brainwashed by their husbands and sons and this comes from a biased view of muslim women as a whole. The idea that muslim women don’t make their own decisions and succumb to man-made regimes by force isn’t always true.

Money also plays a big role. Historically we have seen that terrorist groups are largely made up of poor, young, and uneducated men and women. This reflects the social trend of marginalized groups resorting to violence and gang-like behavior in order to find a sense of identity. Men need money, and so do women, so the promise of financial stability from large, autonomous terrorist groups is an attractive one that leads women to its forefront.

The love of tradition is a recruitment tactic as well. Many muslim women prioritize traditional gender roles in Islamic societies and believe that marriage out-weighs education. Al-Shabaab is a militant jihadi group based in Somalia and East Africa and its recruitment methods were observed by BBC, “al-Shabab recruiters preyed on the insecurities of some young Muslim women who feared that higher education would delay their marriage prospects. Certain Muslim women idealize family and protection, so being apart of groups like al-Shabab cater to these desires.

Anti-imperialist beliefs are very strong in many Muslim communities of the Middle East. The West is seen as the greatest enemy for many Jihadist organizations and the battle for a non-secular world is what groups like ISIS and al-Shabab are fighting for. Men and women alike fall under this stance. Forbes writer Nikita Malik who specializes in counter-terrorism writes that for many muslim women being recruited by terrorist groups “the Western model for women had failed, and that migrating to Islamic State-held territories, or joining a terrorist group, held a solution.”

The lure of community is a powerful one that recruiters use to attract more women. Malik emphasizes that it is usually women that recruit other women. This has been efficient because recruiters find success through pitching strong support systems for women. By joining terrorist groups “women would be freed from daily degradation and disbelief, and instead assimilated into a tight-knit collective “sisterhood.” There is friendship and long-lasting connection within these groups.

Though a long list of recruitment techniques have been addressed in this explainer, there are still women who are forced to join terrorist group against their well. Kidnappings, sex slavery, brainwashing, and forced marriages, all occur within certain terrorist groups. This makes it hard to differentiate the kind of roles that women have in terrorist groups altogether because all that there really is to verify the truth about women in these groups comes from the woman herself.

The Truth is Hard to Find

As mentioned earlier, finding the truth about female ISIS members is difficult. Take Shamima Begum for example. There has been reports that Begum participated in many ISIS duties by choice though she claims she was not active in the caliphate. The Telegraph writes that Begum “has insisted she was never involved in ISIL’s brutality but spent her time in Syria as a devoted housewife to a jihadist fighter.” Currently it is Begums word against her affiliates in ISIS. Reports have said Begum was involved with the ISIS morality police along with recruitment in Europe. Begum herself has publicly said that she still stands with ISIS’s ideals but doesn’t agree with their cruel tactics at times.

Proving the nature of Begum’s involvement with ISIS is difficult. The Telegraph continues “Due to the secondary role they played in the group’s propaganda, it is always harder to find documentation to prove they [women]picked up arms or committed crimes compared to their male counterparts.” Even if women do have important roles in ISIS, their roles are still considered “secondary.” Finding out what women have really done during their time in Caliphates is based on word of mouth. This makes the rehabilitation process (if it happens) even harder because the extent of Jihad’s influence within female terrorists is often unknown. Nevertheless women under ISIS are exposed to many roles and practices regardless of whether or not they participated in any.

What Do Women Do in ISIS?

In ISIS, roles vary. Though ISIS is male dominated, the women under its regime are quite vital. For a PRI article, journalist Azadeh Moaveni, who is a gender analyst for the International Crisis Center, gave her insights into the Shamima Begum case. Finding out what Begum was really involved with during her time in ISIS has proven difficult, but Moaveni, who spent a significant amount of time in Syria and Tunisia, listed the kind of jobs that women had in ISIS while she was there. She said:

“hundreds of women went and there were doctors, language teachers, midwives and graphic designers. They would take their skills and work there because they thought they were building a new society. Less educated and unskilled women either stayed at home or they were involved in these morality police brigades that would essentially terrify and beat into submission the local population by beatings, lashings, fines for little infringements in dress codes.”

The number of women and children in ISIS as of 2018 has been highly underestimated and the spectrum of roles that women fall on is a vast one. Women use their skill sets to support ISIS and its growing society. The following is graph from the International Centre for Radicalisation that depicts the ratio of men, women, and children in ISIS globally. There is an obvious disparity between men and women on a global scale but the amount of women is high enough to pose a large asset to the Islamic State.

The following is the ratio of men, women, and children altogether. The percentage of women in ISIS has steadily increased over the years and seems only to be growing.

The new world that ISIS is trying to create in the Middle East requires the domestic, social, and militant responsibilities that women have taken on. In fact, in some cases, the Islamic State is proud to show their female fighters in combat. Women wielding deadly weapons while wearing ISIS-approved garments are apart of the current propaganda that ISIS is showing to the public. As more women join ISIS, more roles are created , it seems. This shift in traditional gender roles is proving that ISIS is a growing force to be reckoned with, and that women are constantly adding to the danger of ISIS’s caliphate. Though women are making ISIS that much more terrifying, the consequences they face don’t mirror their male counterparts.

Why are women punished less than men?

In terrorism cases, women experience less punishment and its recent relevance has brought the practice into question. In the criminal justice system, women face lighter charges and lesser sentences overall. Many factors play into this.

Children: When the factor of children comes into play, statistically, courts tend to show more leniency. Motherhood is a concept that many can sympathize with and the women involved with terrorism often are raising children while being apart of Jihadist efforts. Take for example, Keonna Thomas.

Keonna Thomas was a woman from North Philly who made plans to join the Islamic state in 2017. She admitted to having the intention of supporting the terrorist group and made many social media post that put the terrorists in a positive light. On her way to Syria, she was stopped at the airport and arrested.

One of the main tactics used by her lawyers was her status as a mother. Her lawyers explained “Ms. Thomas was a lonely, depressed, anxiety-ridden mother who spent too much time on the internet … By attempting to relocate to [Islamic State]-held territory and marry an [Islamic State] fighter, she never gave [the Islamic State] anything of value – except her love.”

The Easy Target: This trope of helpless women being preyed on by terrorists groups is common one used by defense attorneys and it leads us to examine the way gender bias plays into the American judicial system when it comes to terrorism as a whole. Words like “lonely, depressed, anxiety-ridden” make it seem like this was bound to happen. The line in particular “she never gave [the Islamic State] anything of value – except her love” is an obvious dramatization that reflects the way women are seen in terrorist organizations.

According to the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, the median number of years that an American woman guilty of aiding or planning to aid ISIS is four years which proves a disparity between men and women in these cases. Here is a chart that Thomas’s attorneys provided.

The Secondary Role: Women are rarely seen as the face of terrorist organizations, so when they are proven guilty of being allies to Jihadi causes, it is assumed that they had a secondary role. Either they were keeping house or nursing men. This assumption comes from the false idea that women aren’t capable of being on the frontlines. Women are preyed on by terrorists not recruited, in the eyes of the public.

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