Potential threat: 550 women from Europe among IS recruits: report

Study claims Western women driven by ideological passion

LONDON:

Western women who join Islamic State militants are driven by the same ideological passion as many male recruits and should be seen as potentially dangerous cheerleaders, not victims, experts said.

A new study out on Wednesday said the estimated 550 women who have travelled to Iraq and Syria are expected to marry, keep house and bear children.

Despite being banned from fighting, the study found they were active propagandists for the cause.

“The violent language and dedication to the cause is as strong as we find in some of the men,” said extremism expert Ross Frenett of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, who co-authored the new report.

“The worry is that as ISIS loses ground, as everyone hopes it does, that more and more of these women will transfer from the domestic world they’re in now to a more violent one,” he told AFP.

Much has been written about young women going to become “jihadist brides”, but the prevailing narrative of wide-eyed recruits drawn by a sense of excitement belies the importance of their own faith and passions.

Frenett and his fellow researchers have been monitoring hundreds of women on social media, but focused for the study on 12 women from Austria, Britain, Canada, France and the Netherlands who are living with the IS group in Iraq and Syria.

Some of the women endorsed the bloody beheadings carried out by the militants – “I wish I did” it, one said after US journalist Steven Sotloff was killed -- as well as railing against Western governments and the suffering of Muslims.

“My best friend is my grenade... It’s an American one too. May Allah allow me to kill their Kanzeer [pig] soldiers with their own weapons,” one said.

Crucially, the women also provide advice and encouragement to other women thinking of joining.

Melanie Smith, of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) at King’s College London, maintains a database of about 70 female IS members.

She said British women are inciting attacks by suggesting to people who could not travel to Iraq and Syria, “Why not carry out something at home?”

“You can see women online being frustrated about the fact they can’t fight and they suggest to each other that they could do something else,” she told The Observer newspaper.

Jayne Huckerby, associate professor at Duke University School of Law, said in a commentary for The New York Times that women are being driven by the same factors that push men into the arms of the IS group.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 29^th, 2015.