Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the leader of the IS, has issued an order on recruiting more females. The women of IS have responded by blogging, tweeting and posting photos in an effort to increase their numbers. Their online activity isn’t a surprise. The disturbing part of the story is that women from Britain, Germany, Australia, Malaysia and the United States are actually responding to this foolishness. Online accounts of IS male terrorists are overwhelmed with desperate women yearning to be their servants.
Photographs of burqa-clad women carrying AK47s and holding a severed head have been making the rounds online but these women are banned from fighting and are mostly relegated to cooking and cleaning. Some have been promised cash for each baby they produce. The IS has also assembled some of their women in an all-female unit known as the al-Khanssaa Brigade in Raqqa, Syria. Their mission is to terrorise other local women into covering themselves and preventing them from stepping out unaccompanied.
A total of 200 foreign recruited women are estimated to have joined the IS. In addition, it has kidnapped around 3,000 Iraqi women. Recently, two Austrian teenage girls have made headlines by escaping to Syria and becoming IS brides. However, these two, now pregnant and disappointed by reality no doubt, want to return home. The Austrian government has suggested that these girls would face prison time if they are allowed to return since they participated in the activities of a terrorist organisation.
Even though brides are valued mostly as housekeeping baby factories for creating more IS fighters, many have travelled long distances to undergo wilful radicalisation. Their decision to travel may stem from a naive idea of being part of something bigger — the creation of a utopian Islamic state. Since these women come from such varying backgrounds, it is difficult to generalise their motives. Some women may have simply failed to fit in with the majority of people in Western states. Khadija, a Dutch woman in Syria, stated, “I always wanted to live under sharia. In Europe, this will never happen.” For others, a romantic notion of war could be their source of inspiration. Many of these girls are very young and still have much to learn. They likely don’t understand the cruel nature of conflict and have proven themselves to be easily manipulated by propaganda. We may never be able to comprehend the motives of these young women but, at the very least, this story should serve as another reason to pay attention to the young people in our own busy lives.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 3rd, 2014.
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COMMENTS (17)
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Ennui. The lust for wealth and power is enough to drive people affected into the arms of ISIS, whether they be male or female. So what if the girls have to submit to a man? They get to oppress other women - especially those who are prettier than they are.
@Rex Minor: Dear Rex, Although I admire your way of writing I am afraid we will have to agree to disagree this time. Ms Khan has used inconsequential, disparate statistics to establish her point-of-view such as two pregnant Austrian girls, but at the end of the day it is a way of doing putdowns on the Islamic world. I can also provide even worse statistics about the Western world. For example, every year in the US 1.6 million females have a baby out of wedlock, and 1300 hundred men kill their wives. I will not go into the many other horrendous US statistics. Obviously, the average person will find these statistics difficult to comprehend. The bottom line is that the Islamic world, which I do not always agree with, comes out smelling like roses in comparison.
@Sexton Blake: You have raised quite validly the spectre of Events of the past, which only an inquisition could handle and clarify and are certainly outside the scope of this article. Facts are today that ISIL is the greatest force of all previous organisations which the American administrtion and its allies including those among the middle eastern players have encountered in the past. Miss Khan is asking for more attention to todays youth whom even she as a woman finds it difficult to comprehend..
Rex Minor
A nice article. IS is able to radicalise only with the power of Internet. Imagine the power of propaganda done by the state. In Pakistan, radicalization starts very young therefore, they are imprinted into the DNA which is very difficult if not impossible to deradicalize. Am not even speaking of the various madaris and their hate speeches on Friday
s. Am speaking of the states education system which put Non Sunni Sects & other religions in bad light, lowers women`s status etc@Rex Minor: Dear Rex, I do not doubt the intelligence of Ms Sabina Khan, and I am not suggesting she is telling deliberate untruths. However I am suggesting that the above article is very cleverly obfuscating reality, and is a hodgepodge of various articles which are unrelated to reality. It did not explain why the disaster that is Iraq came about. What basically happened is that Iraq, had a great economy in 2001 and a security system, albeit a harsh one, keeping the country under reasonable control. Libya was a delightful country to live in with a high standard of living. Syria was in reasonably good shape. They are all basket cases now and suffering dreadfully, so why did this all come about? They have been bombed into the stone age, and apart from Syria, their security systems and police forces were demolished by the West. I have no doubt people are suffering in Iraq, Syria and Libya, but where did all these brutal groups we call terrorists come from, who set them up, who is providing the weaponry, who is flying the aircraft and drones that are killing 20 innocent people for every insurgent, who is placing the security systems, of these once thriving countries, under so much pressure? I would suggest that Ms Sabina Khan, like you and I, is not fully familiar with all the dreadful atrocities routinely being carried out in Iraq, Libya and Syria, and who is controlling who, but I am not placing all the blame on IS, and am reasonably certain that IS would not exist if Western and other money junkies had not gone onto a permanent war footing and just stayed out of the area. .
Today's youth is stupid and arrogant- a fatal combination
@Sexton Blake:
You have a valid point Sir; but it is upto the reader of the story how one interprets it. There are those who interpret the murderous acts of the Governments and their militay as police actions and regard the acts of the Talibans and the ISIL as gruesome, uncivilised and terrorist acts. Look at it from the ISIL point of view whose aim is to restore the Sunni led majority Governments in the entire middle east by routing the incompetent shia majority administrations ( mostly through fear)which the Americans had circumvented to remove Sadam Hussain but verylate asked for inclusiveness in Al Malicki Governent. It is all a matter of the spin to manipulate the democracy to serve once political objectives..
Rex Minor
The author Miss Sabina Khan brilliantly narrates a piece of the ISIS or ISIL world which the world media had hitherto declined to tell its readers since this very orgaisation was called to life and sponsored by the USA and the UK and France backed up by the Gulf states to replace the Syrian regime of Assad. It is the most powerful set up in the region tody, operating in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, with oil resources and weaponry, which according to Mr Obama will require several decades to eliminate. CNN has also managed to obtain information ablout ISIL massive indoctrination program for the children. This is all frightening but appear to be true, the tactics are more or less similar to those used by the Talibans and Hitler youth program. The truth is also that these people, men and women do not think the way Miss Khan thinks...
Rex Minor
@Adnan: Dear Adnan, A good submission. We currently appear to be becoming subjected to an ongoing, coordinated, propaganda campaign to convince the week minded. First a couple of journalists are supposed to be beheaded by terrorists, then many people are murdered by terrorists, then woman are being treated badly by terrorists. It is the same old anti Islamic propaganda mantra being repeated by Western governments that we have been subjected to for the last 20 years or so. Of course, no mention of the few million people the Western governments have disposed of since 2001, or the many Islamic women their troops have mistreated. Unfortunately, the propaganda appears to be working,and particularly amongst older Western females. I hope ET prints this.
Major parts of this are almost copy pasted from a similar articles on Aljazeera and BBC. The example of Al Khansaa bridge is almost directly copy pasted and so is the case of Aqsa. There is not much opinion in the article, just some news from other sites cobbled together. E.g. see this bbc article that was published a month ago almost (on 6th oct) : http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-29507410
That was interesting and believable...........what comes to mind is that the same twisted thinking born out of frustration that has motivated these women to do such stupidity ( for want of a better word ) ........is akin to a similar twisted thinking that has motivated the IS leadership to commit the atrocities they are doing.........both in the name of religion. The philosophy behind this is certainly is no friend to religion.
Young girls also fall for the propaganda of Imran Khan and PTI despite it defying all logic. They all want to be his bride too. Is PTI therefore the pakistani equivalant of Isis and Imran Khan as leader the same as al Baghdadi?
looks similar to the Nazi state of Hitler.
I find the obove narrative difficult to believe. Sounds like hogwash propaganda.
Their only role is to become baby factories.
Ew.
Seems the author has finally come up with a personal opinion. Long overdue. Instead of cobbling together articles from news sources as CNN, ITN, BBC, Deutsche Welles, France 24....