It was only a couple of months ago that the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) came out with its women’s magazine. Titled Sunnat-i-Khaula, the magazine attempted to appeal to Muslim women, offering first-person stories of a female doctor who gave it all up to travel to “Khorasan”, an interview with the wife of a commander (he did the dishes and helped around the house), and even a supposedly inspirational portrait of a child soldier. The objective was simple: brand extremism as heroic, joining up as a duty of faith possible for all sorts of women; they could go themselves, or send their husband and even their baby sons. Last week, the militant Islamic State (ISIS) group, which has long been in the game of recruiting women and has a brigade comprised of them, renewed its call for action. Unlike prior attempts at recruitment that have appeared in Dabiq, the group’s English-language magazine, this latest one was issued in its Arabic newspaper under the title “Wajib un-Nisa”. Unlike previous attempts at swelling the numbers of women in ISIS-controlled territory, which hinted at fighting as an option for women, this latest call demands it, calling it an obligation and a duty.
Unlike the TTP, whose open attempts to recruit women surfaced only very recently, ISIS has been targeting women as recruits for some time. Even in the initial days of the group’s takeover of Raqqa in Syria, its efforts were directed at women who were recruited into the Al Khansaa Brigade, which went around disciplining and abducting women who did not conform with the group’s stern directives. Women without a full-face veil, women without guardians, and even women talking loudly were all subject to the wrath of this wandering all-female morality police. On social media, the group’s female recruits, particularly those from the West, took on the task of wheedling others to join, talking about how lovely life was in daula (the ISIS-controlled “state”) and what a grand time was to be had in living in such a pure place.
It was until this summer, when ISIS began to lose. As the reports of the group’s losses mounted and fighters were lost, more were required. The argument that turning to women does not come from the surrender of men would be harder to make now. Last week’s call to women to fulfil their obligation for “jihad” and undertake terrorist attacks came in the wake of enormous losses suffered by the group. According to the New York Times, more than 1,000 ISIS fighters surrendered en masse to Kurdish militias. The whole story proves only one thing: terrorist groups, whether they are the TTP or ISIS, manipulate history and text and faith, all to serve their own desire for power. When the groups take over territory, women are deemed worthless, sentenced to isolation, banished from public space and treated like animals. Other women are recruited to carry out these degradations, to beat and search and imprison others.
Muslim women are smarter than Muslim men. The sly manipulation of faith that lies at the core of all terror groups and that is so useful in recruiting men is unlikely to be quite so effective in drawing in women. Unlike Muslim men, Muslim women know and remember that the violence now being demanded of them by ISIS is a mere redirection of the violence that is inflicted upon them. Men who justify beating women, mistreating women and abusing women as a religious right, are now arguing for the same women to take up arms so that they may return to power and to the task of subjugating women. Whether it is ISIS or the TTP or some other militant group, Muslim women are not fooled, not duped by the propaganda that insists that murder is a religious duty.
By arrangement with Dawn
