Female Jihad – Women in the ISIS

Abstract

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has recently been able to recruit hundreds of women from around the world. This development may pose a severe threat to international security. This paper addresses the question: Why should Western women want to join a political struggle like the ISIS that so blatantly oppresses them? Based on the concept of female Jihad women do not seek the male’s honor (sharaf) through martyrdom but take up mainly non-combatant roles. Following this notion, it can be hypothesized that through female Jihad these women aim for a form of emancipation in the new Caliphate. Along the Merriam Webster’s definition of emancipation, the women’s motivation to join ISIS as a form of emancipation is analyzed with very recent accounts from women in Syria over social media as well as experts’ evaluations. The findings reveal that from a Western point of view the women participating in the ISIS often seem to be instrumentalized in order to enforce misogynistic ideologies, and thus, are still acting within a strongly patriarchal system. Yet, the emancipation is very real for many women that do take the journey (hijra) and perceive the confinements of such a system not as restricting. The paper underlines the importance of understanding the mechanisms within female Jihad and the security threat it poses. Female jihadist propaganda may be especially dangerous because we do not take these motivations as valid nor female Jihad as serious as the (predominantly) male suicide bombings.