The Female Jihad

Beautiful - live in the west, collect unemployment, foment jihad.

From the NYTimes:

BRUSSELS — On the street, Malika El Aroud is anonymous in an Islamic black veil covering all but her eyes.

Malika El Aroud, seen in her living room in Brussels, has become one of the most prominent Internet jihadists in Europe.

In her living room, Ms. El Aroud, a 48-year-old Belgian, wears the ordinary look of middle age: a plain black T-shirt and pants and curly brown hair. The only adornment is a pair of powder-blue slippers monogrammed in gold with the letters SEXY. :confused:

But it is on the Internet where Ms. El Aroud has distinguished herself. Writing in French under the name “Oum Obeyda,” she has transformed herself into one of the most prominent Internet jihadists in Europe.

She calls herself a female holy warrior for Al Qaeda. She insists that she does not disseminate instructions on bomb-making and has no intention of taking up arms herself. Rather, she browbeats Muslim men to go and fight and rallies women to join the cause.

“It’s not my role to set off bombs — that’s ridiculous,” she said in a rare interview. “I have a weapon. It’s to write. It’s to speak out. That’s my jihad. You can do many things with words. Writing is also a bomb.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/28/wo.../28terror.html

It is a small world after all:

Quote:

---

Ms. El Aroud began her rise to prominence because of a man in her life. Two days before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, her husband carried out a bombing in Afghanistan that killed the anti-Taliban resistance leader Ahmed Shah Massoud at the behest of Osama bin Laden. Her husband was killed, and she took to the Internet as the widow of a martyr.

---

I can't imagine why the rest of the Europe doesn't move toward the UK model in which inciting criminal violence is itself a crime. One of the most telling lines is that she is living on public assistance while inciting violence against those who work to feed her. If I were a Belgian citizen (particularly a terrorism victim), I'd be moved to take action.

A quick primer on this issue:

Quote:

---

As the United States and Europe have slowly come to terms with the grim reality of the Islamist terror threat, comment and analysis on how to deal with it have almost invariably concentrated on angry young males. What has frequently been overlooked is the role played by females on the peripheries of many terror plots in the West. Their involvement has ranged from encouraging their jihadi relatives, ensuring that their will to carry out the operation remains strong until the end, to withholding information from the authorities. Although the West has yet to see its first female suicide bomber, recent developments suggest that such an incident is likely, perhaps even inevitable....

(Concludes)Women have for some time been used by jihadi groups as highly effective weapons and it comes as no surprise that this year has seen reports of a heightened interest in that threat from a number of national security services. Women are just as susceptible to the jihadist ideology as men and their role in the west as facilitators and enablers of jihad could evolve, as it already has in other parts of the world, to a more direct and violent one.

---

Link:http://www.hudsonny.org/2010/03/the-female-jihad-1.php

Note the author Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens is a neo-con think tank writer and not a specialist in this field, which is usually dominated by those whose focus is women suicide bombers.

From FreeRadicals a Feb '10 commentary on the UK experience, with links to details and ends with this:

Quote:

---

What remains somewhat unexplored (to my knowledge – any pointers to interesting reports greatly appreciated) is the role that women have played in terrorist plots – are they accelerators in their husbands radicalization (or possible plotters)? Or are they innocent naïf's who either get caught up in their husband's plotting or are firmly kept out of the loop by domineering males?

Or is none of this the case, and in fact they could play a positive role in shifting the husband’s attention from his extreme ideas? All of which would be useful knowledge when attempting to craft a counter- or de-radicalization strategy.

---

The author is an analyst linked to IISS and the link is:http://icsr.info/blog/The-Terrorists-Wife