Women who join ISIL’s war are warped

Who are these women who seek to join the brutal fight in Syria, asks Shelina Janmohamed

‘The first phone call you make once you cross the border is one of the most difficult things you will ever have to do,” says Umm Layth who describes herself as a “British Muhajirah living under the Khilafah”.

Thanks to her blog and Twitter feed she is the best-known of a small but growing number of women travelling to join ISIL. She documents her experiences with photos, emotional descriptions of her surroundings and tips to encourage other women to follow in her footsteps.

These women are young, well-educated, from comfortable backgrounds – and yearning to join the “jihad”, to live a more Islamic life under the “khilafah”. Disaffection with their surroundings and an acceptance of the “them and us” western political discourse underpins their desire to uphold the divide.

Youth has always sacrificed home comforts for romanticised struggle. But ISIL is no utopia, and certainly no Islamic state. Its declaration, its principles and its actions bear no relation to any kind of Islamic ideal.

Men flock to ISIL attracted by a culture of violence and belonging that justifies hatred and an outrageous expression of masculinity. Religion seems to be low on their priorities. Take the case of two British men among whose last acts before leaving the UK was to order the books Islam for Dummies and The Koran for Dummies.

The phenomenon has been described as “jihad cool”, but how is a Muslim woman to get involved in such a hyper-male environment? To understand, let’s stop overlaying male western perspectives on these women, and instead stand in their shoes.

The women are attracted by promises to support the men in their jihad, to offer them the comforts of home as wives, to bring up children as the next generation of fighters.

Calling their engagement “sexual jihad” makes newspaper headlines, but puts a passive lens on these women, the same story of submissiveness overlaid on Muslim women generally. But they’re far from passive, they’re proactive in the most warped kind of way. They are giving up home and family to engage actively in a horrific struggle.

Analysts fail to realise that in such an extreme, violent, testosterone-fuelled milieu, if a woman wants to live in the area and join the struggle and gain the glory the male participants gain, then marriage is her only choice, her only safety, her only way to participate.

Of course, the way ISIL treats women is loathesome, yet women continue to join. We’re baffled: we believe women are inherently opposed to violence, but history shows us women can be the blood-thirstiest of terrorists, whether cheerleaders or on the frontline.

These women don’t care about women who are being killed by ISIL. But the men don’t care about the men being killed either. If anything these women are asserting themselves in positions of privilege to impose oppression on other women. Take the Al Khansaa brigade of women in ISIL, enforcing strict laws on other women. As the “chosen” and “privileged”, they care little for “lesser”, “non-compliant”, “deviant” women. It’s the story of the women of imperialist forces throughout history, and the women of ISIL are no different.

Just like the men, these women are trying to create their own culture of “jihad cool”, believing in their righteousness. Let’s not make the mistake of seeing them as passive, sexual objects. Their role and their hatred is just as misguided and toxic.

Shelina Zahra Janmohamed is the author of Love in a Headscarf and blogs at www.spirit21.co.uk