Why Caricaturing Islamic State Women as Sex Brides is Simplistic
By
Arshad Alam, New Age Islam
21 May 2021
The
Message Of IS Appeals Equally To Muslim Women; They Should Not Be Considered As
Mere Appendages To Men
Main
Points:
1. The idea
that women within the IS simply existed to provide sexual comfort to their
husbands is simplistic.
2. The
available evidence does not support the theory of any institutionalized sex
jihad.
3. Moreover,
such an analysis only denies the agency of Muslim women by romanticizing them
as inherently non-violent.
4. The
narrative that IS women are victims must be replaced by one wherein these women
are seen as making an active, conscious and deliberate choice.
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In
ascertaining the reasons of western Muslim women’s willingness to join the
Islamic State (IS), most analysts play on the popular stereotype that they were
primarily ‘lured’ and consequently recruited into the organization to become
‘sex-brides’. The idea that they simply provided sexual comfort to their
husbands who were fighting to establish an Islamic state is facile. Such
analyses do not help us to understand the underlying motivations of these women
to join a dreaded terror organization. Rather than throwing any light, it only
strengthens the stereotype of Muslim men being obsessed with lust.
But then,
according to these women themselves, they were not ‘tricked’ but voluntarily
decided to join the fight and help Muslim men. The very act of travelling to a
far away land without any known support structure points to a certain agency
which these Muslim women exercised. It was a choice which they made consciously
in favour of the Islamic state. Any analysis which denies this agency is too
simplistic. And when such analyses feeds into policy making, we can well argue
that the policy will be doomed from the start. Why is it so hard for us to
understand that the allure of an Islamic state might resonate with Muslim women
as part of their Islamic commitment as it did with men?
In a recent
paper, Kiriloi M Ingram attempts to do just that by shedding light on the
recruitment strategy of IS towards western women. By analysing multiple issues
of Dabiq, the online English magazine of IS, he tries to debunk the myth that
all such recruited women who migrated to Syria and Iraq did so with the express
purpose becoming ‘sex-brides’. He points to the need of understanding the
appeal which the IS might have had for these women. He posits three kinds of
active roles that the IS promised for these women: supporters,
mothers-sisters-wives and fighters.
Muslim
women could become supporters by performing two duties: first by recognizing
that living in the west and associating with Kufr (disbelief) is a major reason
for current Muslim malaise. Their second duty was to abandon friends and family
in the land of disbelief (Dar al Kufr) and perform hijrat (migration) to the
land of Islam (Dar al Islam). After the supporters perform hijrat, they are
given the roles of mothers, sisters and wives through which they are promised
purpose and belonging within their newly created group. The wives of the
caliphate were expected to become ‘bases of support and safety’ for their
husbands and encourage them to engage in jihad while raising her ‘lion cubs’
and being the ‘teachers of generations and producers of men’. The least
discussed role of women was that of the fighter. IS discouraged women from
taking on fighter roles as they considered it to be the exclusive obligation of
Muslim men. However, they did not refrain from praising ‘fighter’ women like
Tashfeen Malik, the female shooter of 2015 San Bernardino attack.
Two other
labels, ‘victim’ and ‘corruptor’ were also employed by the IS. While the earlier
three roles were for women who were part of the in-group or the new community,
the latter two labels were reserved for the outside world. The outside world,
their ways and women were the perennial corruptors ever ready to victimize
Muslim women. But at the same time, if a Muslim woman is not offering any
particular role within the new community, then she is also liable to be
labelled as a corruptor.
Thus, there
was no evidence within the pages of Dabiq that the IS were using sex appeal to
recruit western women. In 2015, Ayman al-Tamimi, who studied a cache of
archives left behind by fleeing IS fighters, also came to the conclusion that
the evidence available did not support the theory of any institutionalized sex
jihad. It is true that IS encouraged women to get married to its fighters, but
they normally did not outline these duties wrapped in love and lust. Their
appeal was rational: women held important positions in society which would
eventually help in the reproduction of the caliphate. They could never be
overlooked in any nation building process. Since the IS were engaged in nation
building of their own kind, the recruitment of women became a necessary
exercise. Those who were looking at sex as the prime motivation behind the
emigration of Muslim women forget that IS expected certain values to be upheld.
Whereas wives must be loyal to their husbands, sisters were expected to be
chaste. The recruitment of women for the IS was very much a mundane process of
building a nation of believers (Ummah) and not a result of their lust for sex
slaves.
This is not
to suggest that the IS members did not commit acts of savagery and brutality on
women. There are documented cases of their indulging in such acts. However, it
seems that this was not by any institutional decree. On the other hand, the IS
certainly sanctioned the keeping of slaves, as we saw in the case of Yazidi
women. While I am not endorsing this savage conduct, it is important to note
that IS made a distinction between treating Muslim and non-Muslim women. Since
our concern here is with IS’ appeal towards Muslim women, their treatment of
non-Muslim women needs to dealt separately.
(Image: REUTERS)
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The popular
imagery constructed around IS which is one of sexual anarchy and libertarianism
therefore needs to be corrected for any informed discussion. An obsessive focus
with the sexual lives of Jihadis, only trivializes the savagery that the IS
enacted. The attraction of Muslim women towards the message of the IS and their
migration should concern all right-thinking Muslims who want to rescue Islam
from the clutches of extremists. But this cause will hardly be served by
fuelling the Occidental fantasy about lustful Arab men indulging in orgiastic
rituals.
What we
need is a dispassionate analysis to tell us why so many Muslim women decided to
leave the comfort of their home and embrace war, brutality and uncertainty.
While we now know about the motivation of IS to target western women, that is
only part of the story. The other half, which we know very little about, is why
many Muslim women migrated to IS territory in the first place. Certainly,
everything cannot be explained away by arguing that they were ‘lured’ by the
IS. Majority of such women were adults and hence very much capable of taking
informed decisions. Any thesis that suggests that these women were lured or
tricked is problematic as it ends up denying their agency.
When it
comes to the IS, the narrative that their women must necessarily be looked at
through the prism of being a victim needs to be replaced by one wherein these
women are seen making an active, conscious and deliberate choice. If a
particular reading of Islam can move Muslim men to enact horrors, why is it
inconceivable if Muslim women are similarly motivated by the appeal of same
religion? The idea that women are necessarily anti-violence should be put to
rest. Throughout the world, women are taking an increasing role in right wing
organizations. There is no reason why such sentiments and motivations would not
be present in Muslim women. It is only by considering them as active agents
within such organizations that we will be able to make a sound policy so that
such events are not repeated.
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Arshad
Alam is a columnist with NewAgeIslam.com
URL: https://www.newageislam.com/radical-islamism-jihad/isis-sexslaves-sex-brides-/d/124861
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