Female
Jihadists Are A Growing Problem. Invisible Martyrs Explains Why
by Abigail R. Esman
Reviewed by Special to IPT News
August 8, 2018
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first of your friends to like this.
 Only one person
could have written this book. Thankfully, she did.
The first Muslim woman and the first American Muslim to join the U.S.
government Counter-Terrorism Center, Farhana Qazi, a Pakistani-American counterterrorism
expert and policy analyst, has traveled the globe interviewing Muslim women
extremists, speaking with would-be suicide bombers and jihadists and their
families.
Their stories, and her understanding of them, fill the pages of Invisible Martyrs: Inside the Secret World of Female
Islamic Radicals, an extraordinary analysis of female
Islamist terrorists and the forces that drive them to extremism – not only
in the Muslim world, but in the West as well. Often lyrically written and
deeply personal, Qazi gives us a narrative that manages to be at once
damning and compassionate, rich with insights that are as frightening as
they are hopeful.
And understanding the threat of women terrorists has never been more
critical. Not only are more women joining jihadist groups, thanks in large
part to internet recruiters and the outreach of ISIS operatives, but women,
Qazi reports, can be even more destructive than men. Not only are they less
conspicuous, thanks in part to burqas and other body-coverings, but
"on average," she writes, women have "killed four times more
people than male operatives."
Moreover, the phenomenon is no longer limited to the war zones of the
Middle East, Southeast Asia and North Africa. Tashfeen Malik became the first female Islamist
terrorist to hit the United States when she and her husband Syed Farook
killed 14 people and injured 22 at a 2015 San Bernardino Christmas party.
It is unlikely that she will be the last.
Qazi takes the fight against Islamic extremism personally. She started
work at the Counterterrorism Center on Oct. 12, 2000, the day al-Qaida
bombed the USS Cole. And yet, as a Muslim American working to fight
Islamist terrorism, she was received with skepticism by her own Muslim
community. For many Muslims in the West, it is exactly this conflict that leads
them to extremism and hatred. Yet in Qazi's case, reconciling the two
worlds strengthened both her patriotism and her commitment to the moderate
Islam she believes can help end Islamic violence and terror.
Invisible Martyrs opens with a caution: "This book is not
everything you ever wanted to know about female terrorists or radical
Islam," she writes. If not, however, it comes as close as one could
conceivably expect to get. Although the road to extremism is complex and
filled with turns unique to each individual, Qazi clearly identifies the
salient triggers, described and illustrated through the women's own stories
and her experiences. In almost all cases, she writes,
"I discovered that some viewed violence as a weapon of
choice. They believed in the radical interpretations of Islam. These women
joined extremist groups to give purpose to their lives and effect change:
to rewrite the future, to say I am within the boundaries set by men,
to cleanse an unwanted past, to fall into favor with God, to cast away
something broken or bruised or scraped, to push beyond the limits of their
gender, to find a like-minded lover, or to experience the connection that a
woman feels when she joins a sisterhood."
Often, too, Qazi notes, women who embrace extremism do so in response to
the "hidden traumas" of their lives in fundamentalist,
patriarchal Muslim families. She describes the women "hunted like
animals in the wilderness for so-called honor crimes [and] the weight of
clerical decisions clamped on fragile, voiceless girls." The rights
and privileges of Muslim women, she says, are too often
"dictated by a patriarchy of irrational and ignorant men,
many of whom support the radical interpretation of Islam – the barbarism,
the beastly action, and a culture of humiliation and shame narrated by
violent extremists. These same men prey on vulnerable women, who are
misguided, misinformed, and mistaken, incapable of differentiating the
universal values of love that the Quran promotes from the teachings of
corrupt, crooked men with blood on their hands."
Nonetheless, Qazi in no way holds these women blameless, nor does she
suggest that they become jihadists simply because they are corrupted by
evil, conspiratorial men. Each girl, each woman, is responsible for her own
choice, whatever her influences. Many choose violence as a way to avenge
the loss of a husband, a child, or the honor of their culture. "The
primary individual motivation for women," Qazi writes, "is
personal: the protection of family, community and country in order to bring
about meaningful change to conflict."
Qazi explores the stories of multiple women, from Rania Ibrahim, who was 15 years old in 2008 when her
aunt and mother – both al-Qaida members – strapped her into a suicide vest
in Baghdad, to the three Sudanese- and Somali-American girls from Denver,
Colorado, apprehended in 2014 as they tried to reach the Islamic
State.
The Denver teens' tale is a particularly cautionary one. Like so
many others in the West, they had been radicalized, not in their local
mosques, but online, despite coming from fully assimilated families – in
fact, it was the Sudanese father, Assad Ibrahim, who alerted the FBI to the
girls' disappearance. At a community gathering, Qazi writes, some parents
expressed concern about their children's online activities, and whether
they should be more closely monitored. Yet one father wondered, by
contrast, whether being under "too much parental control and leading
isolated lives, with only three places to go – school, the mosque, and
their home – compelled the girls to seek freedom online." Indeed, Qazi
notes that many Muslim girls from "ultraconservative households"
specifically seek out friends online "to escape their overbearing
families." Online communities offer kinship, a place to belong, and
"the need to belong is exacerbated by the social isolation that Muslim
girls and women often feel when their mobility is limited...Violent
extremism is their new tribe, offering females a group to be a part
of."
This is also true of converts, who can be especially vulnerable to
Islamist suitors, recruiters for terrorist groups who prey on naïve and
largely uninformed young women, promising them love and happiness if they
only give themselves to Allah. Shannon Maureen Conley, another Denver teen, converted
to Islam and also was arrested en route to the Caliphate in 2014 after
falling in love with an ISIS recruiter.
In telling these women's stories, Qazi emphasizes not only the extent of
the problem of women terrorists, but the urgency of recognizing how
challenging and dangerous it has become. Today, she writes, "radical
women present a real and ongoing threat."
The book has its flaws. Understandably, but no less frustratingly, Qazi
resorts often to clichéd defensiveness, insisting repeatedly that
"Islam is a religion of peace" and that extremists have perverted
its true meaning – an argument that not only has grown tired, but which
extremists themselves would deny just as vigorously. And because the
arguments are both based on interpretations of vague and faith-based texts,
either one is equally true or false. And she spends much of the last
chapters exalting God, a gesture that is not only irrelevant to the book's
purpose but which weakens it as a counterterrorism analysis of a real and
urgent threat. Such references are not only distracting, but annoying, as
if the reader is being proselytized.
Still, perhaps Qazi has a purpose and a point in this. She believes the
Muslim community is on the front lines, and the parents and communities are
the best equipped to prevent radicalization, to signal it when it appears,
and to stop it when it becomes violent. The best way to do this might be by
promoting her interpretation of Islam: empowering of women, based in
charity and community, and in rejection of violence.
Some might argue that such an Islam does not exist. Right or wrong, the
argument misses the more critical point: that Muslim women across the globe
have become a force of "invisible martyrs" that must be stopped.
Teaching them from the earliest age that they can be good Muslims, good
women, and still remain both empowered and peaceful may well be the best
weapon to do just that. Qazi's background and expertise suggest that it is
well worth considering. It would not be easy to do, as she herself
acknowledges. But lives are on the line.
Abigail R. Esman, the author, most recently, of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in
the West (Praeger, 2010), is a freelance writer based in New
York and the Netherlands. Follow her at @radicalstates.
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