Jihad and the West - Black Flag over Babylon Chapter Four Podcast Four

Sexual Jihad   “There are a lot of things about us women that sadden me, considering how men see us as rascals.”     Lysistrata, from the play Lysistrata by Arisotphanes”               As the Greek play goes, Athenian women were fed up with the war against the Spartans. Lysistrata organized a sex strike to force their men to stop killing Spartans, who, according to plan, would stop killing Athenians in turn. The older Athenian women seized the state treasury. The men, without money to buy wine or women to enjoy, made peace with each other, laid down their arms, and reveled in Bacchus and women. But this is not the story of the Islamic State.               In the Caliphate, sexual Jihad is the obligation for women and girls to provide male Jihadis with sexual outlets to relieve the pent-up frustrations brought on by combat. Sexual intercourse is a recurring theme in Islamic sacred texts—when to have it, with whom to have it, where to have it, and the consequences of having it improperly. All kinds of advice about sex are given by the Islamic State. Posters in public places in Mosul read, “We call upon the people of this country to bring their unmarried girls so they can fulfill their duty in sex Jihad for their warrior brothers in the city.”               There is the “groupie” effect. Some women are drawn to the sexual Jihad because of the charisma and derring-do of the Caliphate’s alpha males. The Caliphate’s propagandists use “Jihotties” to play on the hormonal drives of young women and girls. The British comedian Shazia Mirza, mentioned earlier, stresses, “This is not about radicalization; its sexualisation.” The repressed, sexually driven teenage girls have built a fantasy world around their longing for romance and adventure. Mirza argued that for them, State fighters promise “no-guilt halal sex of which Allah approves.”               The matrimonial pairing is sometimes facilitated by a “fixer,” who acts as a matchmaker. There is also an electronic facilitator, “Jihad Matchmaker.”  Women seeking husbands may submit a photo of themselves, and men may select a woman. Women already living in Syria have more options. As one female Jihadi tweeted, “They’ll get a male foreign fighter in a room, and the girls will all walk up and down covered, and the fighter will have the opportunity to look at their face, and he will choose one.”               Photographs of young men with bandoleros crisscrossing their chests populate the Caliphate’s websites. This led a Saudi woman to divorce her husband and smuggle herself and her two children into Syria and then Iraq. Her aim was to marry Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, the paladin of al Qaeda in Iraq.               Another example is the case of a young Dutch woman who was arrested upon her return to Holland from Syria. Earlier, she had gone to Raqqa to marry a Dutch-Turkish jihadist who had served in the Dutch military. She found him irresistibly attractive. The young woman’s mother explained her daughter’s overheated imagination: “She saw him as a sort of Robin Hood.” The mother made the dangerous trip to fetch her daughter from Syria. She succeeded, and the romantic adventure was over.   War Widows—“It’s Like a Celebration”               The call for sexual Jihad has had some successes and failures. Besotted women have trekked to the Middle East, but their sojourns usually do not end in the Gothic romance they expected. Some are initially glad to sexually service the warriors, but most soon regret their decision.  Many of those who leave the relative comforts and security of the West soon begin to tweet their regrets to their parents and friends.               Some of these Western women become widowed soon after marriage. Many cannot mourn men they did not know. One explained, “In the whole year I probably saw him for less than one month altogether. Then he was martyred.” She then married an Egyptian, who left her to return to Egypt. She did not love either man.               Western widows, particularly the less attractive ones, need to wait for new husbands. But many widows see the wait as an act of piety. “It’s not hard [the wait] because it’s for the sake of Allah, we are happy to observe it. When one husband gets martyred, it’s like a celebration.” But others enjoy the lifestyle and do not mind the replicable husbands. One of them is Aqsa Mahmood.   Profile Ten: Aqsa Mahmood “You Are a Disgrace to Your Family and the People of Scotland” “I will become a martyr.” —Aqsa Mahmood               The Mahmood family of Glasgow, Scotland, was taken completely by surprise. The parents could not explain why their daughter, a twenty-year-old Aqsa (also spelled Aksa), vanished for Syria to kill for the Caliphate. Aqsa’s mother and father became particularly alarmed when they saw a photograph of her holding a severed head as a trophy.               A girl of relative privilege, Aqsa had studied at a tony all-girls’ school, where, it is thought, she developed radical beliefs. Her high school friends described her as “ambitious and talented” and as a “normal girl.” In her final year of school, as she prepared to begin a radiology course, she began wearing a hijab. In November 2013, she withdrew from university and moved to Syria. Something had happened to her.               By September 2014, Mahmood had a new family in Syria and was encouraging her Facebook fans to follow her lead: “The family you get in exchange for leaving the ones behind is like the pearl in comparison to the shell you threw away into the foam of the sea.” She married an Islamic State fighter in Syria, who was killed in battle, and she penned a survival guide for Jihadi war widows. Her blog commentary soon became morbid, and she became a leader of an all-women morality police force. She saluted her sisters’ “desires and cravings to participate in the battlefield and give away your blood.” She was in her element.               Aqsa has developed an international fan club, but her parents have yet to join. Her mother and father openly and repeatedly pled to Aqsa to return home, where she would be forgiven and loved. They whispered that they had raised her “with love and affection in a happy home.”  But she no longer loves her parents; she belongs to the Caliphate. In her words, “I [belong] only to our beloved Ameer, destroyer of the enemies, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and to the Islamic State.”               Aqsa’s parents’ initial hope turned to anger and then despair. They called her a “bedroom radical.” They also sent a message to Aqsa: “You are a disgrace to your family and the people of Scotland, your actions are a perverted and evil distortion of Islam.” Mr. Mahmood is haunted by the last words his daughter said to him. She promised, “I will see you on the day of judgment. I will take you to heaven, I will hold your hand. I will become a martyr.” According to her father, “That’s what she said.”