ISIS News Today 2015: Group Lures Women to Join by Citing Their Key Role in State Building

The Islamic State extremist group is luring women into its ranks by telling them they have a major role to play in the creation of an Islamic caliphate, according to an academic from King's College London.

Dr. Katherine Brown, a lecturer in the college's Defense Studies Department, said a huge chunk of the ISIS propaganda focuses on building the Islamic state, citing a media report.

"According to the news website Vocativ, 45 percent of ISIS propaganda centers on efforts to build and sustain the burgeoning caliphate," she said.

"Along with roadworks and local infrastructure, there is messaging on traffic police, charity work, judicial systems, hospitals, and agricultural projects."

The "broader ideas of the good life, and common purpose" are combined with "personal desires." Online discussions show there is emphasis on women getting married immediately upon arrival in Syria.

"Marriage to a fighter provides a strong identity, a sense of belonging to the wider community, the Umma," Brown explained, adding that in the caliphate, "marriage represents more than the private union between two people."

"Their personal choices – domestic chores, children, marriage – are about building a new state."

Brown said stories on Jihadi brides are "full of hope and naive romanticism," citing the case of undercover reporter Anna Erelle, who became a minor online celebrity for being the fiancee of a famous European Jihadi fighter, Bilel.

Another case is Bint Nur, the spouse of a British fighter in Syria, who wrote on Ask.fm in 2014 that "women build the men and men build the Umma."

Women's important role in the state-building of ISIS contrasts sharply with the negative public discourse on young Muslims in Europe, who are constantly seen as "threatening, at risk, alien and unwanted at worst; with little and limited future at best."

The ISIS uses negative public perception in the West to their advantage. "ISIS capitalizes on this, constantly questioning the status of women in the West, highlighting battles over body images, the double bind of domestic work and paid labor, rape culture, pornography, racism, and so on."

But Brown clarified that this does not mean that ISIS is feminist, as women in the state are not equal to men. The ISIS also rejects the Western liberal feminism, and only gives women little freedom to work, travel, and have public roles.

Women, however, are permitted to go outside of this domestic sphere for fighting "if the enemy is attacking her country and the men are not enough to protect it, and the imams give a fatwa for it," Brown cited the Quilliam Foundation think tank.

Addressing this issue on young Muslim women, however, is not a simple thing that can be cured by a single government measure.

"Challenging ISIS will require more than countering their religious narrative, more than new legislation or granting new powers to the police and security services: a successful counter-radicalization program requires addressing the lives of young Muslim women without securitizing them," said Brown.

"Too many young Muslims are silenced by the current political atmosphere because they fear being spied on, or treated as "already radical" just for asking questions, which only drives them towards extremists.

"Instead, understand their fears and aspirations, and seek to overcome Islamophobia, discrimination, and other material disadvantages."

An example of this approach, Brown said, is the upcoming Daughters of Eve conference by the Muslim Women's Council.

"We must allow them to ask critical and difficult questions not only of IS, but of Britain," argued Brown.