By now, there can be few people in the world who aren’t aware of the toxic mess that is ISIL.
They are terrorists who destroy cities and monuments, who rape and kill, who kidnap and bomb. Like the worst of the worst, they have hijacked Islam and tarnished its image, and yet, there are still people who communicate with and support them. Some even want to join them.
The latest story to make headlines concerns a British glamour model who has been in contact with an ISIL fighter in Syria. She has also adopted an alias, Aisha Lauren Al Britaniya, and has posted images of jihadist women posing with rifles and other weapons. The 27-year-old is being investigated by MI5 and antiterror police.
She has admitted she has been in contact over Facebook with an ISIL recruiter called Abu Usamah Al Britani.
I cringe at how this terror group has been abusing an old tradition of “laqab” (earning a title) and giving themselves titles by adding “Al” to their country of origin, as if they were in league with greats from Islamic history.
When Abu Usamah posted a photo of a kitten wearing a suicide belt, Al Britaniya “liked” the photo, and responded with a string of jokey emoji. There is nothing cute or funny about this kind of image.
Posts about kittens and promises of becoming “jihadi brides”, where the women are offered a pampered new life as, well, basically a housewife, are some of the recruiting tactics used by ISIL on social media.
The fact that some women have become so desperate to just be married, even to a terrorist, is very telling of how modern gender roles, expectations and lifestyles have left some women feeling unfulfilled.
I saw a screen grab of a page by an ISIL recruiter a while back, and what he promises – under obviously Photoshopped photos of buff muscular masked men in uniform – are things like a home for an ISIL bride and how her “husband” will treat her like a queen and give her the child she had been dreaming about.
There didn’t seem to be anything especially manipulative in this post. It was a basic proposal of marriage with a promise of a home and family. That shows you that deep down, what many women want is a home. When more and more men opt for “let’s see where it goes” and “I don’t believe in marriage” and so on, it pushes some women to look for that traditional setting in the most extreme places.
There is more than enough evidence of the atrocities committed by ISIL, but that doesn’t seem to bother some women. They probably all believe that the jihadist they marry will be different.
When I showed that screen grab to female friends, they laughed at the “weak” women who would fall for all this. But the fact that it is still working should be a wake-up call for the men who do mistreat, dismiss and take women in their home countries for granted.
Al Jazeera English reported in June that about 700 women and girls are among the 5,000 Tunisians who have been recruited by ISIL and other extremist groups.
If the women and girls were happy and content in their home countries, I really doubt they would leave.
Why men join up is not as hard to understand as some do tend to be more aggressive by nature and can release their worst side in a lawless land.
But this is an oversimplification, as there are other more personal reasons why different people would join these groups.
Some feel they are doing “something special” and buy into the propaganda of establishing a new state. For some, being part of something, even something this horrible, is better than being part of nothing.
rghazal@thenational.ae
On Twitter: @Arabianmau
