Notes

Introduction

1.“Terrorist Identified,” Die Welt, April 6, 2010, https://www.dw.com/en/russia-names-teacher-as-second-subway-suicide-bomber/a-5437274; DNA Web team, “Teenage ‘Black Widow’ Confirmed as Moscow Metro Bomber,” April 2, 2010, https://www.dnaindia.com/world/report-teenage-black-widow-confirmed-as-moscow-metro-bomber-1366657.

2.Frédérick Lavoie, “Moscou: Une des Kamikazes Avait 17 Ans,” La Presse, April 3, 2010, https://www.lapresse.ca/international/correspondants/201004/02/01-4266798-moscou-une-des-kamikazes-avait-17-ans.php.

3.Karina Jougla, “The Ideology of the Veil: Fundamentally Misogynistic or Fundamentally Misunderstood?,” Morningside Review 10 (2014): 1–7; Karina Jougla, “The Ideology of the Veil: Fundamentally Misogynistic or Fundamentally Misunderstood?,” The Morningside Review 10 (May 2014): 40–46, https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/TMR/article/view/5431.

4.Julie Rajan, personal communication with the author, March 13, 2012.

5.Anat Berko, Path to Paradise: The Inner World of Suicide Bombers and Their Dispatchers (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2007). See also Anat Berko, Edna Erez, and Julie L. Globokar, “Gender, Crime and Terrorism: The Case of Arab/ Palestinian Women in Israel,” The British Journal of Criminology 50, no. 4 (July 2010): 670–89, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azq013.

6.Kate Storey, “How a Woman Joins ISIS,” Marie Claire, April 22, 2016, http://www.marieclaire.com/politics/a20011/western-women-who-join-isis/.

7.Naureen Chowdhury, Sara Zeiger, and Rafia Bhulai, eds., A Man’s World?: Exploring the Roles of Women in Countering Terrorism and Violent Extremism (n.p.: Hedayah and the Global Center on Cooperative Security, 2016), 102, https://www.globalcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/AMansWorld_FULL.pdf.

8.“[In 2009] Coulibaly Expressed Increased Interest in Islam and Boumedienne Followed Suit,” Counter Extremism Project, accessed April 11, 2024, https://www.counterextremism.com/extremists/hayat-boumedienne.

9.Anthony Faiola and Souad Mekhennet, “From Hip Hop to Jihad: How the Islamic State Became a Magnet for Converts,” Washington Post, May 6, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/from-hip-hop-to-jihad-how-the-islamic-state-became-a-magnet-for-converts/2015/05/06/b1358758-d23f-11e4-8b1e-274d670aa9c9_story.html.

10.US Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, November 1, 2022, https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/american-woman-who-led-isis-battalion-sentenced-20-years.

11.The Return: Life after ISIS, CBC, Passionate Eye series, May 2021, https://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/the-passionate-eye/these-western-women-left-their-home-countries-to-join-isis-why-did-they-do-it-1.6207886.

12.Salvator Rizzo, “Kansas Mom Pleads Guilty to Terrorism,” Washington Post, June 7, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/07/kansas-mom-pleads-guilty-to-terrorism/.

13.Cristina Carujo and Robert Legare, “Kansas Woman Allison Fluke-Ekren, Who Led All- Female ISIS Battalion, Sentenced to 20 Years in Prison,” CBS News, November 1, 2022, https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/female-isis-battalion-kansas-allison-fluke-ekren/.

14.Carujo and Legare, “Kansas Woman Allison Fluke-Ekren.”

15.Holmes Lybrand, “Kansas Woman who Led Female ISIS Battalion in Syria Pleads Guilty,” CNN, June 7, 2022, https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/07/politics/isis-allison-fluke-ekren-plea/index.html?utm_source=twCNN&utm_content=2022-06-07T22%3A30%3A11&utm_term=link&utm_medium=social.

16.United Nations, “UNICEF Urges Repatriation of All Children in Syria’s Al-Hol Camp Following Deadly Fire,” United Nations, February 28, 2021, https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/02/1085982; UNICEF, “Syrian Arab Republic,” June 2023, 2, https://www.unicef.org/media/143511/file/2023-HAC-Syrian-Arab-Republic-revised-June.pdf.

17.Carujo and Legare, “Kansas Woman Allison Fluke-Ekren.”

18.Federal Bureau of Investigation, “World Trade Center Bombing, 1993,” FBI Archives, https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/world-trade-center-bombing-1993.

19.Carujo and Legare, “Kansas Woman Allison Fluke-Ekren”; Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, “American Woman Who Led ISIS Battalion Sentenced to 20 Years,” press release, November 1, 2022, https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/american-woman-who-led-isis-battalion-sentenced-20-years#:~:text=Fluke%2DEkren%20further%20said%20that,on%20United%20States%20soil%20instead.

20.Pete Williams and Halimah Abdullah, “FBI: San Bernardino Shooters Radicalized before They Met,” NBC News, December 9, 2015, https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/san-bernardino-shooting/fbi-san-bernardino-shooters-radicalized-they-met-n476971.

21.Saeed Ahmed, “Who were Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik?,” CNN, December 4, 2015, https://www.cnn.com/2015/12/03/us/syed-farook-tashfeen-malik-mass-shooting-profile/index.html.

22.US Department of Justice, United States v. Georgianna A. M. Giampietro, “Motion to Revoke Detention Order and Release to Home Confinement,” (2020), https://extremism.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs2191/f/Giampietro%20Govt%20Opposition%20to%20Defendant%20Motion%20to%20Revoke%20Detention%20Order.pdf.

23.US Attorney’s Office, Middle District of Tennessee, “Sparta Woman Pleads Guilty to Concealing Material Support Intended for a Foreign Terrorist Organization,” January 18, 2022, https://www.justice.gov/usao-mdtn/pr/sparta-woman-pleads-guilty-concealing-material-support-intended-foreign-terrorist.

24.Laurie Mylroie, “US Woman Backed ISIS—‘Way for Her to Feel Important,’ ” Kurdistan24, June 8, 2022, https://www.kurdistan24.net/en/story/28630-US-woman-backed-ISIS—%27way-for-her-to-feel-important%27.

25.The Return: Life after ISIS.

26.A. W. Kruglanski, E. Molinario, K. Jasko, D. Webber, N. P. Leander, and A. Pierro, “Significance-Quest Theory,” Perspectives on Psychological Science 17, no. 4 (July 2022): 1050–71.

27.The Return: Life after ISIS.

28.Erin Saltman and Melanie Smith, “Till Martyrdom Do Us Part: Gender and the ISIS Phenomenon,” Institute for Strategic Dialogue, May 2015, 11, https://www.isdglobal.org/isd-publications/till-martyrdom-do-us-part-gender-and-the-isis-phenomenon/.

29.Mia Bloom, “Women and Terrorism,” in Oxford Research Encyclopedia, 2022, https://oxfordre.com/politics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228637-e-124.

30.Mark Hamm, “Terrorist Recruitment in American Correctional Institutions: An Exploratory Study of Non-Traditional Faith Groups Final Report,” December 2007, https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/220957.pdf.

31.Nadia Whitehead, “A Religious Forecast For 2050: Atheism Is Down, Islam Is Rising,” NPR, December 25, 2015, https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/12/25/460797744/a-religious-forecast-for-2050-atheism-is-down-islam-is-rising.

32.Eitan Azani and Liram Koblentz-Stenzler, “Muslim Converts Who Turn to Global Jihad: Radicalization Characteristics and Countermeasures,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 45, no. 2 (2022): 173–99. Converts have been involved in jihadist activity since before al Qaeda was fully formed. The “TERRSTOP” conspiracy to blow up landmarks and tunnels in New York City in the mid-1990s included two converts, Clement Hampton-El, an African American who had been to Afghanistan, and Victor Alvarez, “ ‘a janitor turned gofer for the cell.’ (Though that conspiracy landed the ‘Blind Sheikh,’ Omar Abdel-Rahman, in jail, a connection to al Qaeda was never asserted.) In Osama bin Laden’s empire, converts have always been well represented. Wadih el-Hage, the Saudi’s personal assistant and, later, the architect of the East Africa cells that carried out the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, came from a Lebanese Maronite family. The ‘American Taliban,’ John Walker Lindh, certainly had no problem being accepted in al Qaeda circles.” Daniel Byman, “The Convert’s Zeal: Why Are So Many Jihadists Converts to Islam?,” Brookings Report, December 7, 2007, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-converts-zeal-why-are-so-many-jihadists-converts-to-islam/.

33.Faiola and Mekhennet, “From Hip Hop to Jihad.”

34.Graeme Wood, “Maybe You Have to Be Disagreeable to Convert?,” The Atlantic, June 6, 2021, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/06/why-muslim-converts-jihad/619107/.

35.Sibilla Bandolfi, “The Story of Three Female Converts,” Swissinfo, July 1, 2016, https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/religion-and-gender_why-islam-the-story-of-three-female-converts/42263106; Theresa Corbin, “I’m a Feminist and I Converted to Islam,” CNN, October 14, 2014, https://www.cnn.com/2014/10/14/opinion/muslim-convert-irpt/index.html.

36.Azizah Yahia al-Hibri, “Muslim Women’s Rights in the Global Village: Challenges and Opportunities.” Journal of Law and Religion 15, no. 1/2 (2000): 37–66, passim, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1051514. See also Madeleine Bunting, “Can Islam Liberate Women?,” The Guardian, December 7, 2001, https://www.theguardian.com/education/2001/dec/08/socialsciences.highereducation.

37.Suleyman Sertkaya and Zuleyha Keskin, “A Prophetic Stance against Violence: An Analysis of the Peaceful Attitude of Prophet Muhammad during the Medinan Period,” Religions 11, no. 11 (2020): 587, https://doi.org/10.3390/rel11110587.

38.The verse reads, “Slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them [captive], and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush.” https://quran.com/en/at-tawbah/5.

39.This information comes from documents associated with US v. Georgianna A. M. Giampietro, under order 15JA7521P00000002.

40.Rob Crilly, “Woman Suicide Bomber Kills 40 Queuing for Food Aid in Pakistan,” The Telegraph, December 25, 2010, accessed August 4, 2014, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/8224760/Woman-suicide-bomber-kills-40-queuing-for-food-aid-in-Pakistan.html.

41.Hassan Abbas, “From Fata to the NWFP: The Taliban Spread their Grip in Pakistan,” CTC Sentinel 1, no. 10 (September 2008): 3, https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/files/CTC%20Sentinel_Vol1%20Issue%2010_September%2017_%202008.pdf.

42.Najibullah Lalzoy, “Taliban to Include Suicide Bombers in Their Army,” Khaama, January 4, 2022, https://www.khaama.com/taliban-to-include-suicide-bombers-in-their-army-876876/.

43.Kiyya Baloch and Akbar Notezai, “Pakistan: Woman Suicide Bomber Change in Baloch Rebels’ Strategy?,” Al Jazeera, April 28, 2022, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/4/28/pakistan-woman-suicide-bomber-change-in-baloch-rebels-strategy.

44.Huda al Salih, “Baghdadi Appoints ISIS Female Fighter to Syria Battalion,” Al Arabiya News, https://english.alarabiya.net/News/middle-east/2016/02/28/Baghdadi-appoints-ISIS-female-fighter-to-Syria-battalion.

45.Mia M. Bloom, “She-hadis? Online Radicalization and the Recruitment of Women,” in Violence and Gender in the Globalized World: The Intimate and the Extimate, eds. Sanja Bahun and V. G. Julie Rajan, 2nd ed. (Surrey, England: Ashgate Publishing, 2015), 233.

46.Irene Ndung’u and Uyo Salifu, “The Role of Women in Violent Extremism in Kenya,” Institute for Security Studies, report 12, May 2017, http://genderinkenya.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/The-role-of-women-in-VE-in-Kenya.pdf.

47.Ndung’u and Salifu, “The Role of Women in Violent Extremism in Kenya”; Fathima Azmiya Badurdeen, “Why We Did It: The Kenyan Women and Girls Who Joined Al-Shabaab,” The Conversation, February 21, 2021, https://theconversation.com/why-we-did-it-the-kenyan-women-and-girls-who-joined-al-shabaab-151592.

48.Irene Ndung’u, Romi Sigsworth, and Uyo Yenwong-fai, “Violent Extremism in Kenya: Why Women Are a Priority,” Institute for Security Studies, November 8, 2017, https://issafrica.org/research/monographs/violent-extremism-in-kenya-why-women-are-a-priority.

49.Mia Bloom, Bombshell: Women and Terrorism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 65.

50.Ndung’u, Sigsworth and Yenwong-fai, “Violent Extremism,” iv.

51.Farhad Khosrokhavar, “The Jihadis and the Family,” in Jihadism in Europe: European Youth and the New Caliphate (New York: Oxford Academic, 2021) 1–49, https://academic.oup.com/book/39282/chapter-abstract/338854321?redirectedFrom=fulltext.

52.Kiriloi M. Ingram, “An Analysis of Islamic State’s Gendered Propaganda Targeted towards Women: From Territorial Control to Insurgency,” Terrorism and Political Violence 35 no 2 (2023): 338–54, https://doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2021.1919637.

53.Nelly Lahoud, “What the Jihadis Left Behind,” London Review of Books 42, no. 2 (January 2020), https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n02/nelly-lahoud/what-the-jihadis-left-behind; Nelly Lahoud, The Bin Laden Papers: How the Abbottabad Raid Revealed the Truth about al-Qaeda, Its Leader, and His Family (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022).

54.Nikah can be translated as either marriage or sex, and depending on the context, the term has been used to apply to both coerced gender-based violence perpetrated by ISIS and the increasing phenomenon of women who sought a jihadi spouse and “emigrated” to Raqqa, the former Syrian home base of ISIS.

55.Mia Bloom, “The Predatory Nature of ISIS’s Recruitment of Western Women,” Frontline, “Understanding the Rise of ISIS” panel discussion, 2014, https://soundcloud.com/frontlinepbs/isis-panel-mia-bloom-on-women.

56.Ben Wedeman, “ISIS Makes its Final Stand,” CNN, January 31, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2019/01/31/isis-last-stand-syria-wedeman-pkg-vpx.cnn.

57.Mutlu Civiroglu, “In an Alleged Recent ISIS Video a Woman Is Fighting against SDF in #Baghouz,” Twitter, March 22, 2019, https://twitter.com/mutludc/status/1108952105367158784. See also Charlie Winter and Devorah Margolin, “The Mujahidat Dilemma: Female Combatants and the Islamic State,” CTC Sentinel 10, no. 7 (August 2017): 23–29, https://ctc.usma.edu/the-mujahidat-dilemma-femalecombatants-and-the-islamic-state/.

1. Women in ISIS Compared to Women in Al Qaeda

1.Maura Conway, “ ‘At Risk’ or ‘A Risk’: The Portrayal of ‘Jihadi’ Brides in the UK Press,” paper presented at University College Cork, Ireland, March 2015.

2.For these figures, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brides_of_the_Islamic_State#Statistics. News organizations double that number; see Richard Engel, Ben Plesser, Tracy Connor, and Jon Schuppe, “The Americans: 15 Who Left the Unites States to Join ISIS,” NBC News, May 15, 2016, https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-uncovered/americans-15-who-left-united-states-join-isis-n573611.

3.Nabeela Jaffer, “The Secret World of ISIS Brides,” The Guardian, June 24, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/24/isis-brides-secret-world-jihad-western-women-syria.

4.Kiriloi M. Ingram, “An Analysis of Islamic State’s Gendered Propaganda Targeted towards Women: From Territorial Control to Insurgency,” Terrorism and Political Violence 35, no. 2 (2021): 347; Kiriloi M. Ingram, “The Militarisation of Motherhood: Repatriating ISIS’s Western Women,” Lowy Institute, November 22, 2022, https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/militarisation-motherhood-repatriating-isis-s-western-women. See also Lila Hassan, “Repatriating ISIS Foreign Fighters Is Key to Stemming Radicalization, Experts Say, but Many Countries Don’t Want Their Citizens Back,” Frontline, April 6, 2021, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/repatriating-isis-foreign-fighters-key-to-stemming-radicalization-experts-say-but-many-countries-dont-want-citizens-back/.

5.Jaffer, “The Secret World of ISIS Brides.”

6.Anna Erelle, In the Skin of a Jihadist: A Young Journalist Enters the ISIS Recruitment Network (New York: Harper, 2015), 30.

7.The Return: Life after ISIS, CBC, Passionate Eye series, May 2021, https://www.cbc.ca/passionateeye/episodes/the-return-life-after-isis.

8.Jaffer, “The Secret World of ISIS Brides.”

9.Seamus Hughes, Bennett Clifford, and Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, “When Terrorists Plotted a Texas Jailbreak and Other Stories We Almost Missed,” Daily Beast, November 15, 2020, https://www.thedailybeast.com/when-isis-plotted-a-texas-jailbreak-and-other-terrorism-stories-we-almost-missed.

10.Maya Foa, director of reprieve in the UK, interview with the author, London, December 2021; “Shamima Begum: How Can You Lose Your Citizenship?,” BBC, January 11, 2023, https://www.bbc.com/news/explainers-53428191.

11.Medha Bhagwat, “Who Is Shamima Begum? A Former Brit and Jihadi Bride Faces Execution Threat in Syria,” International Business Times, June 12, 2022, https://www.ibtimes.sg/who-shamima-begum-former-brit-jihadi-bride-faces-execution-threat-syria-65169?utm_source=social&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=/who-shamima-begum-former-brit-jihadi-bride-faces-execution-threat-syria-65169.

12.Joshua Baker, I’m Not a Monster: The Shamima Begum Story, 2023, BBC, podcast, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08yblkf/episodes/downloads.

13.The Return: Life after ISIS.

14.Ellie Hall, “Gone Girl: An Interview with an American in ISIS,” BuzzFeed, April 17, 2015, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ellievhall/gone-girl-an-interview-with-an-american-in-isis#.yy1nra88L.

15.Hall, “Gone Girl.”

16.Ellyn Santiago, “Hoda Muthana: Five Facts You Need to Know,” Heavy.com, June 2, 2023, https://heavy.com/news/2019/02/hoda-muthana/.

17.Henrik Pryser Libell, “ISIS Wife’s Return to Norway Divides Government,” New York Times, January 24, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/20/world/europe/isis-norway.html.

18.“Woman on Trial in Norway Provides Glimpse of Life under IS,” France 24, March 3, 2021, https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210303-woman-on-trial-in-norway-provides-glimpse-of-life-under-is.

19.D. M. Fergusson and L. J. Horwood, “Prospective Childhood Predictors of Deviant Peer Affiliations in Adolescence,” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines 40, no. 4 (1999): 581–92.

20.“Woman on Trial in Norway.”

21.Rick Noack, “Norway’s Prime Minister Loses Majority after Authorities Repatriate Islamic State Suspect and Her Children from Syria,” Washington Post, January 20, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/01/20/norways-prime-minister-loses-majority-after-authorities-repatriate-islamic-state-suspect-her-children-syria/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us.

22.Kiriloi M. Ingram, “An Analysis of Islamic State’s Gendered Propaganda”; Kiriloi M. Ingram, “Militarisation of Motherhood.”

23.Gina Vale, “Women in Islamic State: From Caliphate to Camps.” Report, International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, The Hague, October 2019, https://www.icct.nl/sites/default/files/import/publication/Women-in-Islamic-State-From-Caliphate-to-Camps.pdf.

24.Anand Gopal, “The Open-Air Prison for ISIS Supporters—and Victims,” New Yorker, March 24, 2024, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/03/18/the-open-air-prison-for-isis-supporters-and-victims.

25.Navtej Dhillon, The Middle Eastern Marriage Crisis, Brookings Institution Report, July 11, 2008, https://www.brookings.edu/on-the-record/the-middle-eastern-marriage-crisis/.

26.Erelle, In the Skin of a Jihadist, 118.

27.Mia Bloom, Small Arms: Children and Terror (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019).

28.Sidney Jones, interview with the author, January 2009.

29.Eli Berman, Radical, Religious, and Violent (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009).

30.Mona Alami, “Martyrs Wanted: ISIS’ Devastating Defector Problem,” National Interest, February 26, 2015, http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/martyrs-wanted-isis-devastating-defector-problem-12330?page=2.

31.Conversation between Hani al-Siba’i and an ISIS fighter on Telegram, https://justpaste.it/obw9.

32.Kristen Kao and Mara Redlich Revkin, “Retribution or Reconciliation? Post-Conflict Attitudes toward Enemy Collaborators,” American Journal of Political Science, February 12, 2021, 7, https://ssrn.com/abstract=3448068, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ajps.12673.

33.Mia Bloom and Charlie Winter, “Jihad al Nikah: Sexual Violence and the Islamic State,” (paper prepared for the International Studies Association Meeting, Atlanta, March 16, 2016). See also Haroro J. Ingram, Craig Whiteside, and Charlie Winter, “Women in the Islamic State,” in The ISIS Reader: Milestones Texts of the Islamic State Movement (London: Oxford University Press, 2020), chap. 9.

34. وَاعْلَمُوا أَنَّمَا غَنِمْتُم مِّن شَيْءٍ فَأَنَّ لِلَّهِ خُمُسَهُ وَلِلرَّسُولِ وَلِذِي الْقُرْبَى وَالْيَتَامَى وَالْمَسَاكِينِ وَابْنِ السَّبِيلِ إِن كُنتُمْ ”آمَنتُم بِاللَّهِ وَمَا أَنزَلْنَا عَلَى عَبْدِنَا يَوْمَ الْفُرْقَانِ يَوْمَ الْتَقَى الْجَمْعَانِ وَاللَّهُ عَلَى كُلِّ شَيْءٍ قَدِيرٌ سورة الأنفال آية:٤١ : “Anything you obtain of war booty—then indeed, for Allah is one fifth of it and for the Messenger and for [his] near relatives and the orphans, the needy, and the [stranded] traveler.” The use of concubines is related to several factors: First if an Islamic state exists. Second, if the Islamic state makes offers for other territories to join Islam or enter into treaties. Third, if those territories refuse offers of peace or declare war. Fourth, if, during time of war, both sides capture prisoners that are exchanged mutually, then there are no concubines. Fifth, if the prisoners have no possibility of being exchanged and are kept by the conquered army, then the following things happen: They are either killed or put in prison, where they are humiliated to death or the females are used as concubines. “When the army of the Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him) defeated the army of the kuffar, they would claim the spoils and valuables of the enemy as well as rape their women. An individual who was raping a non-Muslim woman taken captive in the war asked the Prophet (PBUH) if it was necessary for him to withdraw prior to ejaculating. The Prophet (PBUH) did not stop that individual from this act, but instead told him not to be concerned for a potential pregnancy. The Prophet (PBUH) proceeded to say that should the woman become pregnant [as a result of his failure to withdraw prior to ejaculating], then the birth of the child would have been in order with the will and desire of Allah.” Most ancient societies had some form of concubinage in which masters had female slaves. According to the Bible, Solomon had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines (1 Kings 11:3). Concubinage (as-sirr) in Islam was a marriage (nikah) between a free man and his female slave. Ibn Mandhur states in his classical text: وَالسِّرُّ : النكَِّاحُ ؛ لِنََّھ یكُْتمَُ … وَالسُّرِّیَّة : الْمُتخََّذةَ لِلْمَلِكِ وَالْجِمَاع —“Concubinage, from the root sirr meaning secret, is marriage because it is kept hidden… . The concubine is the servant girl adopted by the master with whom she is intimate” (Lisan Al-Arab 7:167).

35.Isabel Kershner, “Palestinians Honor a Figure Reviled in Israel as a Terrorist,” New York Times, March 12, 2010, https://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/12/world/middleeast/12westbank.html.

36.Kershner, “Palestinians Honor.”

37.Ben Ellery, “Palestinian Woman Who Hijacked Two Planes to Give Talk in the UK,” The Times of London, March 4, 2024, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/palestinian-plane-hijack-leila-khaled-talk-psc-hamas-gaza-77lcb8r8s.

38.Mia Bloom, Dying to Kill: The Allure of Suicide Terrorism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005).

39.David Cook, “The ‘Greater Jihad’ and the ‘Lesser Jihad,’ ” in Understanding Jihad (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015,) 32–48.

40.Pew Research Center, “Terrorism and Concerns about Extremism,” in U.S. Muslims Concerned about Their Place in Society, but Continue to Believe in the American Dream July 26, 2017, chap. 5, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2017/07/26/terrorism-and-concerns-about-extremism/; Shmuel Bar, “The Religious Sources of Islamic Terrorism,” Policy Review, June–July 2004.

41.Hussein Fadlallah, “Martyr Operations: A Means of Jihad,” Bayynat, accessed June 2009, english.bayynat.org.lb/news/martyr.htm.

42.Tuty Rahainah Mastarom and Nur Azlin Muhamed Yasin, “The Internet: Avenue for Women Jihadi ‘Participation,’ ” accessed March 5, 2011, http://dr.ntu.edu.sg/bitstream/handle/10220/6649/RSIS0882010.pdf?sequence=1, cited in Mia Bloom, “In Defense of Honor: Women and Terrorist Recruitment on the Internet,” Journal of Postcolonial Cultures and Societies 4, no. 1 (2013): 150–95.

43.“Ask a Scholar,” “Muslim Women Participating in Jihad,” accessed June 2009, www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?pagename=IslamOnline-English-Ask_Scholar/FatwaE/FatwaE&cid=1119503544310.

44.Abdullah Azzam, “Ilhaq bil-qawafilah” (Join the Caravan), 1985, translated into English in 2002, https://english.religion.info/2002/02/01/document-join-the-caravan/. Azzam posited two types of jihad against nonbelievers, defining these as offensive and defensive jihad. He described offensive jihad as a situation “where the Kuffar [nonbelievers] are not gathering to fight the Muslims. The fighting becomes Fard Kifaya with the minimum requirement of appointing believers to guard borders, and the sending of an army at least once a year to terrorize the enemies of Allah.” By contrast, Azzam argued of defensive jihad that “this is expelling the Kuffar from our land, and it is Fard ‘Ayn, a compulsory duty upon all. It is the most important of the compulsory duties.” While most violent Islamists agree on this definition, there is less consensus about when defensive jihad should be declared and if this individual duty is incumbent on all, including women.

45.“Women Fighting Jihad,” Islamwebnet, Fatwa date Thul Hijjah 3, 1421 (February 27, 2001), http://www.islamweb.net/emainpage/index.php?page=showfatwa&Option=FatwaId&Id=82641.

46.Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (New York: Knopf, 2006). See also Steve Coll, The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century (New York: Penguin, 2009).

47.Yūsuf al-’Uyairī, “The Role of the Women in Fighting the Enemies,” undated pamphlet quoted in David Cook, “Women Fighting in Jihad?,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 28, no. 5 (2005): 381.

48.Yusuf al-Qaradawi, “Opinion of the Brand about the Participation of Women in Martyrdom Operations,” cited in Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank, “Meet the New Face of Terror,” Washington Post, August 11, 2007, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2007/08/12/meet-the-new-face-of-terror/1ad0899e-6441-496a-bbfc-13d5ca2a31d7/.

49.Hassan Turabi, “Women in the Teachings of Islam” (Arabic), in Turabi: Spokesman of Radical Islam (Hebrew), ed. Amir Weissbrod (Tel Aviv: Dayan Center, Tel Aviv University, 1999), 55–56.

50.Yusuf al Qaradawi, Fiqh al Jihad, “Qaradawi’s Revisions,” posted by Marc Lynch on Foreign Policy, July 9, 2009, https://foreignpolicy.com/2009/07/09/qaradawis-revisions/.

51.Christopher Sims, “Black Widows and Internet Videos: Employing Women in Islamist Insurgencies,” paper presented to the Gender and War Conference, Newcastle, UK, March 12, 2011, http://kcl.academia.edu/ChristopherSims/Talks/45589/Black_Widows_and_internetInteinte_Videos_Employing_Women_in_Islamist_Insurgencies; emphasis added.

52.“Al Qaeda to Muslim Extremist Women: Stay Home, Raise the Kids,” Fox News, May 31, 2008, accessed June 2008, https://www.foxnews.com/story/al-qaeda-to-muslim-extremist-women-stay-home-raise-kids.

53.Mary Anne Weaver, “The Short, Violent Life of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,” The Atlantic, July–August 2006, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/07/the-short-violent-life-of-abu-musab-al-zarqawi/304983/+&cd=8&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us.

54.Abu Musab al Zarqawi, “Religion Shall Not Lack While I Am Alive,” cited in Azadeh Moaveni, Guest House for Young Widows: Among the Women of ISIS (London: Scribe, 2019), 83.

55.Weaver, “The Short, Violent Life.”

56.Anthony Browne and Rory Watson, “The Girl Who Went from Baker’s Assistant to Baghdad Bomber,” The Times, December 2, 2005, www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article744833.ece.

57.“What’s Behind the Islamic State’s Prisoner Swap Demand?,” PBS Newshour, January 28, 2015, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/whats-behind-islamic-states-prisoner-swap-demand. See also “ISIS’ Demand for Release of Sajida al-Rishawi Seen as Propaganda Ploy,” NBC News, January 24, 2015, https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-terror/isis-demand-release-sajida-al-rishawi-seen-propaganda-ploy-n292956.

58.“ISIS’ Demand for Release.”

59.“What’s Behind the Islamic State’s Prisoner Swap Demand?”

60.“ISIS Claims It Executed Haruna Yukawa, One of Two Japanese Hostages,” NBC News, January 24, 2015, https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-terror/isis-claims-it-executed-haruna-yukawa-one-two-japanese-hostages-n291926.

61.Nick Logan, “ISIS Demanded Sajida al-Rishawi’s Release, Now Jordan Has Executed Her,” Global News, February 3, 2015, https://globalnews.ca/news/1810144/isis-demanded-sajida-al-rishawis-release-now-jordan-plans-to-execute-her/.

62.John F. Burns and Miguel Helft, “YouTube Withdraws Clerics Videos,” New York Times, November 4, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/05/world/05britain.html?_r=1.

63.Ed Pilkington, “ ‘Jihad Jane’ Explains Her Strange Journey from Victim to Radical Muslim,” The Guardian, December 8, 2012, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/dec/08/jihad-jane-journey-victim-radical. See also Tracy Connor and Stephanie Siegel, “ ‘Jihad Jane’ Colleen LaRose Became a Terrorist for Love,” NBC News, January 14, 2015, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/jihad-jane-colleen-larose-became-terrorist-love-n284636; Vikram Dodd, “Profile: Roshonara Choudhry,” The Guardian, November 2, 2010, https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/nov/02/profile-roshonara-choudhry-stephen-timms.

64.Farhana Ali, “Female Suicide Bombers in Iraq: Why the Trend Continues,” Counter-Terrorism blog, March 2008, http://counterterrorismblog.org/2008/03/female_suicide_bombers_in_iraq.php; Alex Perry, “Countering al Shabab: How the War on Terrorism Is Being Fought in East Africa,” Time, July 3, 2012, http://world.time.com/2012/07/03/countering-al-shabab-how-the-war-on-terror-is-being-fought-in-east-africa/; Karla J. Cunningham, “Terror’s Invisible Women,” RAND, April 4, 2012 http://www.rand.org/blog/2012/04/terrors-invisible-women.html; Mohammed Amlin Adow, “Bomb Kills Top Somali Sports Officials,” CNN, April 4, 2012, http://articles.cnn.com/2012-04-04/africa/world_africa_somalia-blast_1_omar-jamal-somali-football-federation-somali-government?_s=PM:AFRICA.

65.Brendan I. Koerner, “Why ISIS Is Winning the Social Media War,” Wired, March 2016, https://www.wired.com/2016/03/isis-winning-social-media-war-heres-beat/.

66.“Women Plead with Al Qaeda to Join Jihad,” The Telegraph, June 1, 2008, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/2062430/Women-plead-with-al-Qaeda-to-join-jihad.html. See also “Al Qaeda to Muslim Extremist Women: Stay Home, Raise Kids,” Fox News, May 31, 2008, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,361166,00.html.

67.Umayma al-Zawahiri, “Risalat illah al Akhawat al Muslimat” (Letter to My Muslim Sisters), January 16, 2010, www.jihadica.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/umayma-al-zawahiri-risala-jan-2010.pdf. See also Nelly Lahoud, “Umayma al-Zawahiri on Women’s Role in Jihad,” February 26, 2010, https://www.jihadica.com/umayma-al-zawahiri-on-women’s-role-in-jihad/.

68.Umayma al-Zawahiri, “Letter to My Sisters.”

69.Nelly Lahoud, interview with the author, May 2010.

70.Umayma al-Zawahiri, “Letter to My Sisters.”

71.Human Rights Watch, “Syria: Extremists Restricting Women’s Rights,” January 13, 2014, https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/01/13/syria-extremists-restricting-womens-rights.

72.Sally Neighbour, Mother of Mohammed: An Australian Woman’s Extraordinary Journey into Jihad (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010); Lisa Millar, “Jihadi Sheilas Speak Out,” ABC Australia, February 4, 2008, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2008-02-05/jihad-sheilas-speak-out/1033080.

73.Female converts and reverts who participated in violent extremist operations include Roshonara Choudhry, a British student who stabbed MP Stephen Timms in May 2010 and was found guilty of attempted murder, and Colleen LaRose, better known as “Jihad Jane,” an American woman charged with conspiracy to commit murder as part of a plot to assassinate Lars Vilks, a Swedish cartoonist who had mocked the Prophet Muhammed.

74.US Department of Justice, United States v. Ali Charaf Damache, sentencing memorandum, October 30, 2018, https://extremism.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs2191/f/Damache%20Sentencing%20Memorandum.pdf.

75.John Shiffman, “Special Report: From Abuse to a Chat Room, a Martyr Is Made—Jane’s Jihad,” Reuters, December 7, 2012, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-jihadjane/special-report-from-abuse-to-a-chat-room-a-martyr-is-made-janes-jihad-idUSBRE8B60GP20121207.

76.Jihad Jane, RTÉ, February 17, 2020, https://www.rte.ie/entertainment/movie-reviews/2020/0212/1114787-jihad-jane-and-the-waterford-link-in-new-documentary/.

77.“Lars Vilks Dead,” New York Times, October 4, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/04/world/europe/lars-vilks-dead.html.

78.Ed Pilkington, “ ‘Jihad Jane’ Explains Her Strange Journey from Victim to Radical Muslim.” The Guardian, December 8, 2012, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/dec/08/jihad-jane-journey-victim-radical.

79.John Shiffman, “Special Report: From Abuse to a Chat Room, a Martyr Is Made—Jane’s Jihad,” Reuters, December 7, 2012, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-jihadjane/special-report-from-abuse-to-a-chat-room-a-martyr-is-made-janes-jihad-idUSBRE8B60GP20121207.

80.Tara Brady, “Jihad Jane: ‘This Story Has Nothing to Do with Religion,” The Irish Times, February 16, 2020, https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/film/jihad-jane-this-story-has-nothing-to-do-with-religion-1.4168517.

81.Shiffman, “Special Report.”

82.John Shiffman, “U.S. Woman Known as Jihad Jane Sentenced to 10 Years in Plot,” Reuters, January 6, 2014, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-jihadjane/u-s-woman-known-as-jihad-jane-sentenced-to-10-years-in-plot-idUSBREA050PC20140106.

83.Ali Damache, LaRose’s handler in Ireland, remained jailed there, fighting extradition to the United States on terrorism charges. Jamie Ramirez pled guilty to related terrorism charges, and the fourth co-conspirator, Mohammad Hassan Khalid, also pled guilty. Khalid, who grew up in Pakistan and, after emigrating to the United States, was an honor student in suburban Baltimore, committed his crimes when he was fifteen and sixteen. He is the youngest person ever charged with terrorism inside the United States.

84.Tam Hussein, “How Malika el-Aroud Paved the Way for Francophone Jihadism in Europe,” NewLines Magazine, June 12, 2023, https://newlinesmag.com/essays/how-malika-el-aroud-paved-the-way-for-francophone-jihadism-in-europe/.

85.[Name withheld], interview with the author, January 15, 2010.

86.Marie-Rose Armesto, Son mari a tué Massoud (Paris: DRANCY Publishers, 2002).

87.Mark Eeckhaut, “Bastin’s Muslim Elite,” Groot Bijgaarden De Standaard, November 23, 2004; cited in Mia Bloom Bombshell: Women and Terrorism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 281.

88.Paul Cruickshank, “Love in the Time of Terror,” Marie Claire, May 18, 2009, accessed June 2009, http://www.marieclaire.com/world-reports/news/malika-el-aroud-female-terrorist. On May 12, 2009, Ayachi Bassam was charged with being the leader of a logistical support team for Al Qaeda in Europe. Wiretaps suggested his involvement in a plot concerning the Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. “Suspects Plotted Attack from Behind Bars,” The Telegraph, May 12, 2009, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/5314517/Al-Qaeda-suspects-plotted-attack-on-Britain-from-behind-bars.html accessed June 2009.

89.Hussein, “How Malika el-Aroud Paved the Way for Francophone Jihadism.”

90.Over a thousand of Malika el-Aroud’s messages in French are available at: http://www.minbar-sos.com/forum/search.php?searchid=31511.

91.Peter Grier, “ ‘Jihad Jane’: How Does Al Qaeda Recruit US-Born Women?,” Christian Science Monitor, March 10, 2010, http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0310/Jihad-Jane-How-does-Al-Qaeda-recruit-US-born-women accessed 7 January 2012.

92.Neil J. Kressel, “When Moderate Religion Fails: Some Social and Psychological Roots of Extremist Faith,” paper presented at the Thirtieth Annual Scientific Meeting of the International Society of Political Psychology, Portland, Oregon, July 6, 2007, 4.

93.Hussein, “How Malika el-Aroud Paved the Way for Francophone Jihadism.”

94.The story of Samantha Lewthwaite’s rise to notoriety is much the same. Being the wife of a martyr brought her instant success and approval from the community. Like el-Aroud, she became a beacon for the jihadi movement within al Shabaab, in Somalia. She was even mistakenly credited with the 2013 attack against the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya.

95.Nic Robertson, “Belgian Al Qaeda Cell Linked to 2006 Airline Plot,” CNN, February 10, 2009, http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/02/10/belgium.terror/index.html; “Alerta en la Inteligencia europea ante posibles nuevos atentados de Al Qaeda en Francia y Bruselas,” Globedia, May 16, 2009, http://globedia.com/alerta-inteligencia-europea-posible-atentado-qaeda-francia-brusela.

96.Malika el-Aroud, December 13, 2007, www.minbar-sos.com.

97.Elaine Sciolino and Souad Mekhennet, “Al Qaeda Warrior Uses Internet to Rally Women,” New York Times, May 28, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/28/world/europe/28terror.html.

98.This was Malika el-Aroud’s signature line from her jihadi website, www.minbar-sos.com.

99.Mia Bloom, “In Defense of Honor: Women and Terrorist Recruitment on the Internet,” Journal of Postcolonial Cultures and Societies 4, no. 1 (2013): 238.

100.Cruickshank, “Love in the Time of Terror.”

101.Hussein, “How Malika el-Aroud Paved the Way for Francophone Jihadism.”

102.Sciolino and Mekhennet, “Al Qaeda Warrior Uses Internet to Rally Women.”

103.Robyn Torok, “Facebook Jihad: A Case Study of Recruitment Discourses and Strategies Targeting a Western Female,” Proceedings of the 2nd International Cyber Resilience Conference, August 2, 2011, 87.

104.Claude Moniquet, president of the Brussels-based European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center, cited in Sciolino and Mekhennet.

105.Cited in Cruickshank, “Love in the Time of Terror.”

106.Hussein, “How Malika el-Aroud Paved the Way for Francophone Jihadism.”

107.Mia Bloom, “Women and Terrorism,” in Oxford Research Encyclopedia, 2022, https://oxfordre.com/politics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228637-e-124?mediaType=Article.

108.See www.minbar-sos.com.

109.Interview with Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, May 11, 2007, http://sharmeenobaidfilms.com/archives/86.

110.Joseph Massad, Desiring Arabs (New York: Chicago, 2007), 277, 256.

111.Roger N. Lancaster, “Subject Honor and Object Shame: The Construction of Male Homosexuality and Stigma in Nicaragua,” Ethnology 27, no. 2 (April 1988): 111–25.

112.Brenda Beagan and Shelly Saunders, “Occupations of Masculinity: Producing Gender through What Men Do and Don’t Do,” Journal of Occupational Science 12, no. 3 (2005): 161–69; Richard Butsch, “Crystal Sets and Scarf-Pin Radios: Gender, Technology and the Construction of American Radio Listening in the 1920s,” Media, Culture and Society 20, no. 4 (October 1998): 557–72.

113.V. G. Julie Rajan, personal communication with the author, March 13, 2012.

114.Lawrence Wright, “The Rebellion Within,” The New Yorker, June 2, 2008, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/06/02/080602fa_fact_wright.

115.Yūsuf al-‘Uyairī, The Role of the Women in Fighting the Enemies, pamphlet, Al Tibyan Publications, accessed June 2008, https://scholarship.tricolib.brynmawr.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/bf95dfdf-3d4d-4de3-95c2-9c65a45e3572/content.

116.Nico Prucha, “Pictures of Female Mujahidin in Afpak,” Online Jihad: Monitoring Jihadist Online Communities, November 28, 2009, accessed April 2024, https://onlinejihad.net/2009/11/28/pictures-of-female-mujahidin-in-afpak/.

117.Joshua Goldstein, War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

118.Goldstein, War and Gender, 72–76.

119.Poster dated 1915, author’s personal collection.

120.Robin MacDonald, “White Feather Feminism: The Recalcitrant Progeny of Radical Suffragist and Conservative Pro-War Britain,” Florida Gulf Coast University, accessed June 2009, http://itech.fgcu.edu/&/issues/vol1/issue1/feather.htm; Nicolletta F. Gullace, “White Feathers and Wounded Men: Female Patriotism and the Memory of the Great War,” Journal of British Studies 36 (April 1997): 178–206.

121.Paul Cruickshank and Tim Lister, “French Killings Refocus Fears on ‘Solo’ Acts of Terror,” CNN, March 21, 2012, http://articles.cnn.com/2012-03-21/world/world_europe_france-solo-terror_1_french-nationals-french-intelligence-french-citizen?_s=PM:EUROPE.

122.Middle East Media Research Institute, “Leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq Al-Zarqawi Declares ‘Total War’ on Shi’ites, States That the Sunni Women of Tel’afar Had ‘Their Wombs Filled With the Sperm of the Crusaders,’ ” MEMRI, September 16, 2005, http://www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD98705; Nelly Lahoud, “The Neglected Sex: The Jihadis’ Exclusion of Women from Jihad,” Combating Terrorism Center, West Point, February 19, 2014, https://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/the-neglected-sex-the-jihadis-exclusion-of-women-from-jihad.

123.Hororo Ingram, Craig Whiteside, and Charlie Winter, eds., The ISIS Reader: Milestone Texts of the Islamic State (London: Oxford University Press, 2020), 28–29.

124.Several websites include graphic photos of women being raped (and gang-raped) at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The authenticity of the photos has never been substantiated. “Rape of Iraqi Women by US Forces as Weapon of War: Photos and Data Emerge,” Asian Tribune, October 3, 2009, http://www.asiantribune.com/news/2009/10/03/rape-iraqi-women-us-forces-weapon-war-photos-and-data-emerge.

125.“A Message from East Africa,” Rumiyah 2: 3, cited in Haroro Ingram, “Rumiyah, Issue 2 (English): Rallying the ‘True Believers’ as Hardship Purifies the Ranks,” International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, October 10, 2016, https://www.icct.nl/publication/rumiyah-issue-2-english-rallying-true-believers-hardship-purifies-ranks.

126.John Bohannon, “Women Critical for Online Terrorist Networks,” Science, June 10, 2016, accessed July 22, 2016,

127.Bloom, Small Arms.

128.Nabeela Jaffer, “ The Secret World of ISIS Brides,” The Guardian, June 24, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/24/isis-brides-secret-world-jihad-western-women-syria.

129.Gopal, “Open-Air Prison.”

130.Frances Perraudin, “Shamima Begum Tells of Fate since Joining Isis during Half-Term,” The Guardian, February 14, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/14/shamima-begum-friends-kadiza-sultana-amira-abase-joined-isis-syria.

131.Baker, I’m Not a Monster: The Shamima Begum Story, episode 9, March 8, 2023.

132.Ellie Flynn, “Brit Jihadi Bride Dead,” The Sun, August 11, 2016, https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1595302/brit-jihadi-bride-dead-kadiza-sultana-bethnal-green-schoolgirl-who-fled-to-syria-killed-in-airstrike/.

133.Perraudin, “Shamima Begum Tells of Fate.”

134.Baker, I’m Not a Monster: The Shamima Begum Story, episode 7, February 22, 2023.

135.John Hall, “Blind Faith: Jihadist Who Cannot See is Pictured Fighting alongside ISIS Militants in Syria and Urges Others to Join Him, Saying Having a Disability Is Not an Excuse,” Daily Mail, July 22, 2014, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2701334/Blind-faith-Jihadist-pictured-ISIS-militants-Syria-urges-join-saying-disability-no-excuse-not-fight.html#:~:text=Taymullah%20al%2DSomali%2C%20a%20Dutch,self%2Ddeclared%20caliphate%2C%20Raqqa.

136.Baker, I’m Not a Monster: The Shamima Begum Story, episode 10, March 15, 2023.

137.“Shamima Begum: Stripping Citizenship Put Her at Risk of Hanging, Court Hears,” BBC, October 22, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-50137470.

138.Josh Baker and Joseph Lee, “Shamima Begum Accepts She Joined a Terror Group,” BBC, January 10, 2023, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-64222463.

139.Baker, I’m Not a Monster: The Shamima Begum Story, episode 3, January 26, 2023.

140.Connor Sephton, “Shamima Begum: Britain’s Treatment of IS Bride Criticized as New Photos of Her in Syrian Refugee Camp Emerge,” Sky News, March 15, 2021.

141.“Hoda Muthana: Alabama IS Bride Loses Appeal for Return to US,” BBC, January 12, 2022, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59974939.

142.Michael Barbaro, “The American Women Who Joined ISIS,” New York Times, podcast, February 22, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/22/podcasts/the-daily/isis-american-women.html. See also Joshua Baker, I’m Not a Monster, 2020, BBC Panorama and Frontline, podcast, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/podcast/im-not-a-monster/.

143.Hall, “Gone Girl.”

144.Rukmini Callimachi and Catherine Porter. “2 American Wives of ISIS Militants Want to Return Home,” New York Times, February 19, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/19/us/islamic-state-american-women.html.

145.Hall, “Gone Girl.”

146.Anne Speckhard, “American-Born Hoda Muthana Tells All About Joining ISIS and Escaping the Caliphate,” Homeland Security Today, April 23, 2019, https://www.hstoday.us/subject-matter-areas/counterterrorism/american-born-hoda-muthana-tells-all-about-joining-isis-and-escaping-the-caliphate/.

147.Barbaro, “The American Women Who Joined ISIS.”

148.Martin Chulov and Bethan McKernan, “Hoda Muthana ‘Deeply Regrets’ Joining Isis and Wants to Return Home” The Guardian, February 19, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/17/us-woman-hoda-muthana-deeply-regrets-joining-isis-and-wants-return-home#:~:text=“I%20look%20back%20now%20and,my%20friends%20are%20still%20brainwashed; Francis Enjoli and James Longman, “ISIS Bride Who Left US for Syria Says She Interpreted Everything Very Wrong,” ABC News, February 19, 2019, https://abcnews.go.com/international/isis-bride-left-us-syria-interpreted-wrong/story?id=61175508.

149.Rukmini Callimachi and Catherine Porter, “2 American Wives of ISIS Militants Want to Return Home,” New York Times, February 19, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/19/us/islamic-state-american-women.html; Mike Pompeo, Mornings with Maria Bartiromo, Fox Business News, February 21, 2019.

150.Enjoli and Longman, “ISIS Bride.”

151.Barbaro, “The American Women Who Joined ISIS.”

152.Barbaro, “The American Women Who Joined ISIS.”

153.Martin Chulov and Bethan McKernan, “Hoda Muthana ‘Deeply Regrets’ Joining Isis and Wants to Return Home,” The Guardian, February 17, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/17/us-woman-hoda-muthana-deeply-regrets-joining-isis-and-wants-return-home.

154.Enjoli and Longman, “ISIS Bride.”

155.Adela Suliman, “Alabama Woman Who Became ‘ISIS Bride’ Will Continue Legal Fight to Return to U.S., Lawyers Say,” Washington Post, January 13, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/01/13/hoda-muthana-islamic-state-alabama-supreme-court/.

156.“IS Bride Shamima Begum Full Transcript: ‘It Was Nice at First, Like in the Videos,’ ” Sky News, February 20, 2019, https://news.sky.com/story/is-bride-shamima-begum-full-transcript-i-did-have-a-good-time-there-11640278; and Chulov and McKernan, “Hoda Muthana ‘Deeply Regrets’ Joining Isis.”

157.“IS Bride Full Interview: I Was Okay with Beheadings,” Sky News, February 18, 2019, https://news.sky.com/video/is-bride-a-lot-of-people-should-have-sympathy-for-me-11640208.

158.“Shamima Begum: ‘I didn’t want to be IS poster girl,’ ” BBC News interview with Quentin Sommerville, February 19, 2019, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGAxm6KJTWE.

159.A. L. Syria, “Shamima Begum: I Was Brainwashed. I Knew Nothing,” The Times, April 1, 2019, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/isis-bride-shamima-begum-i-regret-everything-please-let-me-start-my-life-again-in-britain-9g0tn08vn.

160.Baker, I’m Not a Monster: The Shamima Begum Story, episode 10, March 22, 2023.

161.Mattha Busby, “Shamima Begum Would Face Death Penalty in Bangladesh, Says Minister,” May 4, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/may/04/shamima-begum-would-face-death-penalty-in-bangladesh-says-minister.

162.Hannah Yusuf and Steve Swann, “Shamima Begum: Lawyer Says Teen Was ‘Groomed,’ ” BBC, May 31, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-48444604.

163.Yusuf and Swann, “Shamima Begum.”

164.Baker, I’m Not a Monster: The Shamima Begum Story, episode 10.

165.John Suthers, interview with the author, February 18, 2015.

166.Scott Bronstein and Drew Griffin, “Young ISIS Recruit: I Was Blinded by Love,” CNN, December 6, 2016, https://www.cnn.com/2016/12/02/us/mississippi-isis-muhammad-dakhlalla-interview.

167.US Department of Justice, The United States v. Jaelyn Delshaun Young and Mohammed Oda Dakhlalla, criminal complaint, May 21, 2015, https://www.justice.gov/opa/file/705906/download. “SWT” is shorthand for “Subhanahu wa ta’ala,” Arabic for “May He be glorified and exalted,” usually said as an honorific after Allah is mentioned.

168.Women are perceived as being less responsible when they cause harm, and they receive lighter punishments compared to men. United Nations, Security Council, Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate, “CTED Analytical Brief: The Prosecution of ISIL-Associated Women,” August 8, 2020, https://www.un.org/securitycouncil/ctc/sites/www.un.org.securitycouncil.ctc/files/files/documents/2021/Jan/cted_analytical_brief_the_prosecution_of_isil-associated_women.pdf, 4; and Jill K. Doerner and Stephen Demuth, “Gender and Sentencing in the Federal Courts: Are Women Treated More Leniently?” Criminal Justice Policy Review 25, no. 2 (November 25, 2012), https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0887403412466877.

169.Audrey Alexander and Rebecca Turkington, “Treatment of Terrorists: How Does Gender Affect Justice?,” CTC Sentinel 11, no. 8 (September 2018): 24–29, https://ctc.westpoint.edu/treatment-terrorists-gender-affect-justice/; Hughes, Clifford, and Meleagrou-Hitchens, “When Terrorists Plotted a Texas Jailbreak.”

170.In Germany the women were charged with pillaging. “German Woman Jailed for Nine Years for Enslaving Yazidi Woman,” Al Jazeera, June 22, 2023, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/6/22/german-woman-jailed-for-nine-years-for-enslaving-yazidi-woman. See also Genocide Network, “Cumulative Prosecution of Foreign Terrorist Fighters For Core International Crimes and Terrorism-Related Offences,” May 2020, https://www.eurojust.europa.eu/sites/default/files/Partners/Genocide/2020-05_Report-on-cumulative-prosecution-of-FTFs_EN.PDF, 17.

171.Adrian Shtuni, citing interviews with Balkan returnees in “Rehabilitation and Reintegration Path of Kosovar Minors and Women Repatriated from Syria,” International Republican Institute, 2021, https://www.iri.org/resources/new-report-supports-rehabilitation-of-kosovo-youth-and-women-with-connection-to-violent-extremism/#footnote3.

172.Russell Goldman, “Swedish Girl Who Ran Away to Iraq Says She Had Not Heard of ISIS,” New York Times, February 26, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/26/world/middleeast/swedish-girl-who-ran-away-to-iraq-says-she-had-not-heard-of-isis.html.

173.Loulla-Mae Eleftheriou-Smith, “Escaped Isis Wives Describe Life in the All-Female al-Khansa’a Brigade Who Punish Women with 40 Lashes for Wearing Wrong Clothes,” The Independent, April 20, 2015, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/escaped-isis-wives-describe-life-in-the-all-female-alkhansa-brigade-who-punish-women-with-40-lashes-10190317.html; Lucy Kafanov, “How All-Female ISIS Morality Police ‘Khansaa Brigade’ Terrorized Mosul,” NBC News, November 20, 2016, https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-uncovered/how-all-female-isis-morality-police-khansaa-brigade-terrorized-mosul-n685926.

174.Carolyn Hoyle, Alexandra Bradford, and Ross Frenett, Becoming Mulan: Female Western Migrants to ISIS, ISD Global, 2015, https://www.isdglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/ISDJ2969_Becoming_Mulan_01.15_WEB.pdf.

175.Shane Harrison, “Lisa Smith: Ex-Soldier Turned IS Member Gets 15 Month Sentence,” BBC, July 22, 2022, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62264471.

176.Jamie Dettmer, “The ISIS Online Campaign Luring Western Girls to Jihad,” Daily Beast, August 6, 2014, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/06/the-isis-online-campaign-luring-western-girls-to-jihad.html; Nadim Roberts, “The Life of a Jihadi Wife: Why One Canadian Woman Joined ISIS’s Islamic State,” CBC News, July 7, 2014, https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/the-life-of-a-jihadi-wife-why-one-canadian-woman-joined-isis-s-islamic-state-1.2696385; Charlie Winter, “Women of the Islamic State: Beyond the Rumor Mill,” Jihadology, March 31, 2015, https://jihadology.net/?s=aqsa+mahmood.

177.Umm Layth, April 9, 2014, http://fa-tubalilghuraba.tumblr.com, cited by Hoyle, Bradford, and Frenett, Becoming Mulan, 23.

178.ISIS female emigrant (@AlBrittaniyah) posting to social media, cited in Ahmed Mukhtar and Fouad M. Ammor, “Terrorist Threat in the Euro Mediterranean Region,” Joint Policy Study, April 2016, https://www.academia.edu/27410049/Ammor_et_autres_Joint_Policy_Study_3_pdf; Joanna Paraszczuk, “What to Do After Your Husband’s Martyrdom,” Radio Free Europe, January 30, 2015, https://www.rferl.org/a/what-to-do-after-your-husband-martyrdom/26821892.html; and Ellie Hall, “Inside the Chilling Online World of the Women of ISIS,” BuzzFeed, September 12, 2014, https://www.buzzfeed.com/ellievhall/inside-the-online-world-of-the-women-of-isis.

179.ISIS emigrant posting to social media as Umm Anwar (@UmmAnwar_), cited in Hall, “Inside the Chilling Online World.”

180.Gopal, “Open-Air Prison.”

181.Nabeela Jaffer, “The Secret World of ISIS Brides,” The Guardian, June 24, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/24/isis-brides-secret-world-jihad-western-women-syria.

182.Mia Bloom, “No Place to Hide, No Place to Post: Lessons from Recent Efforts at ‘De-Platforming’ ISIS,” Just Security, December 5, 2019, https://www.justsecurity.org/67605/no-place-to-hide-no-place-topost-lessons-from-recent-efforts-at-de-platforming-isis/.

183.Kiriloi M. Ingram, “The Militarisation of Motherhood.”

184.Bloom, Small Arms.

185.Charlie Winter, “Women of the Islamic State: A Manifesto on Women by the Al-Khansa’a Brigade,” in Ingram, Whiteside, Winter, The ISIS Reader, 199.

186.Imogen Calderwood, “Teenage ‘Terror Twins’ Who Fled Britain to Join ISIS Tried to Recruit Their Whole Family Telling Brothers: ‘We Might Seem Evil to You, but We Will All Be Happy in the Afterlife,’ ” Daily Mail, October 4, 2015, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3259363/Teenage-terror-twins-fled-Britain-join-ISIS-tried-recruit-family-telling-brothers-evil-happy-afterlife.html#ixzz4LZBjVzFj.

187.Erin Marie Saltman and Melanie Smith, “ ‘Till Martyrdom Do Us Part’: Gender and the ISIS Phenomenon,” Institute for Strategic Dialogue, May 2015, https://www.isdglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Till_Martyrdom_Do_Us_Part_Gender_and_the_ISIS_Phenomenon.pdf.

188.“Iddah Was My Time to Heal, Mourn and Reflect after My Husband’s Death,” Marie Curie, April 20, 2020, https://www.mariecurie.org.uk/talkabout/articles/iddah-was-my-time-to-heal-mourn-and-reflect-after-my-husbands-death/273522.

189.Azadeh Moaveni, “ISIS Women and Enforcers in Syria Recount Collaboration, Anguish and Escape,” New York Times, November 21, 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/world/middleeast/isis-wives-and-enforcers-in-syria-recount-collaboration-anguish-and-escape.html.

190.Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shām, “City Charter—Mosul” [in Arabic], June 12, 2014, cited in Vale, “Women in Islamic State,” 2.

191.IS, “Reprimand Penalties for Various Offences” [in Arabic], Mosul, 2014; IS, “News: Hadd of Stoning—Wilāyat ArRaqqah—Ramadān 20,” Dabiq (magazine) 2, July 27, 2014, 36, cited in Vale, “Women in Islamic State,” 3.

192.Mia Bloom and Charlie Winter, “How a Woman Joins ISIS,” Daily Beast, January 26, 2017, https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-a-woman-joins-isis.

193.Azadeh Moaveni, “ISIS Wives and Enforcers in Syria,” New York Times, November 22, 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/world/middleeast/isis-wives-and-enforcers-in-syria-recount-collaboration-anguish-and-escape.html.

194.One ISIS fighter received a paid honeymoon in Raqqa. “For an ISIS Fighter, a Paid Honeymoon in Syria’s Raqqa,” Al Arabiya News, May 27, 2015, http://english.alarabiya.net/en/perspective/features/2015/05/27/For-an-ISIS-fighter-a-paid-honeymoon-in-caliphate-s-heart.html; “ISIS Fighters Get Marriage Bonuses, Including Honeymoon,” CBS News, May 26, 2015, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/isis-fighters-get-marriage-bonuses-including-honeymoon/#.

195.Joanna Paraszczuk, “Speed Dating in the Islamic State” Mercatornet, January 7, 2015, https://www.mercatornet.com/speed_dating_in_the_islamic_state.

196.Winter, “Women of the Islamic State.”

197.ISIS chat room, posted December 9, 2019, to TamTam encrypted messaging app referencing Sahih al-Bukhari 2782, book 56, hadith 1, vol. 4, and book 52, hadith 41, https://www.iium.edu.my/deed/hadith/bukhari/043_sbt.html, https://sunnah.com/bukhari/56.

2. Radicalization and Recruitment Online

1.Portions of this chapter were drawn from Mia Bloom, Bombshell: Women and Terrorism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011).

2.Jamie Dettmer, “The ISIS Online Campaign Luring Western Girls to Jihad,” August 6, 2014, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/06/the-isis-online-campaign-luring-western-girls-to-jihad.html.

3.Tuty Raihanah Mastarom and Nur Azlin Muhammad Yasin, “The Internet: Avenue for Women Jihadi ‘Participation,’ ” Nanyang Technical University, Singapore, 2010, accessed March 5, 2012, http://dr.ntu.edu.sg/bitstream/handle/10220/6649/RSIS0882010.pdf?sequence=1.

4.“Al-Qaeda’s Chick-Lit: How to Please Your Holy Warrior,” The Economist, February 3, 2018, https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2018/02/03/al-qaedas-chick-lit-how-to-please-your-holy-warrior.

5.Nimmi Gowrinathan, “The Women of ISIS,” Foreign Affairs, August 21, 2014, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141926/nimmi-gowrinathan/the-women-of-isis#cid=soc-twitter-at-snapshot-the_women_of_isis-000000 accessed August 21, 2014.

6.Marc Sageman, interview with the author, Washington, DC, March 2005.

7.Inspire is believed to be edited by a US citizen turned militant, Samir Khan, who was hiding in Yemen. Before fleeing the United States, Khan turned out a series of jihadi magazines called Jihad Recollections, which, like Inspire, were trumpeted by cyber-jihadis across the Web. In September 2011 Khan was assassinated by a US drone in Al Jawf Governorate. Katie Zavadski, “The Terrorists Drones Couldn’t Silence,” Politico, September 30, 2016, https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/samir-khan-drone-strike-anwar-al-awlaki-214308/.

8.Julius Cavendish, “Al-Qa’ida Glossy Advises Women to Cover Up and Marry a Martyr,” The Independent, March 14, 2011, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/alqaida-glossy-advises-women-to-cover-up-and-marry-a-martyr-2240992.html.

9.Hororo Ingram, Craig Whiteside, and Charlie Winter, eds., The ISIS Reader: Milestone Texts of the Islamic State (London: Oxford University Press, 2020), citing Abu Hamzah Al-Muhajir, “Advice for the Soldiers of the Islamic State,” Dabiq 6 (2015): 11.

10.Jennifer Thea Gordon, “ISIS’ Desire to Erase Sykes-Picot Is Rooted in Fiction, Not History,” The National Interest, September 17, 2014, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/isis’-desire-erase-sykes-picot-rooted-fiction-not-history-11293.

11.Oved Lobel, “The Taliban Are Losing the Fight against Islamic State,” Australian Strategic Policy Institute, December 6, 2021, https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/the-taliban-are-losing-the-fight-against-islamic-state/.

12.David Cook, “Women Fighting in Jihad?,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 28, no. 5 (2005): 375.

13.Scott Shane, “The Web as al-Qaida’s Safety Net,” Baltimore Sun, March 28, 2003.

14.Panel discussion with Erin Saltman, Association for the Study of Criminology, Washington, DC, 2015.

15.Robyn Torok, “Facebook Jihad: A Case Study of Recruitment Discourses and Strategies Targeting a Western Female,” Proceedings of the 2nd International Cyber Resilience Conference, August 2, 2011, http://igneous.scis.ecu.edu.au/proceedings/2011/icr/.

16.I. Bashar, “Facebook: The Online Recruiting Office for Jihad,” accessed May 11, 2011, http://undhimmi.com/2011/02/17/facebook-the-online-recruiting-office-for-jihad/.

17.Dina Temple-Raston, “Jihadi Cool: Terrorists’ Recruiters Latest Weapon,” NPR, March 26, 2010, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125186382.

18.Marc Sageman, “The Next Generation of Terror,” Foreign Policy 165 (2008): 36–42.

19.Simon Cottee, “Jihadism as a Subcultural Response to Social Strain: Extending Marc Sageman’s ‘Bunch of Guys’ Thesis,” Terrorism and Political Violence 23, no. 5 (2011): 730–51.

20.Sageman, “The Next Generation of Terror.”

21.Ayman al-Zawahiri quoted in Akil N. Awan, “Radicalization on the Internet? The Virtual Propagation of Jihadist Media and Its Effects,” RUSI Journal 152, no. 3 (2007): 76.

22.Amira Choueiki and Theodore Karasik, “Conduits to Terror—Classifying the Methods of Middle Eastern Terrorist Recruitment,” Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis report, no. 11 (2010), http://www.inegma.com/reports/Special_Report_11/Conduits%20to%20Terror%20-%20%20Classifying%20the%20Methods%20of%20Jihadist%20and%20Middle%20Eastern%20Terrorist%20Recruitment_low_res.pdf.

23.Anwar al-Awlaki, “44 Ways to Support Jihad,” NEFA Foundation, February 5, 2009, http://www.nefafoundation.org/miscellaneous/FeaturedDocs/nefaawlaki44wayssupportjihad.pdf.

24.Awlaki, “44 Ways.”

25.Gabriel Weimann, “www.terror.net: How Modern Terrorism Uses the Internet,” United States Institute of Peace, Special Report 116, March 2004, https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/sr116.pdf.

26.Choueiki and Karasik, “Conduits to Terror.”

27.Nelly Lahoud, “Empowerment or Subjugation: An Analysis of ISIL’s Gender Messaging,” UN Women, 2018, https://arabstates.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2018/6/empowerment-or-subjugation.

28.Josie Ensor, “ISIL Finds New Online Home,” The Telegraph, December 3, 2019, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/12/03/isil-finds-new-online-home-telegram-messaging-service-purge/.

29.Mia Bloom and Charlie Winter, paper presentation to International Studies Association, March 2016 Atlanta.

30.Marc Sageman, interview with the author, March 2005.

31.Maura Conway, “Terrorist ‘Use’ of the Internet and Fighting Back,” Information & Security 19 (2006): 9–30.

32.Lisa McInerney, personal communication with the author. June 2009. McInerney kindly provided this information based on her research at the time.

33.US Department of Justice, “Colorado Woman Sentenced for Conspiracy to Provide Material Support to a Designated Foreign Terrorist Organization,” January 23, 2015, https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/colorado-woman-sentenced-conspiracy-provide-material-support-designated-foreign-terrorist.

34.Mia Bloom, “Death Becomes Her: Women, Occupation, and Terrorist Mobilization,” PS: Political Science & Politics 43, no. 3 (2010): 445–50. The al Qaeda manual captured in Afghanistan in 2001 refers to the dishonor of Muslim women as a cornerstone of Western imperialist policy, intended to humiliate Muslims worldwide. The manual begins with a poem titled “Pledge, O Sister,” which warns women that the infidel will rip off their clothes, shave their heads, and dishonor them. It pledges further to destroy every “godless dog” who even utters a bad word toward the sisters in Islam. Jerrold Post, ed., Military Studies in the Jihad against the Tyrants: The Al Qaeda Training Manual (Montgomery, AL: USAF Counterproliferation Center, 2004), 15.

35.Al Qimmah, accessed 2010, http://www.alqimmah.net/showthread.php?t=13736 The link is no longer active.

36.Bloom, “Death Becomes Her.”

37.Abu Musab al-Al-Zarqawi, “Collateral Killing of Muslims is Legitimate,” MEMRI dispatch no. 987, accessed April 13, 2024, https://www.memri.org/reports/abu-musab-al-zarqawi-collateral-killing-muslims-legitimate.

38.Shamita Das Dasgupta, “The Spectacle of Violence in Partition Fiction: Women, Voyeurs and Witnesses,” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 47, no. 1 (2011): 30–41.

39.According to the US Army: “On March 12, 2006, five Soldiers from 1st Platoon, Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 502d Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division abandoned their posts and headed to the village of Yusufiyah, located within their operational sector in Iraq. There the five Soldiers committed a brutal gang-rape and murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi, and the simultaneous murder of her family. Those who were murdered included: Abeer[’s] 34-year-old mother, Fakhriyah Taha Muhasen; her 45-year-old father, Qassim Hamza Raheem; and her six-year-old sister, Hadeel Qassim Hamza Al-Janabi. She had two brothers, 11-year-old Mohammed and 9-year-old Ahmed, who were not at home when the rape and murders occurred.” US Army, “ ‘Black Hearts’ Case Study: The Yusufiyah Crimes, Iraq, March 12, 2006,” https://capl.army.mil/case-studies/wcs-single.php?id=78&title=black-hearts-yusufiyah-iraq. See also Jim Fredericks, Black Hearts: One Platoon’s Descent into Madness in Iraq’s Triangle of Death (New York: Crown, 2011), 259–69.

40.Kaishan al Bayati, “Supervision Is Tightened against Women: Officials Fear Female Suicide Bombers in Baghdad,” Al Arab online (in Arabic), June 25, 2008.

41.Alissa J. Rubin, “How Baida Wanted to Die,” New York Times, August 12, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/magazine/16suicide-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.

42.Al-Rafidain News Channel report, July 5, 2006, accessed June 2008 via Foreign Broadcasting Information Services. Al-Baghdadiyah, Baghdad Satellite Channel, and Rafidain reported on Green’s attack extensively. Al-Mahmudiyah, Al-Furat, Al-Sharqiyah, and Al-Diyar carried more factual reports with comments by Iraqi politicians.

43.Luke Harding, “The Other Prisoners,” The Guardian, May 21, 2004.

44.Kathleen Ridolfo, “Iraq: Rape Case Highlights Sectarian Power Struggle” Radio Free Europe, February 21, 2007, https://www.rferl.org/a/1074851.html.

45.“Ten Years of Abu Ghraib” New Yorker, April 28, 2014, https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/ten-years-of-abu-ghraib.

46.“The Height of Humiliation,” Al-Ahram, June 22–28, 2006, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/800/focus.htm; “No one is Safe: The Abuse of Women in Iraq’s Criminal Justice System,” Human Rights Watch, February 6, 2014, https://www.hrw.org/report/2014/02/06/no-one-safe/abuse-women-iraqs-criminal-justice-system.

47.Posting made in 2010 by “Abu Hanifah” to the Islamic Renewal Organization website, www.tajdeed.org.uk/forums, a website of the Saudi dissident group led by Muhammed al-Ma’asari based in the UK. The statement was issued by the media office of the Mujahideen Army in Iraq. The website has been taken down by the government.

48.Aaron Y. Zelin, “Anṣār al-Mujāhidīn Arabic Forum Adds a Section for Women,” Jihadology, October 20, 2010, http://jihadology.net/2010/10/20/an%E1%B9%A3ar-al-mujahidin-arabic-forum-adds-a-section-for-women/.

49.The seventh-century poet known as al-Khansa’a had four sons, Yazid, Mu’awiya, ‘Amr, and ‘Amrah, who converted to Islam and fought at the Battle of Qadisiyah, where they were all killed. When al-Khansa’a received the news, she did not grieve, but exclaimed: “Praise be to Allah who honored me with their martyrdom. I pray for Allah to let me join them in heaven.” “Al Khansa’a, Poetess of Courage and Pride,” Arab News, May 27, 1998, http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/980527/1998052703.html.

50.Sebastian Usher, “ ‘Jihad’ Magazine for Women on Web,” BBC, August 24, 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3594982.stm.

51.Cited in Elisabeth Braw, “Terrorists Use the Internet to Actively Recruit Women,” Huffington Post, April 12, 2009, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/terrorists-use-internet-t_b_174427.

52.Al Shamika magazine, trans. in Julius Cavendish, “Al-Qa’ida Glossy Advises Women to Cover Up and Marry a Martyr,” The Independent, March 14, 2011, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/alqa-ida-glossy-advises-women-to-cover-up-and-marry-a-martyr-2240992.html.

53.Bloom, Bombshell.

54.“Mother of the Female Bombers Speaks Out,” Die Welt, February 5, 2009.

55.Qassim Abdul Zahra and Brian Murphy, “Iraq Arrests Female Suicide Bomber Recruiter,” Huffington Post, February 3, 2009, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/03/iraq-arrests-female-suici_n_163505.html. See also Bloom, Bombshell, 223–25.

56.Islamic Front for Iraqi Resistance, JAMI, August 8, 2008. While the website is no longer active, the content is referenced in this story from Ivan Watson, “More Women Join the Ranks as Suicide Bombers,” NPR, May 12, 2008, https://www.npr.org/2008/05/12/90367974/more-women-join-ranks-of-suicide-bombers-in-iraq.

57.Al Arabiya Television, July 6, 2008, translated by Foreign Broadcast Information Services, which has become classified. Al Arabiya is archived: https://archive.org/details/AlArabiya_629.

58.United Nations, Security Council, Counter-Terrorism Committee, “Gender Dimensions of Returning Foreign Terrorist Fighters: Research Perspectives,” February 2019, https://www.un.org/securitycouncil/ctc/sites/www.un.org.securitycouncil.ctc/files/feb_2019_cted_trends_report_0.pdf.

59.Dee L. R Graham, Edna Rawlings, and Roberta K. Rigsby, Loving to Survive: Sexual Terror, Men’s Violence, and Women’s Lives (New York: NYU Press, 1994).

60.Bloom, Bombshell.

61.“Beheading Desecration Video of Dead U.S. Soldiers Released on Internet by al Qaeda,” Jawa Report, blog, July 10, 2006, https://web.archive.org/web/20141028214611/http:/mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/183865.php.

62.Michael Howard, “Tortured Bodies of US Soldiers Found Dumped Near Baghdad,” The Guardian, June 21, 2006, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/jun/21/usa.iraq1. See also Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 9, House, Three Brothers of the Band of Brothers, U.S. Government Publishing Office, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRECB-2006-pt9/html/CRECB-2006-pt9-Pg11968-2.htm.

63.Niles Lathem, “Kidnapped GIS Slaughtered; Throats are slit by Qaeda’s new fiend,” New York Post, June 21, 2006, https://nypost.com/2006/06/21/kidnapped-gis-slaughtered-throats-are-slit-by-qaedas-new-fiend-2/.

64.Jawa Report, “Beheading Desecration.”

65.Lt. Col. Celestino Perez, “The Embedded Morality in FM 3–24 Counterinsurgency,” Military Review, May–June 2009, 25, http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/MilitaryReview/Archives/English/MilitaryReview_20090630_art007.pdf.

66.Bloom, “Death Becomes Her.”

67.“Increase in Female Bombers Raises Concern,” CBS News, July 19, 2009, http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500257_162-3677485.html.

68.“LeT Raising Group of 21 Female Terrorists against India,” January 3, 2012, http://www.rediff.com/news/report/let-raising-group-of-21-female-terrorists-against-india/20120103.htm; Chandan Das, “Lashkar Terrorists Training Female Group in Kashmir,” Khabar South Asia, January 24, 2012, http://khabarsouthasia.com/en_GB/articles/apwi/articles/features/2012/01/23/feature-01 (site discontinued).

69.Cited in Mia Bloom, “She-hadis: Online Radicalization and the Recruitment of Women,” in Violence and Gender in the Globalized World: The Intimate and the Extimate, eds. Sanja Bahun and V. G. Julie Rajan (Surrey, England: Routledge, 2015), 253.

70.Irene Ndung’u, Romi Sigsworth, and Uyo Yenwong-fai, “Violent Extremism in Kenya: Why Women Are a Priority,” Institute for Security Studies, November 8, 2017, https://issafrica.org/research/monographs/violent-extremism-in-kenya-why-women-are-a-priority.

3. Boko Haram and Weaponizing Misogyny

1.Mia Bloom, “Terror’s Stealth Weapon,” Los Angeles Times, November 29, 2055, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-nov-29-oe-bloom29-story.html.

2.Hajja Hamsatu Allamin, interview with the author, Malé, June 2022.

3.“Nigeria’s Boko Haram Group Explained—in 60 Seconds,” BBC, May 6, 2014, https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-africa-27048076; US House of Representatives, Committee on Homeland Security, 112th Congress, “Boko Haram: Emerging Threat to the U.S. Homeland,” December 2011, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CPRT-112HPRT71725/html/CPRT-112HPRT71725.htm.

4.Adam Nossiter, “Boko Haram Militants Raped Hundreds of Female Captives in Nigeria” New York Times, May 18, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/19/world/africa/boko-haram-militants-raped-hundreds-of-female-captives-in-nigeria.html?smid=tw-share&_r=1.

5.Vesna Markovic, “Suicide Squad: Boko Haram’s Use of the Female Suicide Bomber,” Women & Criminal Justice 29, no. 4–5 (2019): 283–302.

6.Azeez Olaniyan, “Feminization of Terror: Boko Haram and Female Suicide Bombers in Nigeria,” IAFOR: The Academic Platform, June 6, 2017, https://think.iafor.org/feminization-of-terror-boko-haram-and-female-suicide-bombers-in-nigeria/.

7.“They Said If We Press the Button, We Will Go to Heaven,” The Nation (Nigeria), February 24, 2017, https://thenationonlineng.net/inside-minds-borno-bomber-girls/.

8.Chinedu Asadu, “At Least 200 People, Mostly Women and Children, Abducted by Extremists in Northeastern Nigeria,” Washington Post, March 7, 2024. See also Nicola Abé, “The Suicide Bombing Girls of Boko Haram,” Spiegel International, April 29, 2016, http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-boko-haram-tactic-of-using-girls-as-suicide-bombers-a-1089713.html; Adesewa Josh, “Women of War—Boko Haram Wives,” TRT World, 2019, https://www.trtworld.com/perspectives/women-of-war-boko-haram-wives-27522.

9.“Weekly Address: The First Lady Marks Mother’s Day and Speaks Out on the Tragic Kidnapping in Nigeria,” May 10, 2014, White House Archives, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2014/05/10/weekly-address-first-lady-marks-mother-s-day-and-speaks-out-tragic-kidna.

10.“Chibok Diaries: Chronicling a Boko Haram Kidnapping,” BBC, October 23, 2017, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-41570252.

11.Abigail Pesta, “#BringBackOurGirls: Meet Some of the Survivors From the Boko Haram Chibok Kidnapping,” Cosmopolitan, June 9, 2015, https://www.cosmopolitan.com/politics/a41623/bring-back-our-girls-chibok-interview/.

12.Charlotte Alter, “Girls Who Escaped Boko Haram Tell of Horrors in Captivity,” Time, October 27, 2014.

13.“Chibok Diaries.”

14.Pesta, “#BringBackOurGirls.”

15.Pesta, “#Bring Back Our Girls.”

16.Marc Perelman, “The Interview—‘How I Escaped Boko Haram,’ ” France 24, February 25, 2015, https://www.france24.com/en/20150225-interview-escaped-boko-haram-nigeria-chibok.

17.Alter, “Girls Who Escaped Boko Haram”; Pesta, “#Bring Back Our Girls.”

18.Ismail Alfa and Ruth Maclean, “She Was Kidnapped a Decade Ago With 275 Girls. Finally, She Escaped,” New York Times, April 14, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/14/world/africa/nigeria-chibok-girls-kidnapping-boko-haram.html.

19.Josh, “Women of War—Boko Haram Wives.”

20.Azadeh Moaveni, “What Would Make a Woman Go Back to Boko Haram? Despair.” The Guardian, January 13, 2019.

21.Hafsat Muhammed, interview with the author, Arlington, Virginia, August 2017.

22.Fatima Akilu and Hamsatu Allamin, interviews with the author, 2017 and 2018. Akilu is director of the Neem Foundation, an international crisis response organization.

23.Moaveni, “What Would Make a Woman Go Back to Boko Haram?”

24.Akilu and Allamin, interviews.

25.Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, “The Women Rescued from Boko Haram Who Are Returning to Their Captors,” The New Yorker, December 20, 2018, https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/the-women-rescued-from-boko-haram-who-are-returning-to-their-captors.

26.Nwaubani, “The Women Rescued from Boko Haram.”

27.Nwaubani, “The Women Rescued from Boko Haram.”

28.Dionne Searcey “18 Escaped Girls, 18 Interviews,” New York Times, October 25, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/25/insider/boko-haram-suicide-bombers.html.

29.Moaveni, “What Would Make a Woman Go Back.”

30.Maji Peterx, interview with the author, March 2019.

31.Nwaubani, “The Women Rescued from Boko Haram.”

32.Of course we should believe all women, but there are also societal pressures not to bring shame on the family by admitting to the loss of virginity outside of marriage. As in the United States, rape may be an underreported crime internationally because of the honor code.

33.Ted Thornhill, “Almost a Year after Boko Haram Kidnapped 270 Girls, One Who Escaped Reveals How the Failure to Save Them Has Inspired the Islamists to Capture and Rape Hundreds More,” Mail Online, February 13, 2015, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2949023/Boko-Haram-kidnaps-hundreds-tells-stories-Chibok-girls.html.

34.Nwaubani, “The Women Rescued from Boko Haram.”

35.Adam Nossiter, “Boko Haram’s Strategy of Sexual Terror,” New York Times, May 18, 2015.

36.Fatima Akilu, interview with the author, 2018. See also Nwaubani, “The Women Rescued from Boko Haram.”

37.Joshua Hammer, “Escape from Boko Haram,” Smithsonian Magazine 46, no. 5 (2015), https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/escape-from-boko-haram-180956333/.

38.Benjamin Maiangwa, Ufo Okeke Uzodike, Ayo Whetho, and Hakeem Onapajo, “ ‘Baptism by Fire’: Boko Haram and the Reign of Terror in Nigeria,” Africa Today 59, no. 2 (Winter 2012): 41–57, https://doi.org/10.2979/africatoday.59.2.41.

39.In 2013, witnesses at a hospital in Maiduguri described seeing soldiers bring corpses to the hospital on nearly a daily basis, both from Boko Haram attacks and from military barracks in the nearby town of Giwa. The largest numbers were in May and June, when the military ambulance would sometimes make up to seven trips a day from the Giwa barracks to the morgue, witnesses said. The corpses that arrived at the morgue were visibly emaciated, some with hands tied behind their back or with scars around the wrists, suggesting they had been handcuffed for extended periods of time. Some witnesses noticed “necks hanging at strange angles” or gunshot wounds that suggested the cause of death. Human Rights Watch, “Boko Haram Abducts Women, Recruits Children— Hundreds ‘Disappeared’ by Security Forces,” press release, November 29, 2013, https://www.hrw.org/news/2013/11/29/nigeria-boko-haram-abducts-women-recruits-children.

40.Human Rights Watch, “A Long Way Home: Life for the Women Rescued from Boko Haram,” July 29, 2015, https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/07/29/long-way-home-life-women-rescued-boko-haram.

41.Human Rights Watch, “Victims of Abductions Tell Their Stories—Horrific Abuses by Boko Haram, Lack of Government Protection,” October 27, 2014, https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/10/27/nigeria-victims-abductions-tell-their-stories.

42.Olukorede Yishau, “Tales of horror from Boko Haram Child-Victims,” The Nation (Nigeria), September 8, 2014, https://thenationonlineng.net/tales-of-horror-from-boko-haram-child-victims/.

43.Brian J. Phillips, Theodora-Ismene Gizelis, and Sara M. T. Polo, “Gendered Restraint: Why Do Some Militant Groups Rarely Kill Women?” paper presented at International Studies Association meeting (virtual), April 7, 2021.

44.Jason Warner, Ellen Chapin, and Hilary Matfess, “Suicide Squads: The Logic of Linked Suicide Bombings,” Security Studies 28, no. 1 (September 6, 2018): 25–57, https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2018.1508632, footnote 51.

45.Priya Joshi, “Boko Haram in Nigeria: Women Describe Being ‘Sex Machines’ for Islamist Captors,” International Business Times, May 7, 2015, https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/boko-haram-nigeria-women-describe-being-sex-machines-by-islamist-captors-1500247, emphasis added.

46.Nossiter, “Boko Haram’s Strategy of Sexual Terror.”

47.Emenike Ezedania, Boko Haram, Chibok Girls, and All Matters Nigeria Security (self-pub., 2015), 242.

48.Nossiter, “Boko Haram’s Strategy of Sexual Terror.”

49.Mia Bloom and Hilary Matfess, “Women as Symbols and Swords in Boko Haram’s Terror,” Prism: Inclusive Security 6, no. 1 (January 2016): 112, https://www.inclusivesecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Women-as-Symbols-and-Swords.pdf.

50.Former Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki stated that over 60 percent of women who implemented suicide attacks in Diyala were coerced. Mia Bloom, “In Defense of Honor: Women and Terrorist Recruitment on the Internet,” Journal of Postcolonial Cultures and Societies 4, no. 1 (2013): 150–95. See also Mark Woods, “Boko Haram Could Be Using Kidnapped Chibok Schoolgirls as Suicide Bombers,” Christian Today, May 26, 2015, www.christiantoday.com/article/boko.haram.could.be.using.kidnapped.chibok.schoolgirls.as.suicide.bombers/54681.htm.

51.Phyllis Chesler, “Worldwide Trends in Honor Killings,” Middle East Quarterly (Spring 2010): 3–11, http://www.meforum.org/2646/worldwide-trends-in-honor-killings#_ftnref6.

52.Mia Bloom, Bombshell: Women and Terrorism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 11.

53.“Girls Who’ve Become Boko Haram’s Best Killers,” The Sun (Nigeria), May 29, 2015, reprinted in https://pointblanknews.com/pbn/exclusive/the-nigerian-girls-whove-become-boko-harams-best-killers/.

54.Jim Muir, “Nigeria’s Boko Haram Pledges Allegiance to Islamic State,” BBC, March 7, 2015, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-31784538.

55.Minda Smiley, “Boko Haram Survivors Share Their Stories in This Chilling International Day of the Girl Campaign,” Adweek, October 11, 2018, https://www.adweek.com/creativity/boko-haram-survivors-share-their-stories-in-this-chilling-international-day-of-the-girl-campaign/.

56.Abé, “The Suicide Bombing Girls of Boko Haram.”

57.Josh, “Women of War.”

58.UNICEF, “Northeast Nigeria: Alarming Spike in Suicide Attacks Involving Women and Girls,” May 26, 2015, http://www.unicef.org/media/media_82047.html.

59.Jason Warner and Hilary Matfess, “Exploding Stereotypes: The Unexpected Operational and Demographic Characteristics of Boko Haram’s Suicide Bombers,” Combatting Terrorism Center, West Point, August 9, 2017, https://ctc.usma.edu/posts/report-exploding-stereotypes-the-unexpected-operational-and-demographic-characteristics-of-boko-harams-suicide-bombers.

60.Frederick Nzwilli, “As Nigeria Prepares to Install New President, Female Suicide Bombings Spike,” Religion News Service, May 27, 2015, http://www.religionnews.com/2015/05/27/nigeria-prepares-install-new-president-female-suicide-bombings-spike/.

61.“The Women Who Love and Loved Boko Haram,” Al Jazeera Africa, September 22, 2016, https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/08/women-love-loved-boko-haram-160823120617834.html.

62.Alfa and Maclean, “She Was Kidnapped a Decade Ago.”

63.Radhika Sanghani, “Inside Boko Haram—Where Women Persuade Men to Rape Kidnapped Young Girls,” The Telegraph, October 27, 2014, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11190098/Boko-Haram-Nigerian-women-persuade-men-to-rape-kidnapped-young-girls.html.

64.Harriet Sherwood, “Boko Haram Abductees Tell of Forced Marriage, Rape, Torture and Abuse,” The Guardian, October 27, 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/27/boko-haram-forced-marriage-rape-torture-abuse-hrw-report.

65.“Boko Haram ‘to Sell’ Nigeria Girls Abducted from Chibok,” BBC News, May 5, 2014, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-27283383.

66.Karyn Polewaczyk, “Most of the Girls Rescued From Boko Haram Are Now Pregnant,” Jezebel, May 6, 2015, https://jezebel.com/most-of-the-girls-rescued-from-boko-haram-are-now-pregn-1702495623.

67.Edith M. Lederer, “Sexual Violence Becomes Favorite Tool of Torture for Extremist Groups Like ISIS and Boko Haram: Report,” Huffington Post, 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/14/sexual-violence-report-boko-haram-isis_n_7059652.html.

68.Mia Bloom, “Death Becomes Her: Women, Occupation, and Terrorist Mobilization,” PS: Political Science & Politics 43, no. 3 (2010): 445–50.

69.Ariel I. Ahram, “Sexual Violence, Competitive State Building, and Islamic State in Iraq and Syria,” Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 13, no. 2 (2019): 180–96, https://doi:10.1080/17502977.2018.1541577.

70.CNN Carol Costello, interview with Nimmi Gowrinathan, CNN, February 18, 2015. See also Colby Itkowitz, “CNN: Islamic State Uses Nutella and Kittens to Entice Female Recruits,” Washington Post, February 18, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/in-the-loop/wp/2015/02/18/cnn-islamic-state-uses-nutella-and-kittens-to-entice-female-recruits/.

71.Charlie Winter, “Women of the Islamic State: A Manifesto on Women by the al-Khansa’a Brigade,” translated by the Quilliam Foundation, http://www.quilliamfoundation.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/publications/free/women-of-the-islamic-state3.pdf.

72.Hamsatu Allamin, interview with the author, Malé, June 2022.

73.“They Said If We Press the Button.”

74.Alastair Leithead, “Boko Haram Abductions: Freed ‘Bride’ Tells of Stigma Ordeal,” BBC, April 14, 2016, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-36041860.

75.Sanghani, “Inside Boko Haram.”

76.“Nigeria: Starving Women Raped by Soldiers and Militia Who Claim to Be Rescuing Them,” Impact News Service, May 24, 2018, https://allafrica.com/stories/201410280972.html.

77.“They Said If We Press the Button.”

78.Nwaubani, “The Women Rescued from Boko Haram.”

79.Abé, “The Suicide Bombing Girls of Boko Haram.”

80.Abé, “The Suicide Bombing Girls of Boko Haram.”

81.“The Women Who Love and Loved Boko Haram.”

82.“The Women Who Love and Loved Boko Haram.”

83.Nwaubani, “The Women Rescued from Boko Haram.”

84.Lesley Stahl, “The Chibok Girls: Survivors of Kidnapping by Boko Haram Share Their Stories,” 60 Minutes, 2019, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-chibok-girls-survivors-of-kidnapping-by-boko-haram-share-their-stories-60-minutes/.

85.Hammer, “Escape from Boko Haram.”

86.Pesta, “#BringBackOurGirls.”

87.Hamsatu Allamin, interview with the author, May 25, 2021.

88.Paul Carsten, Reade Levinson, David Lewis, and Libby George, “The Abortion Assault,” Reuters, December 7, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/nigeria-military-abortions/.

89.Carsten et al., “Abortion Assault.”

90.Carsten et al., “Abortion Assault.”

91.Carsten et al., “Abortion Assault.”

92.Irene Ndung’u, Romi Sigsworth, and Uyo Yenwong-fai, “Violent Extremism in Kenya: Why Women Are a Priority,” Institute for Security Studies, November 8, 2017, https://issafrica.org/research/monographs/violent-extremism-in-kenya-why-women-are-a-priority.

93.Gemma Ware and Wale Fatade, “Nigeria: Why Do Children Keep Getting Kidnapped?,” The Conversation, podcast, April 22, 2021, https://theconversation.com/nigeria-why-do-children-keep-getting-kidnapped-podcast-159099?utm_campaign=Counter-Terrorism%20News%20Round-Up&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Revue%20newsletter.

94.Amnesty International, “Nigeria: ICC Must Not Dash the Hope of Survivors of Atrocities by the Military,” March 28, 2024, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/03/nigeria-icc-must-not-dash-the-hope-of-survivors-of-atrocities-by-the-military/#:~:text=In%20December%202020%2C%20the%20ICC,and%20the%20Nigerian%20Security%20Forces.

4. Women Bought, Sold, and Abused by Jihadis

1.Nicola Pardy, “Yazidi Women Still Far ISIS Months after Their Defeat,” The World, Public Radio International, May 21, 2019, https://theworld.org/stories/2019/05/20/yazidi-women-still-fear-isis-months-after-their-defeat.

2.Hawkar Ibrahim, Verena Ertl, Claudia Catani, Azed Ali Ismail, and Frank Neuner, “Trauma and Perceived Social Rejection among Yazidi Women and Girls Who Survived Enslavement and Genocide,” BMC Medicine 16, no. 1 (2018): 154, https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-018-1140-5.

3.Sean Thomas, “The Devil Worshippers of Iraq,” The Telegraph, August 19, 2007, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1560714/The-Devil-worshippers-of-Iraq.html; Liam Duffy, “Western Foreign Fighters and the Yazidi Genocide,” Counter Extremism Project, 13, March 2020, https://www.counterextremism.com/sites/default/files/2021-03/Western%20Foreign%20Fighters%20and%20the%20Yazidi%20Genocide%20Report%2016%20March%202021.pdf.

4.Naomi Kikoler, “Our Generation Is Gone,” US Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2, https://www.ushmm.org/m/pdfs/Iraq-Bearing-Witness-Report-111215.pdf.

5.Duffy, “Western Foreign Fighters.”

6.Rikar Hussein and Nisan Ahmado, “In New Decree, Yazidi Accept Kids Born of IS Rape,” Voice of America, April 25, 2019, https://www.voanews.com/a/in-new-decree-yazidi-to-accept-children-born-of-is-rape/4892284.html.

7.Kikoler, “Our Generation Is Gone.”

8.“How Does the Human Soul Survive Atrocity?,” New York Times Magazine, October 31, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/31/magazine/iraq-mental-health.html.

9.Mia Bloom, Small Arms: Children and Terror (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019).

10.United Nations, “Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery,” April 30, 1957, https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/supplementaryconventionabolitionofslavery.aspx.

11.Mia Bloom, “Six Things You Need to Know about Women and ISIS,” Washington Post, June 4, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2015/06/04/six-things-you-need-to-know-about-women-and-isis/.

12.Yuka Tachibana, Ben Adams, and Kelly Cobiella, “Yazidi Women Tell of Rape and Enslavement at Hands of ISIS,” NBC News, November 29, 2015, https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-uncovered/yazidi-women-tell-rape-enslavement-hands-isis-n462091.

13.US Department of State, “What Is Modern Slavery?,” https://www.state.gov/what-is-modern-slavery/#child.

14.“It is a manifestation of human trafficking that involves the unlawful recruitment or use of children—through force, fraud, or coercion—by armed forces as combatants or other forms of labor. Perpetrators may be government armed forces, paramilitary organizations, or rebel groups. Many children are forcibly abducted to be used as combatants. Others are made to work as porters, cooks, guards, servants, messengers, or spies.” US Department of State, “What Is Modern Slavery?”

15.Mia Bloom, Small Arms.

16.Amnesty International, “Iraq: Legacy of Terror: The Plight of Yazidi Child Survivors of ISIS,” July 30, 2020, 6, https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/MDE1427592020ENGLISH.PDF.

17.US House of Representatives, “Women under Isis Rule: From Brutality to Recruitment,” hearing before the Committee on Foreign Affairs, 114th Congress, July 29, 2015, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-114hhrg95695/html/CHRG-114hhrg95695.htm.

18.Joshua Baker, I’m Not a Monster, November 12, 2020, BBC Panorama and Frontline, podcast, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/podcast/im-not-a-monster/.

19.Jessica Roy, “Two Sisters and the Terrorist Who Came between Them,” pt. 1, “Samantha Elhassani: The American Woman Forced to Join ISIS,” Elle, August 2019, https://www.elle.com/culture/career-politics/a28485965/samantha-elhassani-isis-sisters-part-one/.

20.Nick Paton Walsh, “Beaten, Tortured, Sexually Abused: An American ISIS Widow Looks for a Way Home,” CNN, April 20, 2018, https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/19/middleeast/syria-us-isis-bride-intl/index.html.

21.Shane Bauer, “Betrayal. Torture. Escape: An American Woman inside the Islamic State,” Mother Jones, June 26, 2019, https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/06/betrayal-torture-escape-an-american-woman-inside-the-islamic-state/.

22.Baker, I’m Not a Monster.

23.Nick Paton Walsh, “ISIS Bride,” CNN, April 20, 2018, https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/19/middleeast/syria-us-isis-bride-intl/index.html.

24.Riddhima Kenetkar, “Indiana Woman Samantha Sally Claims Husband Duped Her into Joining ISIS,” International Business Times, April 20, 2018, https://www.ibtimes.com/indiana-woman-samantha-sally-claims-husband-duped-her-joining-isis-2673759.

25.Charlotte England, “Yazidi Girl Set Herself on Fire to Avoid Further Rape at Hands of ISIS,” The Independent, August 25, 2016, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-soldiers-rape-yazidi-girl-sets-herself-on-fire-burns-alive-iraq-refugee-camp-a7208656.html.

26.Kikoler, “Our Generation Is Gone,” 1–2.

27.Duffy, “Western Foreign Fighters,” 6.

28.“UN Team Says Islamic State Committed Genocide against Yazidis,” Voice of America, May 10, 2021, https://www.voanews.com/middle-east/un-team-says-islamic-state-committed-genocide-against-yazidis.

29.Ibrahim et al., “Trauma and Perceived Social Rejection.”

30.Jeffrey Brown, “This Poet Put the Yazidi Women’s Suffering and Strength into Words,” PBS NewsHour, December 27, 2018, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/this-poet-put-the-yazidi-womens-suffering-and-strength-into-words.

31.Damien Cave and James Glanz, “Toll Rises above 500 in Iraq Bombings,” New York Times, August 22, 2007, https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/22/world/africa/22iht-22iraq.7205181.html.

32.Kikoler, “Our Generation Is Gone,” 9.

33.“How Do You Define Genocide?” BBC, April 2, 2022, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-11108059.

34.Amnesty International, “Legacy of Terror,” April 2020, 5, https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/MDE1427592020ENGLISH.PDF.

35.United Nations, “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” December 1948, https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.1_Convention%20on%20the%20Prevention%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Genocide.pdf.

36.Mara Redlich Revkin and Elisabeth Jean Wood, “The Islamic State’s Pattern of Sexual Violence: Ideology and Institutions, Policies and Practices,” Journal of Global Security Studies 6, no. 2 (2021): 1–20, esp. 2–4.

37.Kikoler, “Our Generation Is Gone,” 10.

38.Amnesty International, “Legacy of Terror,” 11.

39.Raphael Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation—Analysis of Government—Proposals for Redress, 2nd ed. (Clark, NJ: Lawbook Exchange, 2005), 91.

40.“German Woman Jailed for Nine Years for Enslaving Yazidi Woman,” Al Jazeera, June 22, 2023, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/6/22/german-woman-jailed-for-nine-years-for-enslaving-yazidi-woman.

41.Counter Extremism Project, “U.N. Investigators Declare 2014 ISIS Offensive against Yazidis an Act of Genocide,” May 13, 2021, https://www.counterextremism.com/press/un-investigators-declare-2014-isis-offensive-against-yazidis-act-genocide.

42.“ISIS Using Kidnapped Yazidi Children in Suicide Missions,” Foreign Desk, February 14, 2017, https://foreigndesknews.com/lisas-desk/isis-using-kidnapped-yazidi-children-suicide-missions/.

43.“Islamic State Video Depicts Final Hours of Yazidi Child Suicide Bombers,” Iraqi News, February 15, 2017, http://www.iraqinews.com/iraq-war/video-depicts-last-minutes-life-minor-yazidi-suicide-bombers/.

44.According to Leila Zerrougui, the UN special representative for children and armed conflict, ISIS kidnapped four hundred (Sunni) children from Anbar province and took them to military bases in Iraq and Syria. Zerrougui, interview with the author, March 2016. Also see the statement by the UN Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, November 16, 2015, https://childrenandarmedconflict.un.org/statement/monthly-meeting-humanitarian-situation-syria/.

45.Nadia Murad, The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity and My Fight against the Islamic State (New York: Crown, 2017), 82 and passim.

46.“Yazidi Children ‘Left Alone’ to Deal with ISIL Captivity Trauma,” Al Jazeera, July 30, 2020, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/7/30/yazidi-children-left-alone-to-deal-with-isil-captivity-trauma.

47.Amnesty International, “Legacy of Terror.” See also Matthias von Heine, “Never-Ending Catastrophe for Yazidi Children,” Deutsche Weille, August 3, 2020, https://www.dw.com/en/yazidi-children/a-54417617.

48.Jennifer Percy, “How Does the Human Soul Survive Atrocity?” New York Times Magazine, November 3, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/31/magazine/iraq-mental-health.html.

49.“Yazidi Children ‘Left Alone.’ ”

50.Amnesty International, “Legacy of Terror,” 22.

51.United Nations, Human Rights Council, “They Came to Destroy: ISIS Crimes against the Yazidis,” June 15, 2016, 18, https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/843515?ln=en.

52.“Nigeria Finds More Than 20,000 Kidnapped Girls in Mali,” Al Jazeera, January 23, 2019, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/1/23/nigeria-finds-more-than-20000-kidnapped-girls-in-mali; Joseph Chinyong Liow, “ISIS Reaches Indonesia: The Terrorist Group’s Prospects in Southeast Asia,” Foreign Affairs, February 8, 2016, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/indonesia/2016-02-08/isis-reaches-indonesia.

53.Revkin and Wood, “The Islamic State’s Pattern of Sexual Violence,” 8, emphasis added.

54.For the pamphlet in English, see Middle East Media Research Institute, “Islamic State (ISIS) Releases Pamphlet on Female Slaves,” MEMRI, December 3, 2014, http://www.memrijttm.org/islamic-state-isis-releases-pamphlet-on-female-slaves.html; hereafter MEMRI ISIS pamphlet.

55.John Hall, “Islamic State Magazine Says Group Enslaves Yazidis,” Daily Mail, October 12, 2014, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2790131/Islamic-State-magazine-says-group-enslaved-yazidis.html.

56.MEMRI ISIS pamphlet.

57.Dabiq, no. 9, 1436 Sha’ban [May 21, 2015], 44, available on http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/Dabiq-9-They-Plot-and-Allah-Plots-compressed.pdf. There are different versions of this Surah: “Do not marry polytheistic women until they believe and a believing slave woman is better than a polytheist, even though she might please you. And do not marry polytheistic men [to your women] until they believe. And a believing slave is better than a polytheist, even though she might please you.” Qur’an.com, https://quran.com/2:221?store=false&translations=22,84,20,206,167,85,131,207.

58.Dabiq, no. 9, 1436 Sha’ban (May 21, 2015), 44, http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/Dabiq-9-They-Plot-and-Allah-Plots-compressed.pdf.

59.During the campaign of Banu’l-Mustaliq, the Messenger married a female prisoner from the defeated tribe so as to raise her status, as she was the daughter of one of its leaders, namely the Mother of the Believers Juwayriyah bint al-Haarith, which set an Islamic precedence for the practice.

60.Dabiq, no. 15, July 31, 2016, 45, archived at https://www.icct.nl/publication/dabiq-issue-15-call-islamic-states-enemies-caliphate-crumbles.

61.Sara Malm, “Nine-Year-Old Sex Slave Is Made Pregnant by 10 ISIS Militants Raping Her, Says Aid Worker,” Daily Mail, April 12, 2015, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3035577/Nine-year-old-sex-slave-pregnant-10-ISIS-militants-raping-says-aid-worker.html.

62.Dabiq, no. 9, “From out Sisters,” 45, https://www.joshualandis.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/Dabiq-9-They-Plot-and-Allah-Plots-compressed.pdf.

63.Mugdha Variyar, “Woman Burned Alive for Refusing Extreme Sex Act,” International Business Times, May 25, 2015, http://www.ibtimes.co.in/isis-woman-burned-alive-refusing-extreme-sex-act-girls-offered-sexual-jihad-fighters-633613 May 25, 2015.

64.Gideon M. Kressel et al., “Bride-Price Reconsidered [and Comments],” Current Anthropology 18, no. 3 (1977): 441–58.

65.National Bureau of Economic Research, “Where Are ISIS’s Foreign Fighters Coming From?,” June 6, 2016, https://www.nber.org/digest/jun16/where-are-isiss-foreign-fighters-coming.

66.“No, Buying ‘The Koran for Dummies’ Doesn’t Mean You’ll Get Islam Right,” The World, August 27, 2014, https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-08-27/no-buying-koran-dummies-doesnt-mean-youll-get-islam-right.

67.Tom Ashbrook and Nada Bakos, “Transcript: Sexual Violence under ISIS Control,” On Point, WBUR, September 30, 2014, https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2014/09/30/transcript-sexual-violence-under-isis-control.

68.Louisa Loveluck, “After Five Failed Attempts to Escape ISIS Slavery, She Tried One Last Time,” Washington Post, February 23, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/after-five-failed-attempts-to-escape-isis-slavery-she-tried-one-last-time/2019/02/23/2137450c-3469–11e9–8375-e3dcf6b68558_story.html.

69.Greg Botelho, “ISIS: Enslaving, Having Sex with ‘Unbelieving’ Women, Girls Is OK,” CNN, December 12, 2014, http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/12/world/meast/isis-justification-female-slaves/.

70.Adam McDowall, “Freed Yazidi Woman in Syria Endured Years of Islamic State Slavery,” Reuters, March 8, 2019. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-islamic-state-yazidi-idUSKCN1QP1FL.

71.Ashbrook and Bakos, “Sexual Violence under ISIS Control.”

72.England, “Yazidi Girl Set Herself on Fire.”

73.Don Synder, “ ‘Like Killing a Chicken’: Trauma Expert on Mission to Record ISIS Horror Stories,” Fox News, September 22, 2016, https://www.foxnews.com/world/like-killing-a-chicken-trauma-expert-on-mission-to-record-isis-horror-stories.

74.Murad, The Last Girl, 136

75.Khaleeda Rahman, “ ‘I Don’t Think John Lennon Would Like Us Much’: British ISIS ‘Beatle’ Who Helped Torture and Behead Hostages with Jihadi John DEFENDS Slavery as He Gives Bizarre Interview from Custody,” Daily Mail, April 8, 2018, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5591465/ISIS-thug-Beatles-gives-bizarre-interview-custody.html#ixzz5CAKxUUDl.

76.Jenan Moussa, “I Had First Interview with Notorious ISIS Member from UK, Part of Group Dubbed ‘The Beatles,’ ” @jenanmoussa, April 8, 2018, cited by https://www.counterextremism.com/sites/default/files/2021-03/Western%20Foreign%20Fighters%20and%20the%20Yazidi%20Genocide%20Report%2016%20March%202021.pdf; “Islamic State ‘Beatle’ Backs Slavery, Disagrees with Traffic Tickets,” The Week, April 9, 2018, https://www.theweek.co.uk/92787/islamic-state-beatle-backs-slavery-disagrees-with-traffic-tickets.

77.Amnesty International, “Legacy of Terror,” 14, 18; Bloom, Small Arms. The United Nations’ “Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment” is not limited to severe physical pain and suffering. It also prohibits the intentional infliction of severe mental pain. Being forced to witness acts of torture therefore amounts to an act of torture or ill-treatment itself.

78.Amnesty International, “Legacy of Terror,” 23.

79.Dana Taib Menmy, “ ‘We Do Not Accept Those Children’: Yazidis Forbid ISIL Offspring.” Al Jazeera, March 24, 2021, https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2021/3/24/wrenching-choice-yazidi-mothers-to-choose-children-or-community.

80.Amnesty International, “Legacy of Terror.”

81.Human Rights Watch, “Shattered Lives: Sexual Violence during the Rwandan Genocide and Its Aftermath,” 1996, https://www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/1996/Rwanda.htm.

82.Amnesty International, “Legacy of Terror,” 34.

83.Padmasayee Papinen, “Children of Bad Memories,” The Lancet, September 6, 2003, https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(03)14277-8/fulltext; R. Charli Carpenter, “Surfacing Children: Limitations of Genocidal Rape Discourse,” Human Rights Quarterly 22 (2000): 428–77.

84.Ruth Pollard, “Rape Is a War Crime That Goes Unpunished,” Washington Post, April 18, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/rape-is-a-war-crime-that-goes-unpunished/2022/04/18/483e3792-bf70-11ec-b5df-1fba61a66c75_story.html.

85.Edith M. Lederer, “Sexual Violence Becomes Favorite Tool of Torture for Extremist Groups Like ISIS and Boko Haram: Report,” Huffington Post, April 14, 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/14/sexual-violence-report-boko-haram-isis_n_7059652.html.

86.United Nations, Security Council resolution 1820, http://www.ohchr.org/en/newsevents/pages/rapeweaponwar.aspx, http://www.un.org./fr/ruleoflaw/.

87.“Tunisia’s ‘Sexual Jihad’—Extremist Fatwa or Propaganda?,” BBC, October 27, 2013, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-24448933.

88.Al Arabiya, September 20, 2013, http://english.alarabiya.net/en/variety/2013/09/20/Tunisia-says-sexual-jihadist-girls-returned-home-from-Syria-pregnant.html; also in Arabic, «الشروق» تنشر أبشع قصة جهاد نكاح للتونسية أم أسماء في سوريا: مارست الجنس مع 100 إرهابي والزوج كان يكتفي بالبكاء http://www.alchourouk.com/72662/662/1/-«الشروق»_تنشر_أبشع_قصة_جهاد_نكاح_للتونسية_أم_أسماء_في_سوريا:%C2%A0مارست_الجنس_مع_100_إرهابي_%C2%A0والزوج_كان_يكتفي_بالبكاء__-.html.

89.“Sex Jihad Raging in Syria, Claims Minister,” The Telegraph, September 20, 2013, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10322578/Sex-Jihad-raging-in-Syria-claims-minister.html.

90.“Tunisia’s ‘Sexual Jihad.’ ”

91.Zainab Al-Suwaij, interview with the author, Washington, DC, September 7, 2016.

92.Mohammad Yassin al-Jalassi, “Tunisians Raise Alarm on Fatwa Encouraging ‘Sexual Jihad,’ ” Al Monitor, March 27, 2013, emphasis added; Christopher Reuter, “ ‘Sex Jihad’ and Other Lies: Assad’s Elaborate Disinformation Campaign,” Der Speigel, October 7, 2013, http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/assad-regime-wages-pr-campaign-to-discredit-rebels-a-926479.html, http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/culture/2013/03/tunisia-girls-syria-sexual-jihad.html#ixzz3bQxIHPGw.

93.A Tunisian foreign fighter, Abu Qusay, in an interview with Tunisian TV after his return from Syria, confirmed the existence of jihad al-nikah. For the interview, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onWv66_PrQs. My interviews with women leaders of Tunisian civil society organizations were held in June 2022.

94.In July 2013 a faked Facebook page attributed to the Muslim Brotherhood promoted sexual jihad. The Brotherhood called it a smear campaign. Vasudevan Sridharan, “Egypt: Is ‘Sexual Jihad’ Claim Part of Anti-Morsi Black Propaganda Campaign?,” International Business Times July 13, 2013; “Pro-Mursi [sic] Protesters Are Awaiting Signal for ‘Sexual Jihad’: Report,” Al Arabiya, July 13, 2013.

95.Reuter, “ ‘Sex Jihad’ and Other Lies.”

96.Shiv Malik, English-Speaking Female Jihadis in Libya Issue Islamic State Call to Arms,” The Guardian, September 27, 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/27/english-speaking-female-jihadis-libya-islamic-state.

97.The exaggerations included allegations about orgies with jihadi terrorists. “The 16-year-old presented on state TV comes from a prominent oppositional family in Daraa. When the regime failed to capture her father, she was abducted by security forces on her way home from school in November 2012. During the same TV program, a second woman confessed that she had submitted to group sex with the fanatical Al-Nusra Front. According to her family, though, she was arrested at the University of Damascus while protesting Assad. Both young women are still missing. Their families say that they were forced to make the televised statements—and that the allegation of sex jihad is a lie.” Christoph Reuter, “‘Sex Jihad’ and Other Lies: Assad’s Elaborate Disinformation Campaign,” Middle East Transparent, October 10, 2013, https://middleeasttransparent.com/sex-jihad-and-other-lies-assads-elaborate-disinformation-campaign/.

98.AbdulRahman al-Rashed, “The Reality of Sexual Jihad,” AlSharq al Awsat, March 4, 2015, http://www.aawsat.net/2015/03/article55341996/opinion-the-reality-of-sexual-jihad.

99.United Nations, “Sexual Violence and Armed Conflict: United Nations Response,” April 1998, https://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/public/cover.pdf.

100.Robert Fisk, “Bosnia War Crimes: ‘The Rapes Went on Day and Night,’ ” The Independent, February 8, 1993, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/bosnia-war-crimes-the-rapes-went-on-day-and-night-robert-fisk-in-mostar-gathers-detailed-evidence-of-the-systematic-sexual-assaults-on-muslim-women-by-serbian-white-eagle-gunmen-1471656.html.

101.Mia Bloom, “How Women Are Doubly Victimized by Sexual Violence,” podcast, June 2022, https://www.aacu.org/podcast/2022-06-mia-bloom-georgia-state-university-how-women-are-doubly-victimized-by-sexual-violence.

102.Tanya Domi, “Rwanda, Bosnia, Ukraine and Now Hamas: October 7 and Surging Wartime Sexual Violence Around the World,” Ha’aretz, April 4, 2024, https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-04-04/ty-article-opinion/.premium/bosnia-ukraine-now-hamas-oct-7-and-the-global-rise-in-wartime-sexual-violence/0000018e-a911-defe-a3ef-bb1d61db0000.

103.Cynthia Enloe writes that soldiers have “natural” sexual urges that must be accommodated. She adds that the military’s effectiveness depends on the satisfaction of soldiers’ sexual needs and explains the common occurrence of militarized violence against women. Cynthia Enloe, “Spoils of War,” Ms. Magazine 6, no. 5 (March 1996): 15. Claudia Card writes that “civilian rape, such as fraternity party gang rapes, may be understood as a kind of training for war.” Claudia Card, “Rape as a Weapon of War,” Hypatia 11, no. 4 (1996): 7, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3810388. For additional readings of the rape debate, see Andrea Dworkin, Woman Hating (New York: Dutton, 1974); Andrea Dworkin, Pornography: Men Possessing Women (New York: Dutton, 1981); Susanne Pharr, “Hate Violence against Women,” Transformation 5, no. 1 (1990) 1–3; and Ronald Holmes, Sex Crimes (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1991). About women as rewards Susan Brownmiller writes: “Sexual trespass on the enemy’s women is one of the satisfactions of conquest, like the boot in the face, for once he is handed a rifle and told to kill, the soldier becomes an adrenaline-rushed young man with permission to kick in the door, to grab, to steal, to give vent to his submerged rage against all women who belong to other men.” Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape (New York: Ballantine Books, 1993), 37.

104.Human Rights Watch, “Shattered Lives,” 27.

105.Madeline Morris, “By Force of Arms: Rape, War, and Military Culture,” Duke Law Journal 45, no. 4 (1996): 651–781. Morris, however, points out that this “c’est la guerre” (that’s just war) view of rape conceals more than it reveals.

106.“There are many aspects of war that are distinctly male, from the phallic nature of the weapons to the masculine language used to describe it.” Maria F. Bruno, “Madonna, Whores and the Persian Gulf War,” Feminist Teacher 7, no. 1 (Fall 1992): 20–21.

107.United Nations, “Sexual Violence and Armed Conflict.”

108.Justice Richard Goldstone, interviews with the author, May 2004.

109.Religious conversion may not help save the individual, as the identity of the victims is not chosen by them but rather for them by the perpetrators. Thus, Jews whose families had converted prior to World War II were not saved by their adoption of Christianity.

110.Barbara F. Walter and Jack Snyder (eds.), Civil Wars, Insecurity, and Intervention. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999; Thomas Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960.

111.Mia Bloom, “Failures of Intervention: The Unintended Consequences of Mixed Messages and the Exacerbation of Ethnic Conflict” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1999), https://www.worldcat.org/title/failures-of-intervention-the-unintended-consequences-of-mixed-messages-and-the-exacerbation-of-ethnic-conflict/oclc/43659339.

112.Mia Bloom, “Rape by Russian Soldiers in Ukraine Is the Latest Despicable War Crime,” The Conversation, April 7, 2022, https://theconversation.com/rape-by-russian-soldiers-in-ukraine-is-the-latest-example-of-a-despicable-wartime-crime-that-spans-the-globe-180656.

113.V. P. Gagnon, Ethnic Conflict as Demobilizer: The Case of Serbia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996).

114.Ruth Seifert, War and Rape: A Preliminary Analysis (London: Routledge, 2014), 38–39.

115.For Foucault, sexual intercourse becomes a “dense transfer point” for acting out the power dynamics between men and women. Rape is seen as an expression of men’s power. Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality (New York: Vintage Books, 1980), 130.

116.Ruth Seifert, “The Second Front: The Logic of Sexual Violence in Wars,” in Women’s Studies International Forum 19, nos. 1–2 (January 1996): 36; Elaine Scarry, “Injury and the Structure of War,” Representations 10 (1985): 1–51.

117.Seifert, “The Second Front,” 35–43.

118.Beverly Allen, Rape Warfare: The Hidden Genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 95–100, citing Slavenka Dracúlic, “Women Hide behind a Wall of Silence,” The Nation, March 1, 1993, 271. A Chetnik was a soldier of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia’s government in exile during World War II. Clearly this understanding of genetics is faulty in that the children would continue to be half-Bosnian Muslims. This erroneous understanding is even more ludicrous if one considers that the children would be raised by their mothers in their mothers’ culture. So, in fact, they women would not be raising little Chetniks.

119.Claudia Card calls this “genetic imperialism,” a realignment of loyalties in future generations. In Bosnian Muslim society, where the religious affiliation was patrilineal, it was assumed that ethnic membership would be determined in much the same manner.

120.Card, “Rape as a Weapon of War,” 7.

121.Patricia A. Weitsman, “The Politics of Identity and Sexual Violence: A Review of Bosnia and Rwanda,” Human Rights Quarterly 30 no. 3 (2008): 561–78.

122.R. Charli Carpenter, “ ‘Women and Children First’: Gender, Norms, and Humanitarian Evacuation in the Balkans, 1991–95,” International Organization 57 (2003): 661–94.

123.According to sources, this was the net effect in 1992 in Kosovo. The ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army did not ostracize the women who were raped and demonstrated that rape would not encourage flight. Accordingly, there was significantly less rape in the 1999 Kosovo campaign than was observed in Bosnia and the other Balkan campaigns.

124.Dara K. Cohen, Rape during Civil War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016).

125.Card, “Rape as a Weapon of War,” 11.

126.Seifert, “The Second Front,” 39.

127.Kanan Makiya observes that where “the honor of the family is perceived to be located in the family’s women, the state routinely employs people to violate the code of honor by raping the women.” Kanan Makiya, “State Rape: Violation of Iraqi Women.” New Statesman and Society 6, no. 251 (May 17, 1993): 16–17.

128.“Though force is a necessary component in the legal definition of rape, it is not the term ‘force’ which should enter the sociological definition of rape, but that of power.” Menachem Amir, Patterns in Forcible Rape (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 23. According to Richard Rada: “Rape is a crime of control, power and dominance… . [I]n this sense, the aggressive component appears to be more dominant in rape than the sexual component.” Richard T. Rada, Clinical Aspects of the Rapist, Seminars in Psychiatry (New York: Grune & Stratton, 1978), 24.

129.The name “Anfal” is taken from the eighth Surah of the Qur’an, titled “Anfal: The Spoils of War,” which details the Muslims’ right to booty in wars against nonbelievers. It is possible that the name only encouraged the idea that women should be considered part of the fruits of victory, as the Qur’an addresses this as a right in this Surah.

130.Mia Bloom, “The Iraqi Genocide of the Kurds,” in Contemporary Genocides: Cases, Causes and Consequences, ed. Alberto Jongman (Leiden: PIOOM, 1996), 79–94.

131.There were cases in which women and children were also killed. Targeting women varied from village to village and depended heavily on the level of resistance encountered by the Iraqi soldiers. “Evidence concerning the Anfal Campaign indicates that the [Iraqi] Government killed many women and children, including infants, by firing squads and in chemical attacks.” US Department of State, “Iraq Report on Human Rights Practices for 1996,” January 30, 1997, https://1997-2001.state.gov/global/human_rights/1996_hrp_report/iraq.html. See also Human Rights Watch/Middle East Watch, Iraq’s Crime of Genocide: The Anfal Campaign against the Kurds (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), and an earlier version, George Black, ed., Genocide in Iraq: The Anfal Campaign against the Kurds (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1993).

132.In addition, some girls were kidnapped and sold to wealthy Sunni Arabs in southern Iraq. Some of the girls were later retrieved by Kurdish representatives in southern Iraq and the Gulf countries. The girls were raped repeatedly after their “sale,” although they were loath to admit it. Ja’afar Gholi, interview with the author, July 1995.

133.Jim Muir, “Behind the Grim Kurdish Flight,” Christian Science Monitor, April 18, 1991, 1, cited in Makiya, “State Rape,” 352.

134.US Department of State, “Iraq Report on Human Rights.”

135.Kanan Makiya, “Rape in the Service of the State,” The Nation 256, no. 18 (May 10, 1992): 627–30. In Cruelty and Silence (New York: W. W. Norton, 1994), 287, Makiya cites an index card in the secret police files that lists the name ‘Aziz Salih Ahmed and activity, “Violation of Women’s Honor”: “Mr. ‘Aziz Salih Ahmed is a civil servant paid a salary to rape Iraqi women.” Makiya’s evidence is questioned by Eqbal Ahmad, although the conclusion that rape is used as policy remains unquestioned. Eqbal Ahmad, “The Question of Iraq,” The Nation, August 9, 1993, 179. Ahmad writes: “I am familiar with the 3 x 6-inch index cards Makiya mentions. These are not employment cards as he thinks. They are records apparently of persons under surveillance or in custody of Iraq’s security department… . ‘Aziz Salih Ahmed may have been accused or convicted of rape. He was not a card-carrying rapist… . This is not to say that crimes of rape do not occur in Saddam Hussein’s regime.” Eqbal Ahmad, “Ahmad Replies,” The Nation, November 8, 1993, 546–48. In occupied Kuwait, a rape center was in Shuwaykh. The children born to the rape victims ended up in the Dar-al Tufula orphanage on the outskirts of Kuwait City; see Makiya, Cruelty and Silence. 287. This is corroborated by the US Department of State’s 1997 report. US Department of State, “Iraq Report on Human Rights.” Al-Rashidiya prison, on the Tigris River north of Taji, reportedly had torture chambers.

136.“President Says Saddam Hussein Must Leave Iraq within 48 Hours,” White House Press statement, March 17, 2003, https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030317-7.html.

137.Makiya, Cruelty and Silence, 287, 352.

138.Makiya, Cruelty and Silence, 289–90.

139.US Department of State, “Iraq Report on Human Rights.” Ja’afar Gholi, interview with the author, July 1995. Members of the Jahsh, the Kurdish collaborators, assisted in the capture and killing of Kurds from rival tribes and allegedly raped Kurdish women from rival tribes.

140.This is a generally accepted reaction within conservative patriarchal societies. For further examples, see Rabia Bhuiyan, Aspects of Violence against Women (Dhakka, Bangladesh: Institute of Democratic Rights, 1991).

141.The exact statistics on rape are difficult to assess even during peacetime. Anecdotal evidence suggests that calls to the Croatian and Serbian rape hotlines increased exponentially after the end of the Bosnian war. These hotlines, which predate the Serb–Muslim conflicts, received ten times as many calls from Serb women in 1998 as before the conflict. Charlotte Bunche, interview with the author, February 1998. See also Lepa Miadjenovic and Divna Matijasevic, “Croatia: Three Years After,” in Women in a Violent World: Feminist Analyses and Resistance across Europe, ed. Chris Corrin (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 1996), 119–32.

142.Stephen Van Evera, “Hypotheses on Nationalism and War,” International Security 18, no. 4 (1994): 5–39, esp. 49 and 53, https://doi.org/10.2307/2539176.

143.Free Yezidi Foundation, statement, February 3, 2021, https://www.freeYezidi.org/blog/fyf-statement-kocho-mass-burial/.

144.Human Rights Watch, “Iraq: ISIS Escapees Describe Systematic Rape, Yazidi Survivors in Need of Urgent Care,” April 14, 2015, http://www.hrw.org/news/2015/04/14/iraq-isis-escapees-describe-systematic-rape. UN Secretary-General, “Conflict-Related Sexual Violence,” June 3, 2020, https://www.un.org/sexualviolenceinconflict/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/report/conflict-related-sexual-violence-report-of-the-united-nations-secretary-general/2019-SG-Report.pdf. See also Benjamin Gilbert, “ISIS Is Still Holding Nearly 2000 Yazidi Women as Slaves,” Vice News, August 20, 2016, https://news.vice.com/article/isis-is-still-holding-nearly-2000-Yazidi-women-as-slaves.

145.Ibrahim et al., “Trauma and Perceived Social Rejection.”

146.Yaacov S. G. Hoffman et al., “Complex PTSD and Its Correlates amongst Female Yazidi Victims of Sexual Slavery Living in Post-ISIS Camps,” World Psychiatry: Official Journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) 17, no. 1 (2018): 112–13.

147.Enabling Peace in Iraq Center, “Iraq’s Quiet Mental Health Crisis,” press release, May 5, 2017, https://www.epic-usa.org/iraq-mental-health/; Aws Sadik, “A Snapshot of Iraqi Psychiatry,” British Journal of Psychiatry Int. 19 no. 3 (August 2022): 80, doi: 10.1192/bji.2020.25.

148.Emily Rauhala and Amanda Coletta, “Far from the Crumbling Caliphate but Haunted by ISIS,” Washington Post, April 10, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/world/wp/2019/04/10/feature/the-caliphate-has-crumbled-but-isis-still-haunts-Yazidi-refugees-in-canada/.

149.Rebecca A Clay, “Treating Yazidi Rape Survivors,” Monitor on Psychology 47, no. 8 (2016): 32.

150.Pardy, “Yazidi Women Still Fear ISIS.”

151.Pardy, “Yazidi Women Still Fear ISIS.”

152.Nineteen women remain as hostages at the time of this writing, and the UN report found “reasonable grounds” to believe the sexual violence against them was ongoing. Domi, “Rwanda, Bosnia, Ukraine and Now Hamas.”

153.Jake Tapper, “ ‘Not Just Killed, Cruelly Mutilated’: Witness Describes Assault of Women on Oct. 7,” CNN, November 16, 2023, https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/11/16/the-lead-israel-investigates-sexual-violence-claims-on-october-7-jake-tapper.cnn; Jake Tapper and Kirsten Appleton, “Israel Investigates Sexual Violence Committed by Hamas as Part of October 7 Horror,” CNN, November 19, 2023, https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/17/world/israel-investigates-sexual-violence-hamas/index.html. See also Screams before Silence, directed by Anat Stalinsky, featuring Sheryl Sandberg, released April 25, 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAr9oGSXgak.

154.Tovah Lazaroff, “Kirby: Safe to Assume Hamas Is still Weaponizing Sexual Violence,” Jerusalem Post, December 7, 2023, https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-777071.

155.Myah Ward, “Biden Calls on World to ‘Forcefully Condemn’ Sexual Violence by Hamas,” Politico, December 5, 2023, https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/05/biden-condemn-sexual-violence-hamas-00130221.

156.Jeffrey Gettleman, Anat Schwartz, and Adam Sella, “Screams Without Words,” New York Times, December 28, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/28/world/middleeast/oct-7-attacks-hamas-israel-sexual-violence.html.

157.“The Intercept: New York Times Exposé Lacks Evidence to Claim Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence Oct. 7,” Democracy Now!, March 1, 2024, https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/1/nyt_anat_schwartz.

158.Screams before Silence. See also Tapper and Appleton, “Israel Investigates Sexual Violence.”

159.Mirit Ben Mayor, chief superintendent of the Israeli Police, interviewed by Sandberg, Screams before Silence.

160.Gettleman, Schwartz, and Sella, “Screams Without Words.”

161.ZAKA volunteer, Haim Omatzgin, interviewed by Sandberg, Screams before Silence.

162.Gettleman, Schwartz, and Sella, “Screams Without Words.”

163.Gettleman, Schwartz, and Sella, “Screams Without Words.”

164.Ben Cohen, “ ‘Never Again’: Israeli Government Shows Uncensored Footage of Hamas Pogrom to Journalists, Diplomats in New York,” Algemeiner, November 3, 2023, https://www.algemeiner.com/2023/11/03/never-again-israeli-goverment-shows-uncensored-footage-hamas-pogrom-journalists-diplomats-new-york/.

165.Gettleman, Schwartz, and Sella, “Screams Without Words.” Although not named in the New York Times article, he is identified in Screams before Silence as Rami Davidian, a farmer from Moshav Patish, who discovered thirty rape victims.

166.“Survivors of Hamas Assault on Music Fest Describe Horrors and How They Made It Out Alive,” PBS NewsHour, transcript, October 10, 2023, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/survivors-of-hamas-assault-on-music-fest-describe-horrors-and-how-they-made-it-out-alive.

167.Tapper and Appleton, “Israel Investigates Sexual Violence.”

168.American Jewish Committee, “What Is Known about Israeli Hostages Taken by Hamas,” January 9, 2024, https://www.ajc.org/news/what-is-known-about-israeli-hostages-taken-by-hamas; Aaron Poris, Miriam Bulwar, and David-Hay, “Freed from Hell: Timeline of Hostage Releases during Israel Hamas War,” Jerusalem Post, December 3, 2023, https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-776293.

169.Noa Shpigel, “Freed Hostage Maya Regev: Every Woman Hostage in Gaza Experiences Sexual Abuse,” Ha’aretz, April 2, 2024, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-04-02/ty-article/.premium/freed-hostage-maya-regev-every-woman-hostage-in-gaza-experiences-sexual-abuse/0000018e-9e09-d764-adff-9ecfce650000.

170.Lazaroff, “Kirby: Safe to Assume.”

171.Interview [name withheld] with the author, April 24, 2024.

172.Elad Simchayoff (@Elad_Si) “Freed Israeli Hostages Tell Their Stories,” X (Twitter) video, January 4, 2024, https://x.com/Elad_Si/status/1742980871781552272?s=20.

173.“ ‘We’ll Never Forgive’: Mom, Daughter on Life of Fear in Gaza Captivity, Pain upon Return,” Times of Israel, December 23, 2023, https://www.timesofisrael.com/we-will-never-forgive-freed-hostages-describe-intense-fear-in-gaza-captivity/.

174.“We’ll Never Forgive.”

175.Lesley Stahl, “Freed Israeli Hostage Yarden Roman-Gat Recounts 54 Days of Terror Being Held by Hamas in Gaza” CBS News, December 17, 2023, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/freed-israeli-hostage-yarden-roman-gat-recounts-being-held-hamas-gaza-60-minutes-transcript/.

176.Doron Katz Asher, interview with Bianna Golodryga, CNN, January 4, 2024, https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/04/middleeast/israel-hostage-doron-katz-asher-interview-hamas-gaza-intl/index.html.

177.“Hamas Says It Lost Contact with Group Responsible for Five Israeli Hostages,” Reuters, December 23, 2023, https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hamas-palestinian-authority-split-un-gaza-resolution-2023-12-22/.

178.Leslie Stahl and David Morgan, “Doctor Who Treated Freed Hamas Hostages Describes Physical, Sexual and Psychological Abuse,” CBS News, December 17, 2023, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/doctor-who-treated-freed-hamas-hostages-describes-physical-sexual-and-psychological-abuse/.

179.Itai Pessach, interview with Sandberg, Screams before Silence.

180.Ariella Marsden, “Israel-Hamas War: Did Oct. 7 Change Israeli Left-Wing Views on Peace?,” Jerusalem Post, November 24, 2023, https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/gaza-news/article-774822.

181.“We’ll Never Forgive.”

182.Reuters, “Video Shows Moment of Israeli Hostage’s Capture by Hamas,” April 18, 2024, https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/video-shows-moment-israeli-hostages-capture-by-hamas-2024-04-18/.

183.Michael A. Cohen, “The October 7 Rape Denialists,” The Atlantic, April 17, 2024, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/october-7-hamas-sexual-assault/678091/.

184.Ali Adi (@ AliAdiOK), “A new video leaked from October 7th, Yarden Bibas is seen being hit by masses of Gazan civilians as he was taken as a hostage to Gaza. Yarden is the father of the two ginger kids that were kidnapped with their mother in another famous video,” X (Twitter) post, April 17, 2024, https://x.com/AliAdiOK/status/1780673047831130112.

185.Amit Soussana, interviewed by Sandberg, Screams before Silence.

186.Lisa DeBode, “Global Outrage over Kidnapping of Nigerian Girls,” Al Jazeera, May 6, 2014, http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/5/6/protesters-demandactionatnigerianembassiestohelpkidnappedgirls.html.

187.“Israeli Forensic Teams Describe Signs of Torture, Abuse,” Reuters, October 15, 2023, https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-forensic-teams-describe-signs-torture-abuse-2023-10-15/.

188.Deborah Lipstadt and Michèle Taylor, “Israeli Women and Girls Have Suffered Horrific Sexual Violence from Hamas. Where Is the Outrage?” The Guardian, January 11, 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/11/israeli-women-and-girls-have-suffered-horrific-sexual-violence-from-hamas-where-is-the-outrage?CMP=share_btn_tw.

189.Lipstadt and Taylor, “Israeli Women and Girls.”

190.UN Women, “Statement on the Situation in Israel and Gaza,” December 1, 2023, https://www.unwomen.org/en/news-stories/statement/2023/12/un-women-statement-on-the-situation-in-israel-and-gaza#:~:text=We%20deeply%20regret%20that%20military,on%20Israel%20on%207%20October.

191.Anna Schecter, “Their Bodies Tell the Stories, They’re Not Alive to Speak for Themselves,” NBC News, December 5, 2023, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/hamas-rape-israeli-women-oct-7-rcna128221#.

192.Yaniv Kubovitch, “Israel Publishes Video of Islamic Jihad Terrorist Confessing to October 7 Rape,” Ha’aretz, March 28, 2024, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-03-28/ty-article/.premium/israel-publishes-video-of-islamic-jihad-terrorist-confessing-to-october-7-rape/0000018e-86b4-d641-abee-cfb720f40000.

193.Lauren Izso, Jeremy Diamond, and Eyad Kourdi, “Israeli Woman Who Was Held Hostage by Hamas Speaks Out on Her Abduction and Sexual Assault in Gaza,” CNN, March 27, 2024, https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/26/middleeast/amit-soussana-israeli-hostage-hamas-sexual-assault-intl/index.html.

194.“Oct. 7 Assaults, Including Sexual Violence, Could Be Crimes against Humanity, 2 U.N. Experts Say,” New York Times, January 8, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/08/world/middleeast/hamas-sexual-violence-un-israel.html.

195.“In First, UN Sending Envoy to Investigate Hamas Sexual Crimes on October 7,” Times of Israel, January 9, 2024, https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-first-un-sending-envoy-to-investigate-hamas-sexual-crimes-on-october-7/.

196.Carmit Klar-Chalamish and Noga Berger, “Silent Cry: Sexual Crimes in the October 7 War,” Special Report of the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel, 2024, https://www.gov.il/BlobFolder/news/arcci-report-october-7/ru/Russian_ARCCI%20report%20.pdf.

197.Hamas released a statement from the media office of the Islamic Resistance Movement: Hamas Media Office, “Our Narrative … Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,” https://en.ypagency.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Our-Narrative-Operation-Al-Aqsa-Flood.pdf.

198.Daniel Boguslaw and Ryan Grim, “The New York Times Puts ‘Daily’ Episode on Ice amid Internal Firestorm over Hamas Sexual Violence Article,” The Intercept, January 28, 2024, https://theintercept.com/2024/01/28/new-york-times-daily-podcast-camera/.

199.TOI “Israel Submits Report to UN on Hamas’s Mass Weaponization of Rape,” Times of Israel, February 21, 2024, https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-report-submitted-to-un-on-hamass-mass-scale-weaponization-of-rape/#:~:text=The%20Association%20of%20Rape%20Crisis,evidence%20of%20such%20crimes%20being.

200.United Nations, “Mission Report: Official Visit of the Office of the SRSG–SVC to Israel and the Occupied West Bank, 29 January–14 February 2024,” https://news.un.org/en/sites/news.un.org.en/files/atoms/files/Mission_report_of_SRSG_SVC_to_Israel-oWB_29Jan_14_feb_2024.pdf. See also Office of the Special Representative of the Secre tary General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, “Press Conference SRSG Pramila Patten on Official Visit to Israel and the Occupied West Bank,” March 5, 2024, YouTube video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLsVvCyTk00.

201.Lucy Williamson, “ Israel Gaza: Hamas Raped and Mutilated Women on 7 October, BBC Hears,” BBC, December 5, 2023, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67629181.

202.Ellen Ioanes, “What the UN Report on October 7 Sexual Violence Does—and Doesn’t—Say,” Vox, March 8, 2024, https://www.vox.com/world-politics/24093631/un-israel-october-7-sexual-violence.

203.Jakkar Aimery, “U.S. House Condemns Hamas’ Use of Rape as Weapons of War; Tlaib Votes Present,” Detroit News, February 14, 2024, https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2024/02/14/u-s-house-condemns-hamas-use-of-rape-as-weapons-of-war-tlaib-votes-present/72607152007/.

204.Izso, Diamond, and Kourdi, “Israeli Woman Who Was Held Hostage by Hamas.”

205.Ohad Merlin, “Hamas, Al Jazeera Admit: Story of IDF Rapes in Gaza Hospital Fabricated,” Jerusalem Post, March 25, 2024, https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-793560.

206.Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, “Palestinian Women and the Politics of Invisibility Towards a Feminist Methodology,” Peace Prints: South Asian Journal of Peace Building 3 (2010): 1–21.

207.Revital Madar, “Beyond Male Israeli Soldiers, Palestinian Women, Rape, and War,” Conflict and Society 9, no. 1 (June 2023): 72–88. Tal Nitsan’s research on sexual violence of Palestinian women by Israeli soldiers found there were political motives for not raping and thus no cases. Tal Nitsan, “Controlled Occupation: The Rarity of Military Rape in the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict” (master’s thesis, Hebrew University, 2006), https://www.academia.edu/3731117/Controlled_Occupation_The_Rarity_of_Military_Rape_in_the_Israeli_Palestinian_Conflict_2007_Hebrew_.

208.In addition to war crimes and genocide, there is another category of offenses now recognized in international law (and first applied at the Nuremberg trials): crimes against humanity. These include murder, torture, rape, and enslavement of nationals of a defendant’s own state, as well as those of a hostile power, in times of peace or war. To qualify as a crime against humanity rather than as merely common murder, rape, or assault, the violence must be part of a widespread or systemic pattern. It is this that allows international law to kick in. Legal scholars claim that both war crimes and crimes against humanity enjoy “universal jurisdiction,” which means that, in theory, any country has the right to try any perpetrator, no matter where the crime was committed or by whom.

209.Only crimes of genocide are truly subject to “universal jurisdiction.” For instance, this was how General Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean dictator, came to be arrested in Britain in 1998. While visiting New York City, Radovan Karadzic, who had managed to elude the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, was served in 2008. The law under which Karadzic was sued is known as the Alien Tort Claims Act, originally a part of the Judiciary Act of 1789. In 2016, Karadzic was finally found guilty of committing war crimes, including genocide.

210.As of 2024, 123 countries were states parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

211.Rauhala and Coletta, “Far from the Crumbling Caliphate.”

212.Hussein and Ahmado, “In New Decree.”

213.Menmy, “We Do Not Accept Those Children.”

214.Hussein and Ahmado, “In New Decree.”

215.Amnesty International, “Legacy of Terror,” 17.

216.Jane Arraf, “Yazidi Women Hide among ISIS Wives in Syria Detention Camp,” NPR Morning Edition, June 5, 2019, https://www.npr.org/2019/06/05/729893315/Yazidi-women-hide-among-isis-wives-in-syria-detention-camp.

217.Of all 416 Yazidi adult and youth survivors, 99 percent of participants in a survey had experienced at least one traumatic event, 85.1 percent reported that they had experienced food and water deprivation, 63.7 percent had had direct exposure to armed and combat-related events, and half had been separated from their family members by force. Regarding general life events during the period of genocide, witnessing fire or explosion (43.5 percent), natural disaster (29.3 percent), and transportation accidents (26 percent) were among the most common traumatic life events. Formerly enslaved participants reported experiencing and/or witnessing a significantly higher number of traumatic events than did non-enslaved women and girls (non-enslaved: M = 5.79, SD = 3.02; formerly enslaved: M = 12.15, SD = 4.30. J. I. Kizilhan, T. Berger, L. Sennhauser, and T. Wenzel, “The Psychological Impact of Genocide on the Yazidis,” Frontiers in Psychology 14 (2023), doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1074283.

218.Amnesty International, “Legacy of Terror,” 8.

219.Menmy, “We Do Not Accept Those Children.”

220.Maysoon al Bayati, interview with the author, June 2022.

221.“Update: Nadia Murad Urges Turkish FM to Halt Airstrikes in Shingal,” Rudaw, December 16, 2018, https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/161220182.

222.US Department of Justice, “Wife of Dead ISIL Leader Charged in Death of Kayla Jean Mueller,” press release, February 8, 2016, https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/wife-dead-isil-leader-charged-death-kayla-jean-mueller.

223.Josie Ensor, “Amal Clooney Files Lawsuit against Senior IS Enslaver in Pursuit of Elusive Justice for Yezidis,” The Telegraph, May 1, 2021, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/01/amal-clooney-files-lawsuit-against-senior-enslaver-pursuit-elusive/#:~:text=Amal%20Clooney%20has%20launched%20a,in%20northern%20Iraq%20in%202014.

224.Spencer Ackerman, “US Transfers Umm Sayyaf, Wife of Suspected ISIS Member, to Iraqi Kurds,” The Guardian, August 6, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/07/us-transfers-umm-sayyaf-wife-of-suspected-isis-member-to-iraqi-kurds.

225.Center for Justice and Accountability, “ISIL Atrocities against the Yazidi: U.S. v. Umm Sayyaf,” https://cja.org/what-we-do/litigation/u-s-v-umm-sayyaf/.

226.United States of America v. Nisreen Assad Ibrahim Bahar, aka “Umm Sayyaf,” No. 1:16-mj-63 (E.D. Va. 2021), http://cja.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/30_Govt-Response-to-CVRA-Motion.pdf.

227.Lipstadt and Taylor, “Israeli Women and Girls.”

228.Domi, “Rwanda, Bosnia, Ukraine and Now Hamas.”

229.Domi, “Rwanda, Bosnia, Ukraine and Now Hamas.”

5. The Long and Winding Road

1.Ahmad Jamidyar, “Syrian, Iranian–Led Forces Capture Abu Kamal,” Middle East Institute, November 8, 2017, https://www.mei.edu/publications/syrian-iranian-led-forces-capture-abu-kamal-threaten-confront-us-and-sdf.

2.Human Rights Watch. “Syria: Dire Conditions for ISIS Suspects’ Families,” July 23, 2019, https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/07/23/syria-dire-conditions-isis-suspects-families. Jo Becker and Letta Tayler, “Revictimizing the Victims: Children Unlawfully Detained in Northeast Syria,” Human Rights Watch, January 27, 2023, https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/01/27/revictimizing-victims-children-unlawfully-detained-northeast-syria.

3.Human Rights Watch, “Syria: Dire Conditions”; International Crisis Group, “Women and Children First: Repatriating the Westerners Affiliated with ISIS,” report no. 208, November 18, 2019, https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/eastern-mediterranean/syria/208-women-and-children-first-repatriating-westerners-affiliated-isis.

4.Crisis Group, “Women and Children First,” November 18, 2019, https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/eastern-mediterranean/syria/208-women-and-children-first-repatriating-westerners-affiliated-isis.

5.“Regeringen vil hente børn og mødre hjem fra fangelejre i Syrien,” TV2 (Denmark), May 18, 2021, https://nyheder.tv2.dk/politik/2021-05-18-regeringen-vil-hente-boern-og-moedre-hjem-fra-fangelejre-i-syrien.

6.Liam Duffy, “Western Foreign Fighters and the Yazidi Genocide,” Counter Extremism Project, March 2020, https://www.counterextremism.com/sites/default/files/2021-03/Western%20Foreign%20Fighters%20and%20the%20Yazidi%20Genocide%20Report%2016%20March%202021.pdf.

7.Campbell Macdarmid, “Families of British Women and Children in Syrian Camps Fear for Their Safety,” The Telegraph, April 2, 2021, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/02/families-british-women-children-held-syrian-camps-fear-safety/.

8.Josh Baker, I’m Not a Monster, 2020, BBC Panorama and Frontline, podcast, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/podcast/im-not-a-monster/.

9.US Department of Justice, “Former Indiana Resident Pleads Guilty to Concealing Terrorism Financing,” November 26, 2019, https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-indiana-resident-pleads-guilty-concealing-terrorism-financing.

10.Baker, I’m Not a Monster.

11.Fatos Bytyci, “Kosovo Brings Back Fighters, Families of Jihadists from Syria,” Reuters, April 20, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kosovo-syria/kosovobrings-back-fighters-families-of-jihadists-from-syria-idUSKCN1RW003.

12.Adrian Shtuni, “Rehabilitation and Reintegration Path of Kosovar Minors and Women Repatriated from Syria,” International Republican Institute, 2021, https://www.iri.org/resources/new-report-supports-rehabilitation-of-kosovo-youth-and-women-with-connection-to-violent-extremism/#footnote3.

13.For example, Shamima Begum had her UK citizenship revoked by the home secretary under the British Nationality Act of 1981.

14.Shtuni, “Rehabilitation and Reintegration.”

15.International Crisis Group, “Women and Children First: Repatriating the Westerners Affiliated with ISIS,” November 18, 2019, https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/eastern-mediterranean/syria/208-women-and-children-first-repatriating-westerners-affiliated-isis.

16.Duffy, “Western Foreign Fighters.”

17.Joana Cook and Gina Vale, “From Daesh to ‘Diaspora’: Tracing the Women and Minors of Islamic State,” International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, July 2018, https://icsr.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/ICSR-Report-From-Daesh-to-‘Diaspora’-Tracing-the-Women-and-Minors-of-Islamic-State.pdf.

18.Alice Brignoli was arrested upon her return to Italy in September 2020. In Germany, a woman identified as Lenore M. from Saxony-Anhalt was arrested upon her return with two other women in December 2020; all three were charged with terrorism. And a woman identified as Sabine S. became the first woman convicted in Germany of belonging to a foreign terrorist organization. In Ireland, Lisa Smith was arrested upon her return in December 2019. In Belgium, Fatima Benmezian was arrested upon her return in March 2019, and Tatiana Wielandt and Bouchra Abouallal were arrested in 2015. US Department of State, “Country Reports on Terrorism 2020: Italy,” accessed April 11, 2024, https://www.state.gov/reports/country-reports-on-terrorism-2020/italy/#:~:text=Italy%20continued%20to%20repatriate%20citizens,to%20be%20prosecuted%20in%20Italy; Adam Hoffman and Marta Furlan, “Challenges Posed by Returning Foreign Fighters,” George Washington University Program on Extremism, March 2020, https://extremism.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs5746/files/Challenges%20Posed%20by%20Returning%20Foreign%20Fighters.pdf; Michaël Torfs, “Two IS Women Sent Back to Belgium,” VRT News, November 29, 2019, https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/en/2019/11/29/two-is-women-sent-back-to-belgium/.

19.Joana Cook and Gina Vale, “From Daesh to ‘Diaspora,’ Part II: The Challenges Posed by Women and Minors after the Fall of the Caliphate,” CTC Sentinel 12, no. 6 (July 2019) 30–45.

20.United Nations, Security Council, Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate, “Gender Dimensions of Returning Foreign Terrorist Fighters: Research Perspectives,” February 2019, https://www.un.org/securitycouncil/ctc/sites/www.un.org.securitycouncil.ctc/files/feb_2019_cted_trends_report_0.pdf.

21.“The Women Who Came Home: Kazakhstan Tries to Rehabilitate Islamic State Returnees,” Radio Free Europe, June 23, 2019, https://www.rferl.org/a/the-women-who-came-home-kazakhstan-tries-to-rehabilitate-islamic-state-returnees/30015082.html.

22.Sarah Wolfe and Cholpon Orozobekova, “Kazakhstan Welcomes Back Women of the Islamic State, Warily,” New York Times, August 10, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/10/world/europe/kazakhstan-women-islamic-state-deradicalization.html.

23.Amy Chew, “ ‘ISIS Version Two’: Malaysia, Indonesia Fear Return Home of Fighters Jailed in Syria after Trump’s Troop Withdrawal,” This Week in Asia, October 13, 2019, https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3032671/isis-version-two-malaysia-indonesia-fear-return-home-fighters.

24.Arwa Damon, Kareem Khadder, and Brice Laine, “A Forgotten Camp in Syria Could Be the Birthplace of ISIS’ Revenge Generation,” CNN, September 12, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/12/middleeast/syria-al-hol-camp-isis-intl/index.html.

25.Vera Mironova, “The Challenge of Foreign Fighters: Repatriating and Prosecuting ISIS Detainees,” Middle East Institute, January 2021, https://www.mei.edu/sites/default/files/202101/The%20Challenge%20of%20Foreign%20Fighters.pdf.

26.Thomas Renard and Rik Coolsaet, “From Bad to Worse: The Fate of European Fighters and Their Families Detained in Syria One Year after the Turkish Offensive,” Security Policy Brief no. 130, Edgmont Institute, October 2020, 3.

27.Duffy, “Western Foreign Fighters,” 4.

28.International Crisis Group, “Women and Children First.”

29.Matthew Weaver, “Fishmongers’ Hall Terrorist Usman Khan Was Lawfully Killed, Inquest Jury Finds,” The Guardian, June 10, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jun/10/fishmongers-hall-terrorist-usman-khan-lawfully-killed-inquest-jury-finds.

30.Kristen Kao and Mara Redlich Revkin, “Retribution or Reconciliation? Post-Conflict Attitudes toward Enemy Collaborators,” American Journal of Political Science, February 12, 2021, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajps.12673.

31.Aisling Swaine, Conflict-Related Violence against Women: Transforming Transition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 27–88.

32.See the remarks made by the mother of a murdered five-year-old Yezidi child in Amal Clooney, “Final UN General Assembly Speech—Daesh Accountability,” Doughty Street Chambers, September 26, 2019, https://www.doughtystreet.co.uk/sites/default/les/media/document/2019.09.26%20-%20FiNAL%20UNGA%20Speech%20Daesh%20Accountability%20%28circulated%293.pdf.

33.Duffy, “Western Foreign Fighters,” 22.

34.Duffy, “Western Foreign Fighters,” 2, 3.

35.Dabiq, no. 9 “They Plot and Allah Plots,” May 21, 2015, https://www.joshualandis.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/Dabiq-9-They-Plot-and-Allah-Plots-compressed.pdf.

36.B. Heidi Ellis, Sanaa N. Abdi, and J. P. Winer, “Mental Health Practice with Immigrant and Refugee Youth: A Socioecological Framework,” American Psychological Association, 2000, https://doi.org/10.1037/0000163-000.

37.Shtuni, “Rehabilitation and Reintegration.”

38.Kao and Revkin, “Retribution or Reconciliation?”

39.Stevan Weine, “Rehabilitating the Islamic State’s Women and Children Returnees in Kazakhstan,” Just Security, December 12, 2019, https://www.justsecurity.org/67694/rehabilitating-the-islamic-states-women-and-children-returnees-in-kazakhstan/.

40.Daniel Brown, “ISIS Posts Video of What Appears to Be an American Child Threatening Trump,” Business Insider, August 23, 2017, https://www.businessinsider.com/isis-posts-video-of-us-child-threatening-trump-2017-8.

41.Mia Bloom, Small Arms: Children and Terror (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019).

Conclusions

1.Megan Specia, “Shamima Begum Loses Appeal over British Citizenship,” New York Times, February 23, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/23/world/europe/shamima-begum-uk-citizenship-appeal.html.

2.Human Rights Watch, “Syria: Dire Conditions for ISIS Suspects’ Families,” July 23, 2019, https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/07/23/syria-dire-conditions-isis-suspects-families.

3.World Health Organization, “Al Hol Camp Annual Mortality Report, 2021,” https://www.emro.who.int/images/stories/syria/Al-Hol-Camp-Mortality-Annual-Report-2021_Syria_02.06.22.pdf?ua=1. Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) also reports that the conditions for the fifty-three thousand inhabitants in al-Hol are terrible, “MSF Report Exposes Terrible Conditions for 53,000 People Held in Syria’s Al-Hol Camp,” Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders), November 7, 2022, https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/latest/msf-report-exposes-terrible-conditions-53000-people-held-syrias-al-hol-camp#:~:text=In%202021%2C%20the%20leading%20cause,of%20people%20in%20Al%2DHol.

4.Human Rights Watch, “Syria: Dire Conditions.”

5.United Nations, Security Council Resolution 2396 (December 21, 2017), https://www.un.org/securitycouncil/content/sres23962017.

6.Tanya Mehra, Thomas Renard, and Merlina Herbach, eds. Female Jihadis Facing Justice: Comparing Approaches in Europe (The Hauge, Netherlands: International Centre for Counter-Terrorism Press, 2024), 1.

7.Mehra, Renard, Herbach, Female Jihadis Facing Justice, 17, 55. The editors note that 118 women were tried in Belgium for Islamist-inspired terrorism activities.

8.Nancy Yamout, Rescue Me, interview with the author, January 2023.

9.“Al-Shamikha, Al Qaeda Women’s Magazine, Launches: Report,” Huffington Post, March 14, 2011, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/al-shamikha-al-qaeda-womens-magazine_n_835572.

10.“O Women, Give Charity,” Al-Nabā’ 45, no. 30 (August 2016): 14; and “My Being Is the Shield of the Mujahideen,” Al-Nabā’ 83, no. 1 (June 2017): 15, both cited in Gina Vale, “Women in Islamic State: From Caliphate to Camps,” International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, The Hague, October 2019, 5, https://icct.nl/app/uploads/2019/10/Women-in-Islamic-State-From-Caliphate-to-Camps.pdf.

11.US Department of Defense, “Documenting the Virtual Caliphate, 2015–2020,” https://minerva.defense.gov/Media/Images/igphoto/2001693605/.

12.Leah Windsor, “The Language of Radicalization: Female Internet Recruitment to Participation in ISIS Activities,” Terrorism and Political Violence 32 no. 3 (2020): 506–38.

13.Carolyn Hoyle, Alexandra Bradford, and Ross Frenett, “Becoming Mulan,” ISD Global, 2015, https://www.isdglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/ISDJ2969_Becoming_Mulan_01.15_WEB.pdf.

14.Tam Hussein, “How Malika El-Aroud Paved the Way for Francophone Jihadism in Europe,” New Lines Magazine, June 12, 2023, https://newlinesmag.com/essays/how-malika-el-aroud-paved-the-way-for-francophone-jihadism-in-europe/.

15.Maarten P. Bolhuis and Joris van Wijk, “Citizenship Deprivation as a Counterterrorism Measure in Europe: Possible Follow-Up Scenarios, Human Rights Infringements and the Effect on Counterterrorism,” European Journal of Migration and Law 22, no. 3 (2020): 347–49, 351 passim.

16.“Notre-Dame Plot: Five Women Jailed over Foiled Car Bomb Attack,” BBC, October 15, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50053555#.

17.Carlotta Rigotti and Júlia Zomignani Barboza, “Unfolding the Case of Returnees: How the European Union and Its Member States Are Addressing the Return of Foreign Fighters and Their Families,” International Review of the Red Cross, no. 916–917 (February 2022), https://international-review.icrc.org/articles/unfolding-the-case-of-returnees-eu-and-member-states-return-of-foreign-fighters-916. See also Constant Méheut, “Top European Court Condemns France Over Refusal to Bring Home ISIS Families,” New York Times, September 14, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/14/world/europe/france-isis-families.html; and H. F. and Others v. France, application nos. 24384/19 and 44234/20 (Eur.Ct. H.R. September 14, 2022), https://caselaw.statelessness.eu/caselaw/ecthr-hf-and-others-v-france.

18.Human Rights Watch, “Syria: Dire Conditions.”

19.Constant Méheut, “Shifting Policy: France Brings Home Wives of ISIS Jihadists,” New York Times, July 5, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/05/world/europe/france-isis-wives-children.html.

20.Mehra, Renard, Herbach, Female Jihadis Facing Justice, 2

21.Amira Jadoon and Andrew Mines, “What is ISIS-K?” The Conversation, August 27, 2021, https://theconversation.com/what-is-isis-k-two-terrorism-experts-on-the-group-behind-the-deadly-kabul-airport-attack-and-its-rivalry-with-the-taliban-166873. See also Sara Harmouch and Amira Jadoon, “How Moscow Terror Attack Fits ISIS-K Strategy to Widen Agenda, Take Fight to Its Perceived Enemies,” Clemson News, March 25, 2024, https://news.clemson.edu/how-moscow-terror-attack-fits-isis-k-strategy-to-widen-agenda-take-fight-to-its-perceived-enemies/.

22.Sirwan Kajjo, “Protests Grow against Powerful Jihadist Group in Syria,” Voice of America, March 7, 2024, https://www.voanews.com/a/protests-grow-against-powerful-jihadist-group-in-syria-enclave-/7518396.html.

23.“Quarterly Report to Congress on Operation Inherent Resolve,” April 1–June 30, 220, cited in Anthony Cordesman, “The Real-World Capabilities of ISIS: The Threat Continues,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, September 9, 2020, https://www.csis.org/analysis/real-world-capabilities-isis-threat-continues.

24.Souad Mekhennet and Joby Warrick, “ISIS Brides Returning Home and Raising the Next Generation of Jihadist Martyrs,” National Post, November 27, 2017, https://nationalpost.com/news/world/isis-brides-returning-home-and-raising-the-next-generation-of-jihadist-martyrs.

25.Laura Sjoberg and Caron E. Gentry, Mothers, Monsters Whores: Women’s Violence in Global Politics (London: Zed Books, 2007), 14.

26.Specia, “Shamima Begum Loses Appeal.”

27.Zoe Williams, “Ham-fisted but Humane: The BBC’s Podcast about Shamima Begum Raises Vital Questions,” The Guardian, March 22, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/22/shamima-begum-bbc-podcast-im-not-a-monster.

28.“German woman Jailed for Nine Years for Enslaving Yazidi Woman,” Al Jazeera, June 22, 2023, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/6/22/german-woman-jailed-for-nine-years-for-enslaving-yazidi-woman.

29.“German Woman Jailed.”

30.Nancy Yamout, personal communication with the author, January 2023.

31.Mia Bloom, Small Arms: Children and Terror (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019). See also Eric Stakelbeck, “Kiddie Jihad: Child Bombers Terror’s Newest Weapon,” CBN News, April 23, 2010, http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2010/April/Kiddy-Jihad-Child-Bombers-Terrors-Newest-Weapon/.

32.Mia Bloom and Sophia Moskalenko, Pastels and Pedophiles: Inside the Mind of QAnon (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2021).

33.Article 8 of the 1961 UN Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness prohibits contracting parties from depriving individuals of their nationality if such a decision would render them stateless. Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights bans the arbitrary deprivation of nationality. UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness (1961), https://www.unhcr.org/ibelong/wp-content/uploads/1961-Convention-on-the-reduction-of-Statelessness_ENG.pdf; and UN, Universal Declaration of Human Rights (December 10, 1948), https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights.