Islamic State's female bloggers draw European women to Syria
Posts about dinners, travel routes and Kalashnikovs are designed to encourage women to join up as teachers, nurses and wives.
AMSTERDAM — When Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a caliphate in June, he called on Muslims around the world to be a part of it. The invitation extended to preachers, engineers, judges, doctors and people with military and administrative experience, basically every Muslim who wanted to play a role in the creation of a new Islamic caliphate, including women.
Initially it was widely believed that young women who were lured to Syria by the Islamists had gone there to provide sexual services to members of the Islamic State (IS). It was later revealed, however, that the women who join IS primarily fulfill traditional roles, such as taking care of the household. Mary, the mother of Vanessa, a 19-year-old Dutch woman who joined IS in August, underlined that women generally have noncombatant roles.
“Vanessa told me that she cooks for her husband and his friends, also fighters, and that she spends a lot of time with other Western women. Basically, women are there to raise a family. The more women, the more children, the more fighters,” Mary explained to Al-Monitor. She is devasted by the choice her daughter has made, but tries to remain in contact with her as much as possible.
On Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites, young Muslim women who live in the so-called Islamic State portray their lives as a sort of Disneyland for Muslims. IS' recruitment campaign is mostly conducted online, and female jihadists have proved to be some of the best propagandists. They share pictures of their dinners, write blogs about their husbands and encourage others to join them by posting sentimental status updates about the advantages of living in an Islamic state. They even offer to help plan the trips of those interested in joining them.
