Women of Al-Qaeda
From Newsweek: Women of Al-Qaeda…
Jihad used to have a gender: male. The men who dominated the movement exploited traditional attitudes about sex and the sexes to build their ranks. They still do that, but with a difference: even Al Qaeda is using female killers now, and goading the men.
The pressures of sexual frustration in this life and the lure of sexual as well as spiritual rewards in the next are exploited as part of a cynical spiel by jihadist recruiters looking for boys and men to be suicide bombers. Hizbullah in Lebanon, Hamas and Islamic Jihad among the Palestinians, and the various incarnations of Al Qaeda have all played on Muslim teachings that promise 72 houris—virginal beings with black eyes and alabaster skin—to attend the martyr’s desires in paradise.
Suicide bombing is changing the rules of deference and subservience that have dominated the traditional society—a strange path to liberation for women hidden behind veils and burqas.
And also see: Reform: Not Ignorant, Not Helpless:
The West is focused on the extreme cases of oppression against Muslim women. But there’s another world out there.
I dont buy the sexual frustration thing at all. Muslim men tend to get married for earlier than Western men, so I wonder where the idea about “sexual frustration” comes from.
It also doesnt address the fact that many suicide bombers are married. Again, sexual frustration doesnt enter into it.
The whole “sex” issue when it comes to the Middle East and Islam really plays into centuries old Western Orientalist views about sex in Islam and the Arab world. It really speaks more about Western obsession with sex than it says anything about Islam or the Middle East.
Well, I don’t know if I buy it, really. I have never known any terrorists, so I can’t say for sure.
But the writer here mentions a fact that in many societies, the “cost” of being married (that is, the capitalistic touches in the society which make the woman or her family demand very expensive things before marriage) prohibits the men from being married until they have had a job for a while and saved a lot of money. The writer says men in their 30s…
Here is an excerpt from an Anderson Cooper 360 show my husband and I watched once… It was really upsetting to watch, but here is the relevant part, from the Nov. 10 transcript:
COOPER: I read a quote. You once said that, for some of these — these people, a suicide attack is — is the only chance they can have of an orgasm. What — what did you mean?
REHOV: Well, again, you know, most of the kids who do that are between 16 and 18 years old. And this is the age where the libido is at its most. They have no idea of what a woman looks like. They have never seen a naked woman.
And part of the training for some of them is to watch porno tapes, so they have an idea. They don’t watch porno tapes for having a pleasure, but — but just to hate even more the flesh that they carry with them. You know, it’s this problem of being so afraid of death, having so much anxiety toward death, that the only solution for them is to blow up for this instant second of pleasure, where they have the equivalent of what would be an orgasm, because they have no sexuality at all.
COOPER: I want to play a clip from — from your documentary. Let — let’s listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, “SUICIDE KILLERS”)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): I wanted to be a martyr for God and the homeland. God would have given me happiness in paradise. I would be given 72 virgins.
——–
I’m neither a man nor a terrorist, so really I don’t know.
This stuff is nonsense. I havent known any terrorists either, but I know Middle Eastern society. Many of these young married couples live for years with the husbands familes, hence no need to support an entire house on their own. These people need to get a clue.