Mills and Boon Meets Jihad in the Diary of a Jihadi Bride

A Malaysian doctor turned jihadist bride has authored a blog described as “Mills and Boon meets Jihad”, thanks to breathless prose in which she describes meeting her husband on their wedding day, and falling in love with him 24 hours later whilst in joint prayer.

Although her exact identity is unknown, clues have been left within her Tumbler blog ‘Diary of a Muhajirah’ by Bird of Jannah, started in February. The 26 year old medic alludes to her middle class background, brought up in a Muslim family with brothers who “always entertain me”, and has tweeted a picture of a stethoscope entwined with a rifle which she describes as a “selfie” of herself and her husband.

But it is in describing her marriage that her most prosaic writing emerges: “I was trembling. Nervous. Scared. My emotions were mixed. When he noticed my arrival, he gave salaam [said hello] and introduced himself, so did I. Then, it was a long awkward silence.

“After few minutes, I flipped my niqab. He looked at me, our eyes catches each others [sic]. He smiled. And asked a question I shall never forget . . . ‘Can we get married today?'”

The next day she wrote of how she fell in love when praying with her new husband: “He turned back and smiled at me. And I can feel something. Yes, I guess I just fell in love with someone — my husband!”

But, like all good romance novels, the star-crossed lovers will not live happily ever after. Describing her husband’s return from the battlefield and the party that followed, she wrote: “I know the fact that one day — my husband will be a shaheed [martyr] . . . and I have to prepare for it.”

Although her blog cannot be independently verified, she has posted a number of images to the blog site and to Twitter, and has made references to jihadists known to be fighting in Syria. She is believed to have travelled to the region originally to work as a doctor, but in April had a marriage arranged for her with a young bearded jihadist, known in the blog as Abu Baraa.

She claims to be able to speak English, Urdu and Hindi, using the languages to communicate with other people in the region, many of whom are foreigners like herself. However, in order to communicate with her Arabic speaking husband, the pair downloaded a dictionary app onto their iPhones.

Her family are said to be fully supportive. In her blog she describes her comfortable upbringing, writing that her brother-in-law was the one to encourage her to join the jihadists’ cause: “My life is such a bless. Allāh grant me the best father in this world. He raised me like a princess, he gave me everything. I have amazing brothers. No matter how much I annoyed them, they always entertain me. My brother in law, who was the reason why I turned back to this Deen, who never get bored in motivating me.

“Allāh perfected my life with a husband who replaced my father, brothers and brother-in-law.” Now her family are putting their affairs in order before joining her in Syria, she claims.  

Her latest blog post, dated 6th November describes how she spent three hours doing washing, one of the other girls complaining that she didn’t want to do it by hand because “the water is too cold”. She then spent the evening watching Japanese anime films and thinking about her husband, who has not been in touch for some time. “I should learn to be positive and stay happy for the sake of my unborn baby. That is the least I can give him for now.”

Since then she has taken to her Twitter account @__BirdOfJannah to lend encouragement to other jihadis, tweeting “A life without jihad is like drinking sea water. It keeps you thirsty & cause you dehydrated. Thats the condition of our Ummah today,” and retweeting “The best thing a man can do is jihād, and the best thing for a women is to be a righteous wife and to raise righteous children.”