A chilling document detailing the kind of life women in the Islamic State ‘Caliphate’ should live has been translated, saying that children as young as nine can get married and a woman should leave a completely ‘sedentary’ life.
The treatise, written by militants working for the all-female police force in Syria, says that life was better during the time of the Prophet Mohammed and women should remain ‘hidden and veiled’ and at the service of men, who they say are their masters, the Quilliam foundation reports.
Contrary to the social media activity of Western women who have joined the jihadi state, it details a live of drudgery and male dominance with no choice or opportunity for women – unless they choose to be housewives covered from head to toe and slaves to their husbands.
The document explains that the primary duty of Western women who join the terror group is to marry a jihadi, then spend their life cooking, cleaning and raising a family. This raises questions about pressure from the group’s leadership to use social media to lie about the part women play, possibly to encourage a greater number of women to leave their homes and travel to Syria to marry jihadi fighters.
It even says how women are now ‘liberated’ by laws demanded they are fully covered in public since it prevents their humiliation. And it washes over talks of starvation and blackouts, saying ‘Women benefit from a substantial amount of these services, for example the maternity hospital, which provides specialist care for mother and son who are examined by pediatricians who give them the cures they need.’
The author is keen to promote the idea that it is a woman’s “divinely appointed right” to live a sedentary lifestyle and says that the “Western programme for women” and the blurring of lines between the roles for the sexes has caused people to forget how to worship God properly. The blame for the confusion is pinned on the emasculation of men, because, they argue, “women are not presented with a true picture of man”, they have become confused and complacent, unable to fulfil their appointed responsibilities, most of which revolve around motherhood and maintenance of the household.
The document also criticises Western civilisation and scientific research and curiosity which has led to huge improvements in quality of life and survival from diseases. They say the West’s obsession with studying “the brain cells of crows, grains of sand and fish arteries” distracts from the true purpose of humans: to worship God.
However if scientific research helps Muslims then they are okay, with the document claiming that those sciences “that people need, that help facilitate the lives of Muslims and their affairs are permissible”
Women, however, must be educated on some level, they write. Hence education is mandatory. But the curriculum is determined by the role that is laid down by IS, such as cooking, running a household and basic reading and writing. Ideally, it would “begin when they are seven years old and end when they are fifteen, or sometimes a little earlier”.
One important caveat made to the above is that it is sometimes permissible for a woman to leave the house. The circumstances in which this is permitted are:
a) if she is going to study theology;
b) if she is a women’s doctor or teacher;
c) if it has been ruled by fatwa that she must fight, engage in jihad because the situation of the ummah has become desperate, “as the women of Iraq and Chechnya did, with great sadness”.
‘Foremost among the first people that we refer to are Muslim women, members of their Islamic community. In that day, they had a role. Today, too, they have a role, one which is derived from the principles of Islamic law and its teachings’ they write.
‘In this treatise, we will report on her real role, one which is far from the confusion that has emerged of late, the role that has been tampered with such that both she and we have forgotten it.’
They say that the Prophet’s community in Medina was ‘the best of communities’.
‘While it was a very simple society in terms of the material world and worldly sciences, it was strong in terms of its faith and the science of the next. People in it were hungry more than they were satisfied. They had houses of palm and mud, rode camels and horses and did not know physics, engineering or astronomy. Because of all this, God was kept at the forefront, and the Righteous were His slaves.’
Women living in IS held terrorist are forced to cover themselves from head to toe with the Al-Khansa Brigade acting like a secret state police, reporting on men and women they do not consider to be living up to the standards they themselves impose and reporting them to the Hisbah religious authority.
Although the figures are impossible to independently verify, the Terrorism Research and Analysis Consortium (TRAC) believes as many as 60 British nationals are currently members of Al-Khansa.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.