The Gender Logics of Resistance to the "War on Terror" in the Middle East (original) (raw)

Women and Jihadism: Between the Battlefield and the Home-front

2016

This briefing offers preliminary reflections and insights into global jihadi discourses on women’s role as militant activists. It references primary source writings and audiovisual materials produced by jihadi groups and ideologues. The briefing will provide an overview of global jihadi discourses on Muslim women’s role as militant activists, firstly highlighting some of the more important contributions concerning women produced by jihadi ideologues, secondly, examining the place of the Muslim woman in jihadi media, and thirdly, comparing Sunni jihadi discourses on women with transnational Shi'i jihadi discourses. The tensions between the need to recruit women into the frontline and the importance of Muslim women’s traditional role on the home-front create competing discourses. This analysis opens possibilities for further research, and for feminist reflection on the operations of gendered forms of agency in the intersections of militancy and conservative neo-traditional interpretations of Islamic law. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10130950.2016.1268827?journalCode=ragn20

The War on Terrorism as State of Exception: A Challenge for Transnational Gender Theory

Journal of International Women S Studies, 2013

In this article, I explore the contributions of theoretical engagements of bare life and states of exception to gender theory in relation to the U.S.-led 'war on terrorism,' beginning in 2001. I discuss connections between the ongoing struggle over representations of the 'Third World Woman,' among feminists and the mainstream discourse that established the United States' invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and imprisonment of an extralegal class of 'detainees' as an inevitable, natural consequence of exceptional difference. In addition I highlight the responsibility academics, including feminist academics, to consider their own positions in relation to the economic, political and representational power dynamics they analyze.

Women in terrorism: a Palestinian feminist revolution or gender oppression?1

Theoretical approach and background information The place of women in terrorism and the extensive media coverage received by attacks involving women 4 have been on the agenda of discussions of global terrorism. Throughout history, women have participated in national struggles for independence, in wars and more recently, in terrorist attacks. Since September 2000, when the insurrection the Palestinians call the "Al-Aqsa intifada" broke out, women have played an increasingly active role in various aspects of Palestinian terrorism. The reasons usually given for the inclusion of women in terrorist activities are that they can pass unsuspected and undetected, and they attract a great deal of media attention. The use of women and children in carrying out terrorist attacks is effective and the media 1 This article first appeared in Hebrew in Tsohar l'vatei hasoar (A Window on Prisons), Collected Articles No. 10, November 2006, pp. 5-11. An expanded version of the study's findings will appear in Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 2007.

Terror, counter-terror: women speak out

2003

Women Speak Out presents articles by several women writers and women's organizations. The book analyzes and interrogates the madness of male-dominated war and violence, and presents women's perspectives on war and the 9/11 tragedy. Contributors include feminist writers, authors, academics, and journalists; mothers, women of color, Muslim women; and women who have had first-hand experience with war and its effects.

Women's Roles in Terrorism & Women Fighting Back

ICSVE Brief Reports

On International Women’s Day it seems important to recognize strong women and the unique characteristics of women to play important roles in defeating terrorism. In the past days, taking part in the Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis Combating Terrorism Conference in New Delhi, India, I had the opportunity to meet and listen to the story of Lamia Haji Bashar, a Yazidi girl who at age 15 was captured with her entire family by ISIS. Lamia ended as a sex slave of ISIS, “owned” and abused by five different men. She finally escaped but not without paying a high price—the two women she was with were exploded on a landmine and she lost one of her eyes and was disfigured by the explosion. Yet she remains an extremely beautiful young woman speaking out in courage about her ordeal of rape and enslavement, speaking up for the thousands of Yezidi, Sunni and Shia girls and boys still in captivity and whose lives have been derailed by the extreme brutality of ISIS. Women are both victims and actors in terrorism and unfortunately play a significant role in ISIS—even cooperating in the enslavement of other women, who they dehumanize and also abuse. We know that terrorism tends to be a male-dominated profession, yet groups like ISIS have made a very strong call to women to travel to Syria and Iraq to join their ranks. Many find this incomprehensible, yet when we listen to actual terrorists tell their stories we find how they were seduced and how we might better protect women from this face-to-face and Internet seduction that is taking place all over the world.

Rethinking Gender in Revolutions and Resistance: Lessons from the Arab world

Gender & Development, 2016

ABSTRACT Ever since the uprisings that swept the Arab world, the role of Arab women in political transformations received unprecedented media attention. The copious commentary, however, has yet to result in any serious study of the gender dynamics of political upheaval. Rethinking Gender in Revolutions and Resistance is the first book to analyse the interplay between moments of sociopolitical transformation, emerging subjectivities and the different modes of women’s agency in forging new gender norms in the Arab world. Written by scholars and activists from the countries affected, including Palestine, Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, this is an important addition to Middle Eastern gender studies