Strategic Weaponization of Women by Middle Eastern Terrorist Organizations: Security Risks of Underestimating Women Jihadists of the Islamic State

Absztrakt (kivonat)

Throughout this thesis, I aim to prove the strategic benefits of recruiting women by terrorist organizations, specifically by the Islamic State. I use Postmodern Feminism theory to analyze and explain the radicalism process of jihadist women. This theory fits the scope of the thesis exquisitely since it argues that for complete neutrality, gender should be stripped away as a factor. This theory allows us to study the most important benefit to terrorist organizations which is the continuous underestimation of women by counter-terrorism efforts. This underestimation is achieved by expected gender roles of women, and stereotypical explanations of women’s radicalization process. The generalized roles expected by women, such as jihadi brides, mothers, and wives only create security loopholes in international relations, and these cognitive dissonances of counter-terrorism efforts are exploited and abused by terrorist organizations. The thesis includes a variety of jihadist women who had dangerous roles such as, propagandists, recruiters, fighters, and torturers. To prove my aim, I analyze three important sections of counter-terrorism, namely, academic literature, fieldwork, and policy-making process. I conclude my thesis in which I suggest increasing the neutral analysis of jihadist women and integration both gender-neutral and gender-specific perspectives within policies, researches, and practices to understand and analyze the root causes of radicalism.