Role of Women in Global ?Jihad

Intro: India is increasingly being viewed as the springboard for waging global jihad – a fertile ground for producing lethal Mujahideens, including deadly female ones.?

Jihad is an obligatory ‘religious duty’ of every Muslim under Quran which means to ‘struggle’ or ‘fight’ or ‘jihad’ in the cause of Allah relentlessly by employing all means (peaceful or violent) till all the ‘infidels’ or ‘kafirs’ (non-Muslims) accept Islam as the only ‘true religion’ in the world. The importance of Jihad can be gauged from the fact that it appears 41 times in 23 verses of Quran, and is indirectly referred in about 109 Quranic verses, collectively called as the ‘sword or violent verses’.
According to Imam Ghazzali, jihad can be waged by tongue (jihad bil lisan), hand (jihad bil yad) and heart (jihad bil qalb/nafs), but the most ‘sacred jihad’ amongst them all, is waging ‘holy war’ against the infidels (i.e. jihad by sword/ jihad bis saif) and, it is the ‘greatest of all jihads’ in the cause of Allah and Prophet Mohammad i.e. al-jihad fi sabil Allah. The one who practices it, for him, there is a guaranteed place in ‘jannat’ (paradise). After his death (or martyrdom/shahada), he will be bestowed as reward,‘services’ of ‘72 voluptuous and virgin’ girls, whom no man or jinn has touched to enjoy for eternity a life of debauchery, as written in Quran, LV: 74.
Let there be no confusion about the real meaning of ‘jihad’, it might be interpreted to mean ‘inner struggle’ (greater jihad) et al. but above everything else, it definitely means ‘holy war’ (jihad by sword/ jihad bis saif) to convert/subjugate all the non-Muslims into the fold of Islam so that the ‘order of Allah/Islam’ reigns supreme across the globe as an important ‘mandatory religious duty’ of all Muslims.
“It is the duty of Muslims to strive (jihad) unceasingly to convert or at least subjugate those who have not. It must continue until the whole world has either accepted the Islamic faith or submitted to the power of the Islamic state.”– Bernard Lewis, Anglo-American Orientalist in “The Political Language of Islam”, p. 73
According to Sahih Bukhari, the pre-eminent Hadith (prophetic traditions as Sunnah) collection of Sunni Islam] also, there are about 200 references to jihad in Hadith; about which 98% or 196 of them are clearly referred to in the true sense of ‘jihad by the sword”. It is also the most ancient form used both by Salafi and Wahhabi, two most prominent and predominant Muslim clans across globe.
It must be noteworthy here that, Islam divides the world into two mutually irreconcilable or hostile camps viz ‘Dar-ul-Islam’ (House of Islam/Islamic world) and ‘Dar-ul-Harb’ (non-Islamic world, so, House of continuous warfare) and jihad is prescribed upon the Mujahideens (a term used for those who wage jihad or wholly engaged in it) as the most useable tool, among others, to finally convert all the ‘Dar-ul-Harb’ into ‘Dar-ul-Islam’, thus, Islamizing the entire world for Allah.
Brigadier S K Malik of Islamic Pakistan has also approved this fact by stating ‘indispensability of a ceaseless jihad’ for subjugating an infidel ‘Hindu India’ in the long run, in his book ‘Quranic Concept of War’, the foreword of which was penned by then Paki dictator and Army Chief General Zia-Ul-Haq.
David Cook, author of “Understanding Jihad” said, “In reading Muslim literature – both contemporary and classical – one can see that the evidence for the primacy of spiritual jihad is negligible. Today, it is certain that no Muslim, writing in a non- Western language (such as Arabic, Persian, Urdu) would ever make claims that jihad is primarily nonviolent or has been superseded by the spiritual jihad. Such claims are made solely by Western scholars, primarily those who study Sufism and/or work in interfaith dialogue, and by Muslim apologists who are trying to present Islam in the most innocuous manner possible.” As Hinduism is a non expansionist and all assimilating philosophy, there is no question of war or fight to expand the Dharma. On the other hand, the one thing common across most sects of Islam, the Sunni, the Shia, the Sufi and others, is that they consider spreading the message of Allah to non-Muslims, their important duty.
Role of Women in Waging Global Jihad: Upping the Ante on Fast Rise
Jihad has been waged from the birth of Islam in the 7th century AD up till now, mostly by male Mujahideens, but what’s new is the increasing role and participation of women in it for waging global jihad. Osama bin Laden, founder of Al-Qaeda, the supreme organization of all Islamic terror groups of the world, prescribed a role for women in jihad in his 1996 declaration of war against America.
According to Jihadology (a web site exclusively dedicated to catering to Jihadi literatures), Yusuf al Uyayri of Saudi Arabia who was later killed in 2003 wrote a book “Role of Women in Fighting the Enemies” urging the ‘women believers’ to join Islamic Jihad en masse to ‘expedite the holy Islamic mission of conquering the entire world forever for Allah’. Subsequently, the Saudi branch of Al-Qaida in 2004 came up with a “global jihadist women magazine’ called ‘Al-Khansa”.
Later, in 2010 another ‘global jihadist women magazine’ was released called ‘Hafidat al-Khansa’ (granddaughters of al-Khansa’). Most notably, one of Ayman Zawahiri’s (Al-Qaeda chief after Osama bin Laden’s demise) many wives, Umaymah Zawahiri published a “Letter to My Muslim Sisters” in 2009, calling them to join the global jihad reminding them that jihad is both a ‘fard al-ayn’ (individual duty) and ‘fardh kifaya’ (collective duty) for both men and women and that they must be ready or willing to do sahada (martyrdom) in the ‘holy name of Allah – the one and only true God’.
Muslim Brotherhood jurist Yusuf al Qaradawi, who has provided Hamas (an Islamic terror group ruling Gaza Strip since early 2007) with much of the religious justification for suicide bombing, issued a Fatwa (Islamic holy declaration/decree) in support of female suicide against ‘an infidel Israel and Jews’. Umm Osama, the wife of Hamas MP Khalil Al-Hayya urged the Arab and Palestinian women “to instill love of jihad and martyrdom in her children.”
Umm Salameh, a widow of an Al-Qaeda leader in northern Iraq later became the Leader (emir) of the ‘Al Nitaqayn’- the women battalion of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Samira Ahmed Jassim, who called herself as the ‘mother of all Iraqi suicide bombers’ was arrested by Iraqi authorities in January, 2009 who confessed of recruiting vulnerable women and persuading them to become suicide bombers. She used their desire to take revenge on the killers of their husbands as a tool.
One of the most famous examples of ‘women role in global jihad’ is Malika al-Aroud, the Belgian widow of one of the suicide bombers who killed Afghan leader Ahmad Shah Massoud in September 2001.
Then there are ‘fiercely jihadi women’ like Defne Bayrak, a young Turkish woman, who seduced a 32 year old Humam al-Balawi, a Jordanian doctor and devout Muslim to marry her- produced two daughters and finally indoctrinated him to ‘sacrifice his life for Allah’ who later blew himself up along with seven CIA employees in Afghanistan in December, 2010. Now, she wants her two daughters to also join the global jihad.

-Sourabh Jyoti Sharma ?(The writer can be contacted at sourabhlibra@gmail.com) ?