The document offers a chilling mixture of the mundane and the depraved.
The document offers a chilling mixture of the mundane and the depraved
“…sisters… come and gain true honour by living under the law of Sharia, by marrying a brother who puts Allah before his desires…”
These are the disturbing words of Aqsa Mahmood, the Glaswegian medical student who left for Syria a few months ago in order to join the terrorist group calling itself Islamic State (IS).
In a document that surfaced on the internet a couple of weeks ago, Aqsa sheds light not only on daily life under IS rule but also on the motivations young female Muslims may have for joining the struggle.
On one hand Aqsa comes across as a typical tech-savvy and image conscious young girl when she quips “we mostly depend on blue-toothing with one another” and “bring make-up and jewellery from the West because trust me there is nothing here”.
On the other hand, she exhorts young Muslim women in the West to join her by asserting “If you are still in doubt then research until you are content. However, do not keep using this as an excuse to stay back from the land of Jihad”.
She also appears remarkable at ease with her second class status as a woman under IS rule when she cautions women that they will not be allowed to fight and are expected to spend most of their time ‘cooking, cleaning, looking after and even educating children’. The single sacrifice that came in the way of her travelling to her dystopian paradise to offer her services to the IS struggle seems to be her family.
In haunting and poetic words, that reveal a mind-set that is both perturbed and beguiled, Aqsa says “Personally an important step for me was trying to distance myself from my family as much as I could’….this was crucial for myself as I didn’t and still don’t trust my stubborn heart…Leaving my family for the sake of Allah was the biggest sacrifice I’ve ever made in my selfish life so far.”
The document offers a chilling juxtaposition of the mundane with the depraved, couched in language that manages both a vernacular and pious tone. The words are simultaneously heart-wrenching, poorly-spelled and hauntingly eloquent.
However, hiding behind the faux piety and heroic altruism of her words is an egoism and self-righteousness, qualities that are often masked with sanctitude. Crucially they offer an insight into just how twisted and deluded the human mind can become when intoxicated by religious dogma synthesized with political certainty.
In a strange kind of way I can appreciate what is going through his poor young girl’s mind, or rather I understand the milieu in which she was raised. That all-pervasive sense of victimhood, pernicious anti-Muslim conspiracies around every corner, the desire to live in a society that reflects a puritanical interpretation of Islam and that drive to play a role in creating a global bloc of Muslims living under a single leader.
These are sentiments that are shared by many Islamist and Salafist groups around the world, groups that would even condemn IS and call themselves mainstream. These are groups that I grew up listening to and, for a brief while, following.
However, what individuals that have peddled such ideas for many years in the UK and around the world fail to appreciate is the fact that their handiwork has primed young people like Aqsa for IS recruitment. A wide variety of such groups and individual activists have, in their quest to deflect contemporary Muslim failings in order to salvage much needed Muslim pride, created an atmosphere in which jihadism can become the logical next step.
Aqsa and her disturbing document should not be viewed in a vacuum or as an anomaly. Her quest to go and live by the Islam she has read about in books and heard about in speeches has ended in IS controlled Syria for a reason. When a vacuous and literalist approach to scripture alongside a ‘them and us’ hate narrative is peddled as the mainstream, it is inevitable that a section of adherents will seek to walk the walk.
In the eyes of Aqsa, the normativisation of a medieval interpretation of Islam meant life in modern society felt uncomfortable and hostile. The natural choice then is to migrate to a land in which ones conception of Islam fits with the ground realities and daily life.
So in essence IS recruits see that their retrograde ideology does not fit with the modern world so instead of adapting to the modern world they seek to adapt the world to their retrograde ideology. This explains the wholesale destruction and chaos they bring to every area they conquer, bringing about 7th century social conditions to which they can apply their 7th century view of religion.
Aqsa is not alone. She may be one of the more articulate of the British female recruits to IS but her broad sentiments are shared by hundreds of other Brits. Unfortunately we will continue churning out such individuals as long as we allow peddlers of hate and purveyors medieval romanticism to go about their business unchallenged.
Ghaffar Hussain is the the managing director of Quilliam
24 Responses to “British female jihadist authors disturbing recruitment document”
Just Visiting
can you tell us more about that meeting? Why was leaving the meeting your response, to hearing the views- did you consider anyother responses?
Leon Wolfeson
Sure – he was an “external” speaker, and I felt that if I remained that I would say something inappropriate to an inter-faith setting.
The other Muslims, afterwards, agreed it was a mistake to invite him and they didn’t agree with his views, and I never saw him again.
Joseph Flannagan
It will be interesting to hear what she thinks a year from now !. My guess is that she will be desperate to return to UK and the freedoms of the west. She may be in ” honeymoon ” mode at present but once the realities of JUST being there to cook and clean hit home then she will have her eyes open to just how dull and unproductive life of an islamic wife actually is. There is no way she should EVER be allowed to return to Britain ( no doubt wanting to bring her husband and children as dependents ) once she tires of living in paradise.
Joseph Flannagan
It is not just theory. From birth muslims are indoctrinated as to the perfection of islam , mohammed and the koran. It is made perfectly plain what happens to anyone who criticises , questions , blasphemes or leaves islam. They are actively discouraged from studying or investigating ANY other religious belief systems – except of course the absolutely negative and hateful islamic version of kuffars as fed to them by islamic scholars – and especially the girls are generally not allowed to mix socially with non muslims. This is why they push for islamic schools , refuse to integrate and maintain loyalties to islam and their countries of origin. Many muslims know the koran by heart from cover to cover but cannot understand a single word as they speak NO Arabic. Hundreds of millions of muslims are totally illiterate and have NEVER read the koran and are at the mercy of clerics who are themselves often semi literate to ” explain ” the koran. Since the time of mohammed islam has been paranoid about enemies and plots against it and that continues to this day. Despite the muslim inspired violence in Somalia , Libya , Egypt , Iraq , Sudan , Afghanistan , Syria , Mali , Yemen , Algeria , Pakistan , China , Thailand , Philippines , USA , Europe ,India , Russia , etc they continue to deny it is anything to do with islam. This denial is reinforced very strongly by idiot politicians and a media that goes to great lengths to avoid mentioning islam in ANY reporting of the various atrocities or barbarities perpetrated under the ” allah u akhbar ” war cry .