Women in an Islamic State

members of IS's al-Khansaa Brigade: can you say 'Stockholm syndrome'?

Women ~ don't really want to live with 'em, can't establish a caliphate without 'em. We're all appalled, angered, and/or disgusted by the cruelty and callousness of the Islamic State. They take xenophobia to new lows and only one thing lower: misogyny. (While it's almost certainly more complicated than those labels would imply, for all intents and purposes, that's pretty much what it comes down to.) But IS has a problem that al-Qaeda and the Taliban don't. Their goal is a state that will grow and last for generations, if not forever, and for that, they need women. They need women to marry the fighters, to bear and bring up their children, to tend the home fires, and maybe most importantly right now, to recruit more women ~ or, rather, girls ~ to the cause: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-33985441
   Girls who emigrate to IS from the West use social media to recruit, give advice, and post about their new lives: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/09/meet-the-female-recruiters-of-isis.html