Al Qaeda and Female Terrorism
I think I should sue the London Telegraph. They printed a story on Iraq that looks pretty similar to my blog post on tomatoes, cucumbers and goats just a few weeks before they did. And they say bloggers only report the news that the papers manage to gather. Not so this time. But I guess it's okay, I picked up my fair share of buzz from that anyway. Wa amma ba'ad
For those of you who did not know, Ayman Al Zawahiri, Al Qaeda's #2, delivered a 2.5 hour long rambling audio "press conference" in which he said, along with a million other unrelated things, that there were no women in Al Qaeda and that a woman's place was in the home, caring for Al Qaeda fighters, having their babies, etc. In fact it struck some level of opposition among women Al Qaeda wannabes, given that he didn't seem to allow much middle ground. Even if women can't fight (under this theory), why can't women write, or demonstrate, or help set up the website, or settle the accounts, these extremists wondered. Why is it always the home. But Zawahiri seemed rather clear, and unremarkable (world's greatest terrorist is a misogynist--not exactly a shock) but then he added something rather surprising--that whether or not a woman could be used in the jihad in times of "need" was up to the local jihadists.
So Zawahiri has a theory. Women, to this guy, belong not just out of harm's way, but out of the public sphere. They aren't part of the jihad, and they don't support it, except through caring for the fighters in the home. They don't agitate or organize newsletters or bake sales or anything else, they are baby factories and nurses. Clear enough, but then why the exception? Why send a baby factory/nurse to blow herself up. And if she can do that, what's wrong with writing an article?
Usually what the jurist arguing the case does in such instances is look for a loophole, anywhere, to justify the action. In this context, dig through the classical manuals to find something to justify the position. A realist would say that is silly, just tell us why it is you want the exception, but this is the traditional means of doing this sort of thing in this highly formalist universe. And militants have done precisely this in the past to explain female suicide bombing, quoting the Hanbali medieval jurist and Ibn Taymiyya disciple, Ibn Qayyim al Jawziyya, to the effect that if the jihad is defensive, then the woman needs no permission from her husband to fight in it, nor does a child need permission from his parents. It's an oft quoted section of Ibn Qayyim these days, though it appears in other classical texts as well.
The problem is that since most of these militants think ALL of their jihads are defensive (i.e. resisting Western neo-colonialism), and they've made a repeated point that the jihad is not just war but other forms of nonviolent activity, that would mean women are more or less independent of their husbands when it comes to the jihad, including writing, agitating, maybe even working to pay taxes and let others do the fighting (seems enough to fit in modern jihad's at least rhetorically elastic definition). I don't think many Muslim conservatives are happy with that conclusion, even ones who are quite happy to let their wives run around and agitate for Islamic revolution. It's one thing to let your wife do this, many do (it's a mistake to think that those who promote Muslim revolution uniformly want their wives in their homes, often they want them on the streets as well, agitating and promoting the cause, particularly among other women), but it's another to suggest she can just go off and do it and doesn't need her husband's permission. For Zawahiri, who doesn't want women agitating at all, this is doubly a concern.
So then the Muslim radical is in a real quandary. If he says women can participate in defensive jihad, he's opened a loophole far wider than he intended given his expansive definition of defensive jihad. But he can't close the loophole completely because they need women suicide bombers, particularly in Iraq. The female suicide bomber is the trend these days, because women barely ever get searched--there are not enough female inspectors to do it. Any park I walk into in any part of Iraq, any time, I am searched, my wife passes freely. My wife is dressed in jeans and a shirt, but the more modestly dressed conservative women aren't going to be felt up by the 19 year old male militia dude with his hands all over me, either. It would violate every cultural taboo to allow that, even if realistically they could carry far more ammunition without attracting notice. And Al Qaeda has found THAT iraqi loophole and is starting to exploit it mercilessly. Eventually it will close, there are women friskers now, they'll increase over time, but for now, it's wide for them. So what to do?
Zawahiri doesn't bother to dig through mountains of text to make the argument, to find the legally supportable position that gives him the ability to make a narrow exception he seeks. It's probably because he doesn't know enough to do that. But given his scholarly limitations, he can't use obfuscating legal rhetoric and is forced to just concede what it is that is really motivating him ideologically rather than masking his motivations through proper legal argument.
"Need" he says. Not necessity (darura) but need (haja). I need women suicide bombers, and can therefore use them in violation of the rules I've just laid out. It's not even a legal position, it's the mask coming off, I have no doctrinal reason, ideologically I want them in the home but I am less likely to win my war unless I do this so I need to be a hypocrite, and here I am. Sort of like if you had asked Hillary or Obama, why are you taking the positions you are in Michigan or Florida, and they had said, rather than some elaborate legal explanation about what the rules were ahead of time or whether every vote should count, "I need them to count, or not, in order to win."
What's left in such a case? A nakedly ideological position, devoid of any interpretive dimension, wherein the rules are bent according to the "need" of the actor (in this case, Zawahiri) to achieve whatever ideological objective he sets out for himself.
And what does a realist like me say? I'm glad he did it, I want him to lay his cards on the table, and we liberals (many more prominent than I) will lay ours out, and let's none of us pretend we're getting it exclusively from a grand interpretive theory and that's it's anything but ideologically driven. And our community, with God as our guide, can choose its path.
HAH
For those of you who did not know, Ayman Al Zawahiri, Al Qaeda's #2, delivered a 2.5 hour long rambling audio "press conference" in which he said, along with a million other unrelated things, that there were no women in Al Qaeda and that a woman's place was in the home, caring for Al Qaeda fighters, having their babies, etc. In fact it struck some level of opposition among women Al Qaeda wannabes, given that he didn't seem to allow much middle ground. Even if women can't fight (under this theory), why can't women write, or demonstrate, or help set up the website, or settle the accounts, these extremists wondered. Why is it always the home. But Zawahiri seemed rather clear, and unremarkable (world's greatest terrorist is a misogynist--not exactly a shock) but then he added something rather surprising--that whether or not a woman could be used in the jihad in times of "need" was up to the local jihadists.
So Zawahiri has a theory. Women, to this guy, belong not just out of harm's way, but out of the public sphere. They aren't part of the jihad, and they don't support it, except through caring for the fighters in the home. They don't agitate or organize newsletters or bake sales or anything else, they are baby factories and nurses. Clear enough, but then why the exception? Why send a baby factory/nurse to blow herself up. And if she can do that, what's wrong with writing an article?
Usually what the jurist arguing the case does in such instances is look for a loophole, anywhere, to justify the action. In this context, dig through the classical manuals to find something to justify the position. A realist would say that is silly, just tell us why it is you want the exception, but this is the traditional means of doing this sort of thing in this highly formalist universe. And militants have done precisely this in the past to explain female suicide bombing, quoting the Hanbali medieval jurist and Ibn Taymiyya disciple, Ibn Qayyim al Jawziyya, to the effect that if the jihad is defensive, then the woman needs no permission from her husband to fight in it, nor does a child need permission from his parents. It's an oft quoted section of Ibn Qayyim these days, though it appears in other classical texts as well.
The problem is that since most of these militants think ALL of their jihads are defensive (i.e. resisting Western neo-colonialism), and they've made a repeated point that the jihad is not just war but other forms of nonviolent activity, that would mean women are more or less independent of their husbands when it comes to the jihad, including writing, agitating, maybe even working to pay taxes and let others do the fighting (seems enough to fit in modern jihad's at least rhetorically elastic definition). I don't think many Muslim conservatives are happy with that conclusion, even ones who are quite happy to let their wives run around and agitate for Islamic revolution. It's one thing to let your wife do this, many do (it's a mistake to think that those who promote Muslim revolution uniformly want their wives in their homes, often they want them on the streets as well, agitating and promoting the cause, particularly among other women), but it's another to suggest she can just go off and do it and doesn't need her husband's permission. For Zawahiri, who doesn't want women agitating at all, this is doubly a concern.
So then the Muslim radical is in a real quandary. If he says women can participate in defensive jihad, he's opened a loophole far wider than he intended given his expansive definition of defensive jihad. But he can't close the loophole completely because they need women suicide bombers, particularly in Iraq. The female suicide bomber is the trend these days, because women barely ever get searched--there are not enough female inspectors to do it. Any park I walk into in any part of Iraq, any time, I am searched, my wife passes freely. My wife is dressed in jeans and a shirt, but the more modestly dressed conservative women aren't going to be felt up by the 19 year old male militia dude with his hands all over me, either. It would violate every cultural taboo to allow that, even if realistically they could carry far more ammunition without attracting notice. And Al Qaeda has found THAT iraqi loophole and is starting to exploit it mercilessly. Eventually it will close, there are women friskers now, they'll increase over time, but for now, it's wide for them. So what to do?
Zawahiri doesn't bother to dig through mountains of text to make the argument, to find the legally supportable position that gives him the ability to make a narrow exception he seeks. It's probably because he doesn't know enough to do that. But given his scholarly limitations, he can't use obfuscating legal rhetoric and is forced to just concede what it is that is really motivating him ideologically rather than masking his motivations through proper legal argument.
"Need" he says. Not necessity (darura) but need (haja). I need women suicide bombers, and can therefore use them in violation of the rules I've just laid out. It's not even a legal position, it's the mask coming off, I have no doctrinal reason, ideologically I want them in the home but I am less likely to win my war unless I do this so I need to be a hypocrite, and here I am. Sort of like if you had asked Hillary or Obama, why are you taking the positions you are in Michigan or Florida, and they had said, rather than some elaborate legal explanation about what the rules were ahead of time or whether every vote should count, "I need them to count, or not, in order to win."
What's left in such a case? A nakedly ideological position, devoid of any interpretive dimension, wherein the rules are bent according to the "need" of the actor (in this case, Zawahiri) to achieve whatever ideological objective he sets out for himself.
And what does a realist like me say? I'm glad he did it, I want him to lay his cards on the table, and we liberals (many more prominent than I) will lay ours out, and let's none of us pretend we're getting it exclusively from a grand interpretive theory and that's it's anything but ideologically driven. And our community, with God as our guide, can choose its path.
HAH
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