Terrorism

Citation:

Von Knop, Katharina. 2008. “The Multifaceted Roles of Women Inside Al-Qaeda.” Journal of National Defense Studies 6: 139-62.

Author: Katharina Von Knop

Abstract:

The purpose of this four-part article is to explore and analyze the multifaceted roles of women in the al-Qaeda movement. The first part offers an analysis of the ideology and identifies the role of women in the radical Islamist movement al-Qaeda. The second part endeavors to shed some light on the online activities of radical Islamist groups. This issue was explored in collaboration with the Dark Web Team from the Artificial Intelligence Lab at the University of Arizona. The third part explains the notion of “sisterhoods,” in which women are considered operational facilitators and organizational supporters. In the fourth part, the role of women acting as suicide bombers under the banner of al-Qaeda will be analyzed. So far the involvement of women in direct terrorist activities has been treated as a minor issue within the al-Qaeda movement, but it will be argued that in order to achieve strategic goals in the fight against terrorism, measures and concepts will have to be identified and developed that are specifically tailored to address women.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Combatants, Female Combatants, Gender, Women, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Non-State Armed Groups, Religion, Terrorism

Year: 2008

Citation:

Lorber, Judith. 2002. “Presidential Address: Heroes, Warriors, and Burqas: A Feminist Sociologist’s Reflections on September 11.” Sociological Forum 17 (3): 377-96.

Author: Judith Lorber

Abstract:

My presidential address looked back at the gendered imagery of American heroes and warriors, Muslim terrorists, and oppressed Islamic women as they appeared in comparatively sophisticated media sources in the first 6 months after September 11. The imagery was conventionally gendered, but the actions of women and men reported in the same sources showed multiple gendering heterogeneity within homogeneity. Making this multiplicity of gendering visible blurs and undermines gender lines and the inequities built on them. The social constructions of heroism, masculinity, and Islamic womanhood are core parts of the gender politics of September 11, a politics deeply embedded in the current debates over the causes and consequences of terrorism and war.

Keywords: September 11, Gender, masculinity, terrorism, Islamic feminism

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Women, Men, Masculinity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Gender Equity, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Non-State Armed Groups, Religion, Terrorism

Year: 2002

Citation:

Wessells, Michael. 2005. “Child Soldiers, Peace Education, and Postconflict Reconstruction for Peace.” Theory Into Practice 44 (4): 363-69.

Author: Michael Wessells

Abstract:

Worldwide, children are drawn into lives as soldiers and terrorism as the result of forced recruitment and also by extremist ideologies and their inability to obtain security, food, power, prestige, education, and positive life options through civilian means. Using an example from Sierra Leone, this article shows that peace education is an essential element in a holistic approach to the reintegration of former child soldiers and to the prevention of youth's engagement in violence and terrorism. In the post-conflict context, effective peace education has a stronger practical than didactic focus, and it stimulates empathy, cooperation, reconciliation, and community processes for handling conflict in a nonviolent manner. These processes play a key role also in the prevention of children's engagement in violence and terrorism.

Topics: Age, Youth, Armed Conflict, Combatants, Child Soldiers, DDR, Education, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Post-Conflict, Post-Conflict Reconstruction, Peacebuilding, Terrorism, Violence Regions: Africa, West Africa Countries: Sierra Leone

Year: 2005

Citation:

Haritaworn, Jin, Tamsila Tauqir, and Esra Erdem. 2008. “Gay Imperialism: Gender and Sexuality Discourse in the ‘War on Terror.’” In Out of Place: Interrogating Silences in Queerness/raciality, edited by Adi Kuntsman and Esperanza Miyake, 71–95. York: Raw Nerve Books.

Authors: Jin Haritaworn, Tamsila Tauqir, Esra Erdem

Abstract:

Our article focuses on the situation in Britain, where ‘Muslim’ and ‘homo-phobic’ are increasingly treated as interchangeable signifiers. The central figure in this process is Peter Tatchell who has successfully claimed the role of the liberator of and expert about Muslim gays and lesbians. This highlights the problems of a single-issue politics of representation, which equates ‘gay’ with white and ‘ethnic minority’ with heterosexual. At the same time, the fact that Tatchell’s group Outrage passes as the emblem of queer and hence post-identity politics in Britain shows that the problem of Islamophobia is not reducible to the critique of identity. The active participation of right- as well as left-wing, feminist as well as gay, official as well as civil powers in the Islamophobia industry proves racism more clearly than ever to be a white problem, which crosses other social and political differences.

Topics: Ethnicity, Feminisms, Gender, LGBTQ, Religion, Sexuality, Terrorism Regions: Europe, Northern Europe Countries: United Kingdom

Year: 2008

Citation:

Bennoune, Karima. 2008. “Terror/Torture.” Berkeley Journal of International Law 26 (1): 1-61.

Author: Karima Bennoune

Abstract:

In the face of terrorism, human rights law’s requirement that states “respect and ensure” rights necessitates that states take active steps to safeguard their populations from violent attack, but in so doing do not violate rights. Security experts usually emphasize the aspect of ensuring rights while human rights advocates largely focus on respecting rights. The trick, which neither side in the debate has adequately referenced, is that states have to do both at the same time. In contrast to these largely one-sides approaches, adopting a radical universalist stance, this Article argues that both contemporary human rights and security discourses on terrorism must be broadened and renewed. This renewal must be informed by the understanding that international human rights law protects the individual both from terrorism and the excesses of counter-terrorism, like torture. To develop this thesis, the Article explores the philosophical overlap between both terrorism and torture and their normative prohibitions. By postulating new discourses around the paradigm of terror/torture, it begins the project of creating a new human rights approach to terrorism.

Topics: International Law, International Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law (IHL), Rights, Human Rights, Security, Human Security, Terrorism, Torture

Year: 2008

Citation:

Hollander, Nancy Caro. 1996. “The Gendering of Human Rights: Women and the Latin American Terrorist State.” Feminist Studies 22 (1): 40–80.

Author: Nancy Caro Hollander

Topics: Gender, Women, Governance, Health, Trauma, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Militarization, Rights, Human Rights, Sexual Violence, Rape, SV against Women, Terrorism Regions: Americas, Central America, South America Countries: Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala

Year: 1996

Citation:

Naaman, Dorit. 2007. "Brides of Palestine/Angels of Death: Media, Gender, and Performance in the Case of the Palestinian Female Suicide Bombers." Signs 32 (4).

Author: Dorit Naaman

Topics: Combatants, Female Combatants, Gender, Women, Media, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Non-State Armed Groups, Terrorism Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Palestine / Occupied Palestinian Territories

Year: 2007

Citation:

Galvin, Deborah M. 1983. “The Female Terrorist: A Socio-Psychological Perspective.” Behavioral Sciences and the Law 1 (2): 19-32.

Author: Deborah M. Galvin

Abstract:

This article deals with the female terrorist, her socio-psychological characteristics, and her role within the terrorist organization. There is no archetypal female terrorist; her description is varied from her physique to her role within the organization to her psychological make-up. Women take up terrorism either by their own initiative or through a secondary other, most often introduced into it by a male. Although women terrorists have the equality to fight or die by the side of their male counterparts, their power position frequently is less than that of the male. The female's sexuality plays an important role in the group dynamics and does alter the nature of terrorism itself. The article explore the implications of these findings for the future of terrorism and the participation of women.

Topics: Combatants, Female Combatants, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Non-State Armed Groups, Terrorism

Year: 1983

Citation:

Becker, Bettina T. 2000. "Woman, Violence, Nation: Representations of Female Insurgency in Fiction and Public Discourse in the 1970s and 1980s." Women in German Yearbook 16: 207-20.

Author: Bettina T. Becker

Abstract:

Germany in the 1970s was subject to a wave of terrorist activities in which women such as Ulrike Meinhof and Gudrun Ensslin played a significant role. The mass media and public discourse in general struggled with women's participation in these cases of extreme physical violence. In this article, I explore the articulations of the discourses of gender, nation, and violence in the German news magazine Der Spiegel, Ulrike Meinhof's tele vision play Bambule, and Traude Buhrmann's Flage fiber Moabiter Mauern (Flights over Moabit's Walls), in order to illuminate representations of female insurgency. My argument centers around their different uses of deviance and the changing character of social criticism in the 1970s and 1980s.

Topics: Combatants, Female Combatants, Gender, Women, Gender Roles, Media, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Non-State Armed Groups, Nationalism, Terrorism, Sexuality, Violence

Year: 2000

Citation:

McKay, Susan. 2005. "Girls as 'Weapons of Terror' in Northern Uganda and Sierra Leonean Rebel Fighting Forces." Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 28 (5): 385-97. 

Author: Susan McKay

Abstract:

Girls—both willingly and unwillingly—participate in terrorist acts within the context of contemporary wars. These acts range from targeting civilians for torture and killing to destroying community infrastructures so that people's physical and psychological health and survival are affected. Girls witness or participate in acts such as mutilation, human sacrifice, forced cannibalism, drug use, and physical and psychological deprivation. This article focuses upon girls in two fighting forces: the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in Northern Uganda and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone and their roles as combatants whose primary strategy is perpetrating terrorist acts against civilians. In analyses of gender and terrorism, girls are typically subsumed under the larger category of female, which marginalizes their experiences and fails to recognize that they possess agency and power.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Combatants, Female Combatants, Gender, Girls, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Non-State Armed Groups, Terrorism, Weapons /Arms Regions: Africa, East Africa, West Africa Countries: Sierra Leone, Uganda

Year: 2005