Radical Female Muslims Redefining Islam

When 17-year-old Sina’ al-Muhaydali took part in a suicide attack against Israeli soldiers in South Lebanon in 1985, her martyrdom was among the earliest reports of women fighting in jihad.

That role traditionally was limited to adult Muslim men, but more recently, growing numbers of women associated with radical Islamic groups have been chosen for suicide attacks, leading scholars to re-examine the status of women and attitudes toward martyrdom in the Islamic world.

David Cook, assistant professor of religious studies at Rice, writes frequently about jihad, martyrdom operations, and their implications for contemporary Islam. In a recent article, “Women Fighting in Jihad?,” Cook claims that, while classic Muslim legal literature contains very few references to women on the battlefield, contemporary Muslim writers are revealing changing attitudes toward the issue of women fighting. “Although outsiders frequently comment negatively on what they perceive as suppression of women’s rights,” Cook writes, “the relative prominence of women fighters in recent wars and jihads is reflective of the changing status of women in the Muslim world.”

Cook cites several examples in which radical Muslim groups have allowed women to fight alongside men, particularly in more secularized countries such as Chechnya and Palestine. In the case of the Chechens, he believes their years under Soviet occupation made them much-less knowledgeable about Islamic law and may be one reason “why the separatists there involved more women suicide attackers than in any other conflict in a Muslim country.”

Although secularism may explain why certain areas in the Muslim world are more willing to involve women in their military operations, the motivations behind using female fighters vary from country to country. Cook contends, for instance, that the Russians in Chechnya believed the female suicide attackers were widows of fighters seeking vengeance. Other information about these female suicide attackers suggests that they participated in martyrdom operations to set an example for other Muslims.

In the case of Palestinian suicide attacks against Israelis, which only recently included women, Cook concludes that involving women may be a tactical maneuver. “I think it could be a desire to skew the profile of the typical suicide attacker that Israeli intelligence and security forces had developed,” Cook says. The women’s motivation, he adds, also may be to help publicize the Palestinian cause and perhaps shame Muslim political and religious leaders for “their perceived refusal to fight Israel.”

Still, Cook notes, the right of women to join men on the battlefield is in sharp contradistinction to classical Muslim sources and “can be seen as a radical change in Islam.”