Behind every great man stands a woman, and behind every militant jihadist stands an equally devoted jihadist woman. Or so says al-Qaeda.  

The Search for International Terrorist Entities Institute, or SITE Institute — an American non-profit terrorist-monitoring group that scours, among other things, militant Islamist websites — reports on a rising target demographic for militant Islamist websites: women.

In a passage purportedly written by the former and late al-Qaeda leader Yusuf al-Ayiri, the site proclaims:

“The reason we address women in these pages is our observation that when a woman is convinced of something, no one will spur a man to fulfill it like she will… The saying ‘Behind every great man stands a woman’ was true for Muslim women at these times, for behind every great Mujahid stood a woman.”

Targeting women for jihad is certainly not a new thing; eager to capitalize on an expanding Internet audience, Al-Khansa, a new jihadist online magazine directed exclusively at women, incites women to participate in jihad. What this recent jihadist message does demonstrate, though, is the ferocity of the media wars being waged for the hearts and minds of Muslims. While the al-Qaeda recruiting video tapes have tended to target men, this attests to an increasingly visible move to envelop women within the fold of militant jihad, even be it, in this case, as some sort of a support mechanism (woman are, according to this website, not supposed participate in physical combat). This, apparently, is gender equality’s new and militant face.  

Mimi Hanaoka