Gender, Agency and Vulnerability: The Case of Western Muslim Women Joining the ISIS

Abstract

In this article I look at the case of Western Muslim women who joined the Islamic terrorist group of ISIS. I deconstruct the generally held assumptions in the main stream Western media about the desirability of an unrestricted life. One of the major questions that I raise through this article is whether or not feminist scholarship should aim at developing a certain standard of emancipation of women. To be more specific, through this study, I want to understand what freedom means for different actors—Western Muslim women, mainstream media, and social media—involved in the debate on young western men and women joining the ISIS.