The Myth of the ISIS Female Suicide Bomber

In the historical pantheon of societal folk devils, few figures are as rivetingly transgressive as the ISIS female suicide bomber. Burqaed and belted-up to the nines, she is the ultimate Other, transgressing not only civilizational prohibitions against murder and suicide, but also deeply ingrained assumptions about what it means to be a woman in patriarchal societies where women are accorded lesser status. She is a deviant among deviants, exploding the most elemental code of the jihadist worldview: namely, that men are men—which is to say, first and foremost, warriors—and women are women—which is to say, first and foremost, wives and mothers.

She is also almost entirely fictitious, conjured up by ISIS’s foes to amplify the group’s demonic extremity and desperate unravelling.

The classical doctrine of jihad stipulates that all able-bodied Muslims, regardless of sex, are obligated to fight in defense of their territory and faith. But, as terrorism scholar Nelly Lahoud has demonstrated, jihadist ideologues have “explicitly excluded” women from discharging this obligation. A woman’s involvement in jihadism, according to the conventional, but best performed from within the confines of her home, where she can service the emotional and sexual needs of her husband, procreate, and raise the next generation of “lions.”