Islamic State Seeking Out Women

As a growing number of women travel abroad to join the Islamic State, the militant group is using the female jihadists as a tool to expand its base in Western countries and bring new blood to their fight in the Middle East.

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"The Islamic State is trying to promote the idea of a mixed society, one that is normal and includes both women and men," said Alain Marsaud, a French parliament member who was also a former counterterrorism judge. "Women are also used through their (presence) and messages on the Web to encourage men on the path of jihad."

Many of the women joining the militant group experience a strong desire to find an alternative to a world dominated by Western structures — mental, physical and political — that they believe to be profoundly unfair and exclusive, especially when it comes to Islam, said Geraldine Cassutt, a researcher at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland who studies female jihadists.

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What's unclear — and for many people hard to fathom — is why women are joining an organization known for gruesome killings, systematic rape and the brutal subjugation of women.

The three American teenage girls caught en route to Syria last week are just the latest in a series of young women who attempt to — and sometimes succeed at — making the journey.

The Clarion Project, an independent, non-profit organization countering extremism, says about 60 women from the United Kingdom have traveled in the past year to join the group in Iraq and Syria — where the Islamic State has taken large swaths of land in recent months.

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