Meet the British women jihadis fighting

for IS
Dominic Yeatman Sunday 7 Sep 2014 8:45 pm

An elite militia of British women has been put in charge of stamping out immoral
behaviour at the heart of the Islamic State (IS).
Sixty women from the UK have reached IS forces in Iraq and Syria, with many
tweeting from the captured Syrian city of Raqqa.
Monitoring groups say that some have joined the feared al-Khansaa brigade, an all-
female morality police which patrols the city, hunting for deviation from ultra-strict
Sharia law.
With as many as 500 female jihadis thought to have arrived from overseas, experts
say the British contingent has impressed IS commanders with its extremism.
Among its leaders are Aqsa Mahmood, 20, a former medical student from Glasgow
who has praised the killers of Lee Rigby and the Boston bombers.
Her distraught parents said last week they felt betrayed by their daughter after she
told her followers: If you cannot make it to the battlefield, then bring the battlefield
to yourself.
Also involved is Umm Farriss, the first British woman to picture herself wearing a
suicide bomb.
Melanie Smith of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) said:
The British women are some of the most zealous in imposing the IS laws.
I believe thats why at least four have been chosen to join the women police force.
We think its a mixture of British and French women but its social media accounts
are run by the British and they are written in English.
Raqqa is believed to be where Scottish aid worker David Haines is being held
hostage, and where the British IS leader dubbed J ihadi J ohn is thought to have
filmed the beheading of US hostages J ames Foley and Steven Sotloff.
Ms Smith told the Sunday Telegraph that many of the British women move in the
same circle as the killer and are likely to know his identity.
Others known to be in the city include Khadijar Dare, 25, a mother-of-one from south
London who earlier this month tweeted her hope of becoming the first female hostage
killer.
Sixteen-year-old twins Salma and Zahra Halane are both thought to have married
jihadis since leaving their Manchester home in J une.
While former Kent housewife Sally J ones, 45, tweeted: You Christians all need
beheading with a nice blunt knife and stuck on the railings at Raqqa.
Come here Ill do it for you!
But Sarah Khan of counter-extremism group, Inspire, said that female recruits will be
disillusioned.
Its often women who are bigger enforcers of patriarchy than men, but if you look at
Islamic history theres never been any notion of morality police, its absurd.
Give it a few months or years its going to hit them and they are inevitably going to
want to come back.