Ailantha
  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact

Fifty Shades Of ISIS?

3/5/2015

2 Comments

 
   The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria - ISIS - started off as as a small ultra-extremist, ultra-violent Iraqi splinter of Al Qaeda that Al Qaeda eventually renounced and disowned for its brutality.  
    When ISIS tried to join a  militant rebel group in Syria to fight against President Bashar al-Assad the Syrian rebels basically told ISIS to get out.
    Which, unfortunately for Syria, Iraq, and the rest of the planet, ISIS has refused to do.
    Within the past year ISIS has seized and occupied thousands of square miles of Syria and Iraq, claiming that the occupied areas are now part of an Islamic state it calls a caliphate.  The people who live in those areas have fallen under the harsh Islamic Sharia law that ISIS brutally enforces on the men, women, and children under its thumb.
    ISIS has succeeded in its conquests because this group, so abhorent that no other rebel or terrorist group would be associated with it,  has  young men from all over the world rushing to join its ranks, which have swelled to the point where  ISIS currently has 30,000 fighters, 19,000 of them from 90 foreign countries.
    ISIS has a wildly successful recruiting method, attracting  alienated young Muslim men  of the electronics and screen  generation by means of social media campaigns carried out on Facebook and Twitter.  They post high-quality youtube videos of their brutal murders mastered to look like  live video games. They distribute fast-paced video games that are  fantasy murders.   They call to young men to become jihadi fighters, and their message promises adventure, excitement, comaraderie,  money, fun and things that are perhaps  more enticing:  Identity. Manhood. Power.  The taste of domination over the subjugated. 
    Less easy to understand is the pull of ISIS on young Muslim women. 
    Besides the three Glasgow  school girls  recently in the news, dozens of  young women from Western countries,  teen-aged girls or only slighlty older,  middle-class and educated, have  run away to Syria  to join ISIS.   And the trend appears is growing.
    As with boys, ISIS uses chatty social media messages to attract girls.
    But what is the pull on these girls?
    A sense of religious fervor and zealotry?  A longing to escape their lives?  To somehow find themselves? Are they seeking to be part of what they see as a great cause?   Are they desperate to belong? 
    Probably all of the above,  but might  it not also be that these girls are in  search of a great romantic adventure that involves giving themselves over totally to the will of a strong man?
    The ISIS media campaign promises girls that they will be brides of jihadi fighters. 
    Perhaps it's the word "bride" that has the pull.  It sounds romantic.  The stuff of a girl's dreams, this particular one being that she will be taken by a strong, brave, powerful man and will become his. She will give up her will, dress in black from head to toe, live for her husband, and be subject to him in body and soul.
    Perhaps it's a dream of total will-free submission, a psychological twist of the Fifty Shade Shades of Grey fantasy that has held women all over the world spell bound. 
    The boys who flock to ISIS dream of being the conquerors, the girls dream of being the conquered.
   But what these naive girls who join ISIS are really walking into is
a life that condones brutality and  oppression, the life endured by desperate women in countries where religion dictates that  women are physical property  and have no freedom or voice or rights or protection from abuse or mistreatment.   
   Of course there will be some women who will profit from conditions in the Islamic State.  The women who will be given positions of power over other women. The women who will be needed to police the women in carrying out the will of the men.
    But life for most of the women living in the Islamic State  will be even more dismally oppressive than life for most of the men, who will take their desperation out on the women.
    And their right to do so will be  the will of God.
  Even the women will believe it.
Picture
2 Comments
Cindy
3/5/2015 12:05:23 am

Thank you for posting this, Patti. We need to be talking about this. These kinds of things cannot go on in the world without the rest of us knowing and lamenting and praying for a change of heart. God help us. God help them to awaken to the Truth that the only power worth wielding is the power of Love.

Reply
Patti
3/5/2015 12:59:28 am

Amen, Cindy!

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Picture
    "Hail Mary"
    by Patti Liszkay
    Buy it on Amazon:

    https://www.amzn.com/1684334888

    Picture
    "Equal And Opposite Reactions"
     by Patti Liszkay
    Buy it on Amazon:

    http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa
    or from
    The Book Loft
    of German Village,
    Columbus, Ohio
    Picture
    Or check it out at the Columbus Metropolitan Library
    Picture

    Archives

    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013

    RSS Feed

    I am a traveler just visiting this planet and reporting various and sundry observations,
    hopefully of interest to my fellow travelers.

    Categories

    All


























































































Proudly powered by Weebly