Description
This paper critiques the perceptions of women’s involvement in the Islamic State (IS) in Western academic scholarship. Using discourse analysis on a sample of scholarship from both orthodox and critical terrorism studies research journals (2014-2019), this paper demonstrates that the portrayal of women in IS perpetuates narratives drawn from Orientalist and Islamophobic practices. These academic portrayals often depict the female IS participant as motivated solely by romantic interest and naively seduced by the promise of exotic adventure. We find that scholarship takes a paternalistic tone and offers a rebuke of women for what is seen as abandoning Western freedoms. The conclusions of this paper are twofold: critiquing the discourses of academic scholarship, but moreover examining their implications for national security policy regarding women’s involvement in IS.
