This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/385
Hamas gives women equal Jihad obligations
January 18, 2005
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Online magazine grooms women for jihad
A new online magazine published by the 'Women's Information Office on the Arabian Peninsula' aims to teach women how to contribute to jihad, or holy war.
"Our main mission: push our children to the battlefield, like Al-Khansaa," declares Umm Raad al-Tamimi in the magazine.
The monthly publication champions the ideology of Al Qaeda terrorist chief Osama bin Laden: "Drive infidels from the Arabian Peninsula," or Saudi Arabia.
Named after a female Arab poet whose life straddled pre- and early-Islamic eras, the magazine appears to be the first of its kind targeting women.
"Close ranks on the side of our men," orders the publication, which also dedicates space to alleged Al Qaeda "martyrs" in Saudi Arabia.
Al-Khansaa was famous for her eulogies, particularly that written for her brother Sakhr, who died in a tribal feud.
She later sent her four sons to fight jihad, all of whom were killed.
"We will stand up, veiled and in abaya [black cloak], arms in hand, our children on our laps and the book of Allah and Sunna as our guide," the editorial in the first edition said.
"The blood of our husbands and the bodies of our children are an offering to God."
The publication carries a section entitled "Women's Camp (Muaskar)," which is reminiscent of Al-Qaeda's military online magazine "Muaskar Al-Battar".
It talks of the "physical preparation for jihad", with the first lesson focussing on building up one's arms, without illustration.
Another is devoted to basic knowledge of how to rescue wounded fighters.
Women are recommended to have at their disposal a first-aid kit, containing among others "natural honey and Zamzam water" from the Zamzam spring in Mecca, which Muslims believe originated from heaven.
Another article covers "Our children... how to raise them?"
"Jihad must be instilled in them at an early age... from birth... their education begins at the foetal stage," it said.
"That's why a man should carefully choose the future mother of his children, that is to say (one who is) pious... and vice versa."
The magazine has triggered mixed reactions on Islamist Internet sites.
One contributor to a web site blasts it for "poisoning" women's ideas while another accuses it of "seeking to instil an extremist and terrorist ideology in children, overstepping boundaries."
A third, however, commends the magazine which it argues "restores women's dignity, trampled by fashion and pornographic magazines."
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IMRA Newsletter
Hamas gives Women equal Jihad Obligations
Dr. Joseph Lerner
25 September 2004
News sources and opinion writers have been surprised by the increased number of women suicide bombers, successful and unsuccessful. However, the first paragraph of Article 12 of "The Charter of the Hamas" (late 1988) expressly deals with this issue:
"Hamas regards Nationalism (Wataniyya) as part and parcel of the religious faith. Nothing is loftier or deeper in Nationalism than waging jihad against the enemy and confronting him when he sets foot on the land of the Muslims. And this becomes an individual duty (footnote 25) binding on every man and woman; a woman must go out and fight the enemy even without her husband's authorization, and a slave without his master's permission."
Footnote 25: Fard'ayn, is an individual duty under Islamic law, to distinguish from "Fard Kifaya", which is a collective duty. Fard'ayn is an absolute duty which overrides other considerations such as the duties of a wife towards her husband and of a slave towards his master."
Raphael Israeli, Harry Truman Research Institute, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel "Resistance Movement (Hamas) " pp.99-134 in "The 1988-89 Annual on Terrorism", Y Alexander and H. Foxman (eds.)
After
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This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/385