How interesting! When an ISIS member’s lawyer wants to justify her having been allowed to return to Norway from Syria’s Al-Hol camp, he goes right to her niqab-dump! Why ever does he do that? How interesting that he clearly thinks we’ll be … reassured about something… consider it something positive and good… that a woman has rejected the niqab…
Yet my burqa:my freedom, and my niqab:my freedom have become international memes; the world’s press routinely publishes I love my burqa and you’ll never take it away from me opinion pieces. We are intended to find Islamophobic this man’s implication that removing the niqab – and hey wait a minute – –
How do we know she didn’t dump it under duress, desperate as she is to get Norwegian medical care for one of her children?
“The woman remains a security concern,” [a local terrorism expert] acknowledged. “But at least she will be under control and surveillance in Norway. Apart from France, no European-born returnees from the war in Syria [have] carried out new terror attacks in Europe.”
Oh yeah right apart from France… As in – apart from that, Mrs Lincoln, how was the play…
Bringing her back to Norway is bringing down the Norwegian government; but after all what a good idea to let this “ISIS Wife,” as the NYT headline absurdly calls her, back in the country.
Keep calling these chicks ISIS wives. Go ahead. I mean, that’s all the poor stupid dears were, right? Mobile vaginas immobilizing themselves for a time in ISISland in order to produce babies for one husband after another. No other personal identity here, and certainly no moral agency and certainly no slave holding or beheading applauding or propaganda issuing… The sexism with which these women are being received in Europe and America is astounding.
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UPDATE: Norway’s ruling coalition has disbanded after the populist Progress Party (FRP) left the government, partly due to the repatriation of a mother with suspected ISIS links from Syria.
The Prime Minister said there were no options, but there were. Bring in the child for treatment while the mother stays behind and works out her citizenship options. She grew up in Norway and presumably has family there who can look after the child. She has a Pakistani background, and one of her husbands has (had?) Chilean roots – she may qualify for citizenship in those countries, or in whatever country her other husband came from (he is not identified in news stories).
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ANOTHER UPDATE: So as the thing becomes a big story – a whole government falls because someone thought Norway needed to repatriate and permanently surveil an ISIS militant – we can scan a big ol’ page of news stories about it and find not ONE reference to this woman as an ISIS militant. Let’s see what we find… ISIS spouse, ISIS widow, ISIS bride, ISIS wife… Occasionally we get suspect, woman, returnee… But take a look and you’ll see overwhelming use of the reductive, sexist formulation. Do we call ISIS men ISIS husbands? Why not?