Muslim women suicide bombers: Implications for the Jiihad and counterterrorism efforts - Essay Example

men, on the one hand, will emphasize the seriousness of their intentions and, conversely, will make it difficult for counterterrorist officials to timely detect and prevent the imminent terrorist threat. The current state of knowledge about women-suicide bombers is relatively scarce. Researchers are lacking a single and universal answer as to whether female suicide bombers are villains or victims. More important are the implications which female suicide bombers carry for counterterrorism efforts and Jihad.

This paper will analyze the case of several female suicide bombers, to identify their real function and effect on the public idea about Jihad, and the influence which they produce on the structure of counterterrorism approaches against suicide bombers. A young 15-year-old girl enters an Iraqi police checkpoint on her way to Baquba; sensing something odd in her behaviors, a constable demands she be searched (Steele, 2008), A girl immediately announces that she is wearing a suicide belt that is strapped like a corset around her waist (Steele, 2008).

As a result of complex but timely actions of the police professionals, a girl is immediately handcuffed to metal railings, while police officers take off her outer garments and defuse the device – it takes the highest degree of professionalism to detect and safety defuse such devices (Steele, 2008), but it would be fair to assume that such lucky cases are rare. The case of Hasna Mariy is much more tragic – no one remembered a young girl to read chapters from Koran or to be increasingly religious; she rarely went to their village mosque and used to call their imam a lech (Ghosh, 2008).

“So it was not religious extremism that made this villager from Anbar province blow herself up at an Iraqi police checkpoint last summer, killing three officers and injuring at least 10 civilians. Religion not the basic motive in her actions, Hasna was considered one of the innocent victims of the recent jihadi trends” (Ghosh,