THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN THE RELIGIOUS EXTREMISM: CASE STUDY OF THE ISLAMIC STATE

In 2014, the unstable political environment in the Middle East provided the opportunity for an extremist jihadist group to establish its own state on the territory of Iraq and Syria – the so-called Islamic State with its society based on the ideology of Islamic extremism. This ideology also clearly defined gender roles for men and women. This paper examines the phenomenon of women’s roles in religious extremism with the aim to analyse gender roles within Islamic extremism by using a case study of the Islamic State and its society and its roles. The analyse of the case study is based on and informed by the definitions of Islamic and religious extremism. The paper concludes that in the early days of the Islamic State, women only had the supportive roles of wives and mothers to raise the next generation of fighters, but in the final phase of the Islamic State, women could take active roles in its defence and become fighters or suicide bombers.