ISIS里的“黑寡妇”

美国最近发生的枪击事件引发了诸多疑问，其中一个问题就是：凶手塔什芬•马利克是谁？

与丈夫在圣贝纳迪诺的假日聚会上大肆杀戮的马利克，成为近期对西方发动恐怖袭击的又一位女性，而ISIS宣称对所有这些由女性实施的袭击事件负责。这批人中还包括哈斯娜•阿布拉森，她为策划巴黎恐怖袭击的凶手提供掩护（两人在抓捕过程中被一同击毙），以及哈亚特•布美迪安。在法国《查理周刊》今年1月遭到袭击后，她与男友阿米蒂•库利巴利袭击了一家超市并杀害了一名女警察，随后逃往ISIS控制的地区。没过几周，她就在法国ISIS杂志《Dar al-Islam》的问答栏目上出现。

事实很清楚：女性也有可能成为恐怖分子。然而，这一现象仍然令人震惊，女性顺从和顾家的形象依旧深入人心。以马利克的事件为例：当局研究了她在沙特阿拉伯生活以及在家乡巴基斯坦上大学的经历，仍然无法确定这对夫妻中究竟是谁唆使了这次袭击。而目击者表示，正是马利克开了第一枪。与此同时，媒体和一些政治人物正在努力搞清，为什么这样一位被一些人形容为“时髦”、“温和”、“孝顺”、“服从”的“羞涩的家庭主妇”会变成一个冷血杀手。

同样的，许多人把关注点放在了马利克是一名妻子而且刚成为母亲上。针对她的母亲身份，有人咒骂（母性本能本该阻止她的行为），有人辩护（产后抑郁症才让她做出这样的极端举动）。与此同时，她的丈夫赛义德•里兹万•法鲁克同样抛弃了他们六个月大的女儿，这一事实却被忽略不提。根据流传的说法，这对夫妻通过约会网站相识，ISIS既没有指导过也没有联系过她（尽管马利克宣誓效忠ISIS，该组织随后也把这对夫妻称为其“支持者”）。不过这也没有阻止一些人的猜测，他们认为ISIS正在安排一些激进的女性与意志不坚定的男性结婚。

在圣贝纳迪诺的袭击之后，还有许多问题等待解答。但目前可以肯定的是，马利克对ISIS的支持属于一种常见的模式。许多女性被这个组织所吸引，从事招募、宣传和支持等工作，尽管这个组织以残暴压迫女性而闻名。据估计，大约有600名西方女性加入了ISIS，类似马利克这样的非西方女性估计要远大于这个数字。据报道，仅仅突尼斯一个国家就有约700名女性来到叙利亚加入圣战组织。尽管如此，我们似乎还是对伦敦女学生或是密西西比州前拉拉队长试图加入ISIS这样的新闻更感兴趣。

人们总是刻板地认为穆斯林女性处于从属地位，尤其是在那些穆斯林为主的国家，这是我们理解ISIS为何吸引女性的主要障碍。我们还倾向于关注恐怖分子对女性的压迫，这让许多人难以相信女性会参与暴力的极端活动。毫无疑问，厌女症常常让女性成为恐怖主义的目标，无论是ISIS在叙利亚和利比亚的性暴力和绑架，还是最近发生在美国科罗拉多斯普林斯市一家计划生育诊所的枪击事件。科罗拉多恐袭的行凶者在作案后喃喃说道：“再没有婴儿尸体了”。然而，女性参与各种类型的恐怖活动也是由来已久。以ISIS为例，西方女性加入该组织的原因有许多与男性类似：感到不合群，认为社会不公，受婚姻伴侣的影响，渴望冒险，或是想要宣泄。而ISIS在使用英语和法语之外的语言吸引非西方女性时，这些因素如何起到作用，还需要进一步的跟踪调查。

想要防止女性支持ISIS，就需要更好地理解和对待这些动机，开展更有针对性的活动和项目，吸引更多女性社会工作者、社区领袖和家庭成员来参加。女性可以是恐怖主义的行凶者和受害者，但同样也可以成为解决方案的一部分。在重新思考恐怖主义对女性的策略时，我们也必须注意抵制活动带来的风险，尤其是要避免西方公众在ISIS的袭击后对戴头巾的穆斯林女性公开骚扰。此外，要解决这一问题，光做好女性的工作还不够；在美国，任何危险人物都不应当拥有那些更适合出现在遥远战场的枪支，而ISIS正在寻求将战火燃烧到美国国内。

确实，随着ISIS越来越多地把暴力输出到西方国家，马利克在圣贝纳迪诺袭击中扮演的角色，提醒人们该组织对女性杀手的禁令也许已经不可避免地放松了，或至少是更难执行了。在当下的关键时刻，这一认知极为重要，枪击事件直指女性犯罪的盲点，充分显示我们还远远无法阻止她们的致命行动。（财富中文网）

杰恩•哈克比，杜克大学法学院国际人权中心法学副教授，是《性别、国家安全和反恐：人权视角》一书的合作主编。

译者：严匡正

审校：任文科

With attacks in the United States come many questions, including: who was Tashfeen Malik?

We have a dangerous blind spot in seeing how someone can be a wife, a mother and a terrorist

After storming a holiday party in San Bernardino with her husband, Malik joins a string of women linked to recent high-profile attacks in the West for which ISIS has claimed credit. Her peers include Hasna Aitboulahcen, who sheltered the alleged mastermind of the recent Paris attacks before both died in the raid to capture him, as well as Hayat Boumeddiene, who fled to ISIS-held territory as her partner Amedy Coulibaly killed a policewoman and lay siege to a supermarket in Paris on the heels of the Charlie Hebdo attack in January. Within weeks, Boumeddiene was featured in a Q&A piece in Dar al-Islam, a French ISIS magazine.

The facts are clear: women can be terrorists, too. Yet, the phenomenon still seems to shock and tropes about female passivity and domesticity hold firm. Take the case of Malik: authorities are probing the time she spent living in Saudi Arabia and at university in her native Pakistan, unsure who in the couple instigated the attack. Witnesses are now describing how she shot first. Meanwhile, the media and some policymakers wrestle with how Malik, described by some as “modern,” “soft-spoken,” “obedient,” “submissive,” and a “shy housewife,” could turn into a killer.

Likewise, much is being made of Malik being a wife and a new mother. But while theories on Malik’s motherhood range from damning (maternal instincts should have stopped her) to exculpatory (postpartum psychosis made her do it), the fact that the father, Syed Rizwan Farook, also left behind their 6-month-old daughter goes unremarked upon. By all accounts the couple met through an online dating site and ISIS neither directed nor communicated with them (though Malik pledged allegiance to the group, who later called the couple its “supporters”). Yet this hasn’t stopped some from speculating that ISIS is now in the business of arranging marriages between radicalized women and unsure men.

In the wake of the San Bernardino attack, certainly there are still more questions than answers. But what is so far alleged about Malik’s support of ISIS fits a general pattern. Many women are drawn to the group, taking on recruitment, propaganda, and support roles despite the fact that it is known for its anti-women horrors. There are estimated to be 600 Western female ISIS recruits, but the number of non-Western women is believed to be much higher. Around 700 women from Tunisia alone have reportedly travelled to Syria to join jihadist groups. Despite this, we seem most fascinated with the specter of London schoolgirls or a former cheerleader from Mississippi trying to join the ranks of ISIS.

Stereotypes about the subservience of Muslim women, particularly those from Muslim-majority countries, are a major barrier to understanding the group’s appeal to women. So too is our tendency to fixate on how terrorists oppress women, a fact that many find difficult to reconcile with female involvement in violent extremism. There is no question that misogyny often puts women in terrorism’s crosshairs, whether it be ISIS’ sexual violence and kidnappings in Syria, Iraq and Libya or the recent attack on Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs after which the shooter rambled about “no more baby parts.” But, so too have women long been involved in terrorism of all stripes and in the case of ISIS, its Western female recruits can be drawn by many of the same factors as men: alienation, inequality, marriage, adventure, and pull of the cause. How these factors play out when ISIS attracts women outside of the West, and in languages other than English and French, also needs tracing.

Efforts to prevent women from supporting ISIS need to better understand and address these push and pull factors, with programs better tailored to include more female caseworkers, community leaders, and family members. Just as women are perpetrators and victims of terrorism, they are also part of its solution. Risks of backlash must also factor in the re-think on terror strategies about women, not least to avoid the public harassment of Muslim women wearing hijab in the West that follows ISIS-related attacks. The answer, however, won’t always just be about women; in the United States, all dangerous people should be prevented from access to guns that are more suited to the far-away battlefields that ISIS now seeks to recreate on U.S. soil.

Instead, responses in the shooting’s aftermath based more on ignorance and fear than evidence have also pointed to a lingering blind spot on women perpetrators, and one that shows just how far we really are from tackling their deadly acts.

Jayne Huckerby, an associate clinical professor of law and the director of the International Human Rights Clinic at the Duke University School of Law, is a co-editor of “Gender, National Security and Counter-Terrorism: Human Rights Perspectives.”