 Our event this evening is a broadly speaking event for those of you who are fans of our broadly speaking events More than mere victims of women and violent extremism I want to start just by thanking a number of the people who made this happen the our the staff at Civic Hall particularly Marissa Mlotec and particularly our colleagues at the Royal Norwegian Consulate General and at the UN the Norwegian mission to the United Nations we have done a number of events with the Norway and various Incarnations, and we're very happy to be partners I also want to thank Liza Mundy and Catherine Zope who are the editors and curators of broadly speaking And the Liza's the director of the bread winning and caregiving program at New America Before we start our conversation. I have the honor of introducing our special guest that the her Excellency Minister Solway Hurne Who is the Minister of Children Equality and Social Inclusion in Norway for the Americans in the audience? Yes The very fact that she has that title says so much So Minister Hurne has been she's as a politician in the Progress Party She's been the Minister of Children Equality and Social Inclusion since October 2013 And as part of the Cabinet of Prime Minister Ernest Solberg We had an occasion to do an event with last September. She's been an elected official since 1995 she was elected to the Storting the Norwegian Parliament From Rogaland in the 2005 election and has been re-elected for two consecutive terms in 2009 and 2013 Since being elected she's served on the Standing Committee on Justice and the Standing Committee on family and cultural affairs as Minister Minister Hurne has been a leader in the policies for paternity leave and family policy Particularly this is also for Americans amazing to hear the cash benefit that allows parents to keep children at home instead of in kindergarten She's also called for the Introduction of maybe the only American custom that Norwegians would want to import in the area of family and child policy But the custom of date night which does allow people to remember. They're not just parents So with that I would love to invite Minister Hurne to the podium to give her remarks. Thank you Thank you so much Anne-Marie and Thank you so much for to your colleague and also to your staff for arranging this this event we are in Norway the Norwegian Council are we are grateful for this opportunity to work together with New America and Also to shed light on this very important issue that we are going to to handle this this evening and ladies and gentlemen Millions of people around the world are suffering from war and conflict Which lead to devastating consequences for women and girls? Homes are ruined and women and children are forced to flee They are taking hostages. They are raped and they are killed Women and girls all over the world not only in conflict affected countries Suffer from widespread and serious human white violations In Syria and Iraq Teenage girl are captured by easels soldiers who sell them as slaves 270 teenage girls in Nigeria were kidnapped April last year and are still not realized from Boko Haram In Pakistan the Taliban shot and nearly killed Malala Simply for wantoning and education Serious violation against women and girls is a common thread among the violent extremists Their fear of gender equality ties them together My own country is no stronger to violence extremism the act of terrorism on 22nd July 2011 in Norway where the most violent act my country has expired since the second world war It shocked our society in a very core The tragic event reminds us that extremism is not only linked to Islam Norway's homegrown Terrorist called himself a Christian His hatred against women's rights and equality bears a strike Resumables to to that of extremists from other parts of the world Ladies and gentlemen Security Council resolution 1325 women peace and security has made it clear that women's participation Rights and needs are important factors for internationally peace and security Society with a high degree of gender equality tend to be more peaceful and have fewer conflicts Last year the Security Council adopted a resolution calling for the promotion of women's empowerment To halt the spread of violence extremism in other words the link between women's empowerment gender equality and Messages to counter radicalization are recognized If we want to effectively fight violence extremism We should listen to the woman and on the ground and support their work Women are not only victims of extremists They are also a force to be reckoned with both in good and sometimes bad ways Some women join violent movements Others can be buffer against the spread of violence extremism in their communities and their countries Norway has a long tradition of supporting women's leaders and their organization on the ground in fragile and conflicted affected countries We see there is a need for target strategies efforts encountering those LEDs complex challenges Internationally the Norwegian government's aim is a much stronger implementation of Security Council resolution 1325 Therefore a few weeks ago my government launched a Released action plan on women's peace and security The action plan is our tools to help enforcing the UN Security Council resolutions This is down through broad cooperation include things civil society The plan focused on specific areas For instance women's participation in peace processes It will be an important part of our security and foreign policy in the year ahead of us Another important action plan my government had launched is against radicalization and violence extremism Measures list here are important for our international work But they are also important for how we deal with these threat international on local level Preventive efforts are key in ensuring fundamental values such as democracy human rights and security And let me be clear Norway will continue to lead the way when it comes to gender equality and women's rights internationally We strongly believe it is a condition for sustainable peace and development Therefore we have also made girls access to education a top priority in our development policy Girls in area affected by conflict often lose the opportunity to go to school And ensuring education for children including in conflicts area is our common responsibility If we fail to deliver we are bound to see more extremism and less peace I'm looking forward tonight to hear the debate this evening on the role of women in countering violent extremism You all represent an impressive range of knowledge and expertise And I'm very much looking forward to hear your different viewpound tonight This year with the celebration in In the UN Beijing plus 20 and the marking of the 15th anniversary of Security Council resolution 1325 we have an unique opportunity to renew our commitments to war Gender equality So I would like to end by echoing UN women's in setting 2030 as the end date for the gender inequality By then the world need to be more equal and more equal place especially for women. Thank you So I now have the pleasure to introduce the moderator of our panel Lydia Paul green Lydia Paul green is the deputy International editor of the New York Times She's been at the time since 2002 where she was from 2005 to 2009 the West Africa correspondent and certainly That experience is highly relevant to the the violence. We're going to be talking about tonight And from 2009 to 2011 the South Africa correspondent She has won numerous prizes including the George Polk Award for foreign reporting For her coverage of the violence and the conflict in in Darfur in Sudan So Lydia Paul green who will then introduce our panel and we will have our discussion so we have a great group of people with a really wide breadth of Knowledge from places all around the world So I'm not going to waste a lot of time on their bios because you guys can all Google them on your phones But just very quickly we have Peter Bergen who is you know one of the premier journalists of our time covered? The wars in Iraq his book manhunt is the definitive Telling of the hunt for bin Laden lately. He's been doing a lot of reporting around Isis and particularly looking at the women who are joining Isis and what their motivations are We have Mona El Tahaway whose book head scarves and hymens is about to come out She is a lean leading Journalist and commentator on the issues surrounding women in the Muslim world She's also a contributing columnist to the New York Times We have Asne Syresta whose new book one of us is the story of Anders Brevik the man who massacred 77 people in Norway and She'll be talking to us about the extremist roots of his of his violent Philosophy and then Alexis Okao who is a contributing writer at the New Yorker and who is currently working on a book About standing up to people standing up to extremism in Africa So I'd like to invite them all to join me on the stage We've all agreed in advance that we're gonna be very kind to poor Peter We took a vote and we decided not to engage in the ritual sacrifice So, I mean we're all coming at this question from a lot of different perspectives, so I thought I'd start with something really general Is violent extremism regardless of whether it springs from You know nationalism from a faith a particular misguided faith inherently anti-feminist and misogynistic I'd love to hear I'll say for you to maybe tackle that for us first It seems it is scholars say that all racist ideologies have a Big portion of misogyny in them and I think that most of the extremist trends that we see today are definitely racist trends and in Brevik's case He of course his main goal is to get rid of Muslims from Europe They should either be deported Convert or get killed But he says I'll just say briefly now, but he says that who's to blame for this Who's to blame for the Islamization of Europe? It is the feminists That is logical turn because the feminists have feminized Europe so we can't stand up to the Muslims and He says that his account is that between half a million and one million Western European women have been raped by Muslims And no one is there to stand up for them because the feminists have feminized them a week or the the European man So that's definitely a very core of his ideology. It's Anti-feminism and he wants to wanted to restore a patriarchic Europe where men rule and women are back to more reproductive role banned from higher education and It's interesting to see many of his points. There are some countries in the world that have Some of these parts in their Constitution if you include the ban of female driving so it's it's interesting to see how this extremist ideologies how they are very Similar on several points But do you find so many of you could pick it up from there. Do you find points of connection with the particular brands of extremism that we're seeing flowering in the post Arab Spring Middle East right now Where are the commonalities and where the divergences well, I think first of all it's really important to Look at religions across the world And we were talking earlier about Abrahamic religions and what they have in common and I think you know having lived in Egypt Israel Saudi Arabia and United States most recently and Speaking as an Egyptian Muslim, you know I see the common threads between say ultra orthodox men who will delay planes for hours because women are sitting next to them To what I call the Christian Brotherhood here in the United States and the damage They've done to reproductive rights in you know Many southern states and across the country and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and an orphan and I say this jokingly But it's quite serious I say you know all these men are basically obsessed with women's vaginas and I always tell them stay out of my vagina Unless I want you in there and I think But and so when I look now at you know Egypt and the other countries in the region and you know You take a country like Saudi Arabia Which is perhaps the example that we all think of as the most extremely comes to misogyny and you see women infantilized there You know beyond belief treated as five-year-olds almost for their entire lives And then you see you know what what has happened in Egypt and essentially to kind of wrap it up really quickly That there's a visceral realization among many men whether they belong to extremist groups or not That women have basically broken down this door and they're out there now in what used to be a male dominated And this great sense of entitlement to public space And so you hear about these mob sexual assaults sexual violence in increasing more more women speaking out So it's this kind of moment in history where men realize they've been challenged in unprecedented ways and then my challenge for me and that you know that I try to deal with in the book of my own Writing and that we're talking about today is is women who choose to remain in these fundamentalist Islamist groups Like the Muslim Brotherhood and then those who go to join groups in the Arab world We'll call them dash because they don't like to be called dash and I call them murderous shit Excuse my language, but it's really important for me as a Muslim to make that distinction So from the women who go all the way to these violent radical extremists to those who support groups like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt And support things like female genital mutilation What makes these women kind of give into patriarchy and become the full soldiers of patriarchy is you know Kind of a lifetime concern for me So I think it's both a historical moment and a moment of real questioning for these women Whose side do you want because this is the time to decide you know I think that also we're seeing in you know We're seeing an interesting moment that crosses are the sort of the concerns that we're seeing in the Middle East and in Europe And you have to wonder does this sort of in your face You're seeing more and more people in your in Europe both men and women Going to join ISIS being drawn into these this this kind of violent extremist Movement and you have to ask to what extent is the kind of in-your-face secularism of Europe? Driving this this this feeling this feeling of Alienation I mean whether it's you know hard-line bands on head scarves, you know things like Charlie Hebdo is is that sort of Is that sort of part of of of what would create an embattled sense of Space for people of the Islamic faith in Europe I mean, I think there's a very telling statistic which is 10% of the French Population is Muslim 70% of the prison population in France is Muslim. So that's an astonishing statistic But that said, I mean that isn't true in the United States American Muslims are better educated have higher incomes than the average American yet We're still seeing people attracted in small numbers from the States It's not like the hundreds we're seeing from France and the UK and Holland and even you know scores from Norway And you know we're seeing and there one big difference is we are seeing women We at the New America Foundation are looking at every single named individual who's gone of which are about just around 600 We found the 10% of them are women They are average age of 18, which is kind of an amazing number And this is unprecedented. We didn't see this during the Afghan war. We didn't see it in the Bosnian war We didn't see it. We saw one Belgian female suicide bomber during the Iraq war So this is very different now. Why is it happening? You know people want to be heroes in their own story. There's a kind of adventure kind of component There's the claim that this is an Islamist utopia which a lot of people believe and by the way It's not that they're ignoring the beheadings They see the Islamist utopia as being the beheadings are part of that so for instance I took the opportunity today of reading the tweets of These Colorado teenagers who have hundreds of pages of tweets and they you know They say gays need to be need to die like these are Colorado teenagers And so that fact that ISIS is throwing gays off buildings and you know and killing them that way is actually part of the project That they are admiring it's not so it's not that they're sort of dismissing it. They're actually embracing it Yeah, is there a I Mean just to probe a little bit on that I mean, why do you think that the fight that the that ISIS is drawing in women at a time in a way That these previous battles in Afghanistan did not in Bosnia. You didn't really see that Is there something particular about this moment in society? It's primarily women from Europe from what I understand What's the appeal? Well first up their claim to be an Islamic state is partly true I mean they control more territory they control about the population of Switzerland, so it's eight million people You know they I don't think their pretensions to be a state are going to go on forever But the fact is that I'm you know back Bin Laden ever said I'm the caliph You know Baghdadi is making a claim his claim to be the caliph means that he's not only in charge of ISIS He's in charge of all Muslims anywhere and throughout history and it's an extraordinary claim Most people that I think that's a serious delusion, but a lot of people don't unfortunately And they are signing up for you know, there's a lot Islamist utopia and maybe in the 70s. They might have joined some other kind of At a group that kind of allowed them to you know, maybe if there were Americans They might have joined the weather on underground of the Black Panthers But you know this is sort of a way of joining something that's exciting and Utopian in its claims and we've seen this throughout You know European history that people are attracted to these groups that claim that they have you know That a perfect society is being created and they understand that history has a direction They've created this perfect society and whether that's Marxist or Islamist It's sort of the same impulse that we've created heaven here on earth most people don't buy that but some people will Yeah, I mean Mona you mentioned earlier this this this notion that the women who go to join ISIS are more like the women who went to Be with Charles Manson that and I mean sort of building out from that the question that is you know is ISIS a you know as some people have called it a death cult rather than a You know an extreme Version of the kind of violent the sort of the natural Successor to al-Qaeda or is it something completely different? I think it's both I think it's very disingenuous for my fellow Muslims to claim that that dash has nothing to do with Islam because they clearly base a lot of the stuff they do on various parts of scripture and sayings of the prophet and obviously then take it to a most horrific Radicalized version of that and something that I find absolutely Unconscionable and abhorrent, but but at the same time it's They are they belong to something that has just gone horribly wrong in this moment in time with with the way that certain people Think Islam should be but you know one of the things that they've done with with women that I think is is quite fascinating And and horrific at the same time because you know that these women is we talked earlier when we had our call the women who were drawn to ISIS or dash and then you know you perhaps in an imaginary Conversation, I would say to them How could you go and join a group that is enslaved women as we know they've done with with Yazidi women and you know They will dismiss them as infidel women But then you know I want to know as a feminist because you often hear this word agency I mean we use this word agency quite lightly and I think it it's a very serious matter a lot of my fellow Muslims again Because of we fight the stereotyping of Muslim women is oppressed and and you know We want you to see us as women with agency We'll talk about the women and the girls who join dash as having agency But agency to do what because I think when we put this feminist label on it It's like using feminism to cut feminism at its knees So I'm I cannot support these young women going to join a group basically that says girls as young as nine Should be married and you shouldn't work and you know you just come over here Basically and produce babies because they're not going to fight with these men But you know some of the teenage girls in the UK and you might have crossed you might have come across this Peter but one of the latest reports about them was saying that they love the the Isis eye candy So that seems to be trying to market itself as the good-looking jihadis to join To draw these European girls so they're like the pop stars of the the armed extremists The lunatic fringe basically of the armed extremists and you know when you asked me about your average kind of jihadi I think he's this really ugly bloke with an ugly scraggly beard anyone knows anything about me knows I love bearded men, but not the scraggly bearded type And so the the dash guys are the neatly trimmed beards and they have all these videos I've uploaded on YouTube to target these girls and there are quotes from these young women in the UK Because this is a very British saying all these that you know They're eye candy and they think that they've these kind of pop idols and they and they must seem on top of it So but then at my question then is so you recognize the sexual agency of these girls to then be sexually attracted to these men It's really quite warped, you know eat your heart out Justin Bieber But when it comes to who goes there is the pull factor that they talked about like something pulls them And then there's the push factor to which we should also not forget I've studied many of the cases of the Norwegian girls who go to fight with the dash or with Isis or to go not to fight Because none of them are allowed to fight there Even though it seems that the men and the women who go they go for the same reasons But they go to play different roles, but the the girls that I've studied there The push factor is that they don't feel at home in Norway. Is there something about us? Should we also talk about our societies? Is there something about Europe that don't make them feel at home? So they all gone through some radicalizations. They are mostly from Well, it's quite secular not very religious homes Muslim homes those that I've studied and they go through the radicalization in the mosque or in some Islam net and some of the organizations and They want to wear the first the hijab Then the niqab and they're not allowed and one girl for instance She was not allowed by their families or by the state school. Yeah at school And one of them who was an A student, but she could not have Sport classes because she could not bump into a man. That was her impression. So she didn't get her How to say her bachelor? high school exam and is and that's What radicalized her made her okay, this society is not for me. I can't live my life there I can't finish high school because even she had best degree in all matters But because she didn't do the sports she could not get her exam and go into university So it's like we also have to look at is there something that pushes these girls out Are there something can we work be more flexible? Can we be do some compromises? And I think one last thing about that is a very important to support the civic society Support support the civic organizations who talk on the ground with these kids Because they have a great distrust in the government and greatest trust in and you know the elites in In the policy makers. Yeah These these extremist groups always seem to arise in response to what's seen as a straying away from orthodoxy You know the the the received You know power of the day is not You know following the right path and and so I wanted to I wanted to bring Nigerian to this discussion because you know Northern Nigeria is a very deeply conservative society Islam has been there for hundreds of years And yet suddenly you've seen exploding on the scene a group that has a very different Interpretation of its duty towards Islam and it's in its practice of Islam That has taken a terrible toll On women and girls certainly but on the country as a whole So could you talk a little bit about sort of the roots of Boko Haram and where it came from and the impacts that it's had? Yeah, I mean Boko Haram arose in a setting where I mean Nigeria for a long time Since independence unfortunately has been plagued by Decruption by leadership that hasn't been accountable. So in northern Nigeria even before Boko Haram, there have always been efforts by Residents to push their leaders to be more accountable and leaders have recognized this and that solution has always been in the form of Sharia law But it's always been what residents have wanted has always been sort of a more moderate form of Sharia they've To them Sharia represents their leaders being accountable. It represents them providing for the poor Using money, you know non-corruptly Punishing criminals And so politicians will go when it's time for them turn for the elections will say yeah We're we're gonna push for a more extreme version of Sharia law And what happens is they get elected and what they impose is just something sort of like a morality police where they'll say Oh, you you know, you can't watch dancing and music in movies or you Or women can't ride motorbikes and residents push it back against that because that's not what they're used to they're used to Sharia law existing along with the more secular federal law They're used to Women in society have always been no matter if you're talking about Muslim or Christian context always been leaders in their communities They've always worked. They've always Driven they've always done things that men can do despite being in more conservative societies and so But the problem with the fact that politicians would sort of use Sharia as this political tool and not follow up on it Not follow up on being accountable It created and narrowed the space for People who are dissatisfied With the corruption who wanted to change and the change wasn't coming about through these politicians And so because there was well, there wasn't enough space for these people to to come through You know, they they became disillusioned as happened in other places and and more radicalized and that led to the formation of the book or am it led to Young imams preaching about the ills of society like corruption and a lot of people really being in support of it You know, they were like this they're saying this is right. That's what we've wanted What happened was though is that book or am evolved? From that sort of more pure beginnings into, you know, copying al-Qaeda now copying ISIS and what's interesting about book or am is that Kind of like the Christian fundamentalist group the LRA and in Uganda It's never been interested in being a fight that maybe like ISIS women and men can join it's always been a fight for men You know, they've always had particular use for girls and women. That's a sex slaves You know without a doubt so young women have never been interested in joining because I mean within their local settings The government baby corrupt and unaccountable, but at least women have a great degree of freedom, you know with education Was working and so it you know, it's interesting now that book or am is pledged lesions to ISIS You know, are they actually besides copying their public executions and beheadings and things like that? Are they gonna imitate anything more substantial? I wonder in terms of are they trying to recruit young people are they trying to make a more appealing to women because as of right now When when book or am occupies certain territories, you know women are afraid, you know, they don't want to go near them And maybe they eventually as their last resort, you know, they will Partner up with some of the members but only as last resort. It's never seen as an appealing thing for women in Africa and West Africa or even in Uganda. Yeah But do you see a You know, you see this sort of the similarity between these these practices between the LRA, which was a you know, which which is a kind of cult-like group that claims these kind of Christian roots and this this prophetic vision Very kind of post-apocalyptic. I mean, there's a real linkage there between the you know The ideology and the sort of death cult nature of Boko Haram, but also the death cult that you see with ISIS is Is religion legitimately a part of of of what these groups are about and And and how does that how does that affect the way in which these groups deal with women? I Think the short answer is yes. It's not a comfortable answer, but To I mean the two points one is 80% of the terrorist attacks in the world today take place in five countries All the which of Muslim majority countries Afghanistan Iraq Syria Libya and Nigeria and they're all conducted basically by Islamist terrorist groups Well, it's impossible to understand them without reference to their Islamic beliefs And just as Christian fundamentalists, you know played an instrumental role in the Crusades It's hard or at all, you know You can't understand the settler movement in the Palestinian territories without reference to our fundamentalist Jewish beliefs about the sacred nature of those Territories you can't understand this without reference to Islam if bin Laden was here or Abu Bakr about al-Baghdadi, of course He wouldn't enjoy this very much But he would say it's about the defense of Islam and and he he would have a very articulated Way to explain that and I just think you know We live in a society that's uncomfortable to say these things because either for PC reasons Or we live in an increasingly secularized world that isn't comfortable with references the discussions of or taking seriously People's religious beliefs even even deluded as they are But I do think there is something to do with this and I don't think you could take it away Yeah, can I have something about please? Yeah, I think it's really important as well to remember that I mean I mentioned earlier women of Islamist movements and and For me some of the hope that I got was I went to Tunisia last year and Tunisia if anything of all the countries That have had our pricings in revolution since 2010 when Tunisia opened the way basically Tunisia has another movement which people often compare to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, but they're nothing like it I mean as an Egyptian who's been to Tunisia several times And it was very familiar with the Muslim Brotherhood and in the Salafis or that the ultra right-wing radical versions of Islamists Tunisia's another movement is much more like the average kind of conservative Egyptian and the moment of hope that came for me there Which which helped me see that not all all Islamist women Should be or are always the foot soldiers of patriarchy is the moment when Tunisia the Tunisian constituent assembly had to write their constitution and The women it was because of the women fighting from the secular side as well as the Islamic side Not all the women from another but enough women from their so-called Islamist movement in Nahrada Which had a kind of a majority among all the different? Coalitions that that came together to make the constituent assembly enough women from the Islamist movement Pushed for a clause in the Tunisian constitution Which is the first of its kind in the Arab world that guarantees equality between men and women and when I interviewed one of these women from In Nahrada now this woman when she when she went to university. She's a lawyer She went to law school under Ben Ali's regime She couldn't wear a headscarf because headscarves were banned She had to wear a beret because she wanted to go to school But also continue to cover according to her own you know interpretation of a salmon interpretation that says women must cover their hair And when I asked her why she pushed for this Article in the Tunisian constitution She said because I believe that men and women are equal and because I believe that when women fight only men benefit And I think this that that is basically you know the heart of it when women fight only men benefit But then you know I see it in my Egyptian context and I and the Egyptian Muslim brotherhood is nowhere near that We had women in Egypt who allowed religion to be used against them to justify things like Removing the age the minimum age of marriage to call female gentle mutilation Which is a form of torture and terrorism Practiced on the bodies of girls and women to basically silence us and make us into the brides You know the nine-year-old brides of Baghdadi and his fellow lunatics So I think and this is the moment that I think we're in in the revolution Which is why I say that we need a social and a sexual revolution in which we make these points in which we say I will not allow you to look to use these scriptures that for the longest time allowed you to silence me as a Muslim woman can make an observation If the big problem is is that some of these scriptures are in the Quran and the Quran is not a book It's the word of God right and I mean I'm agreeing with you This is I think this is the problem about fighting back against some of the This is very I think it's why it's very hard for Muslims to say. Hey, these guys are completely wrong Right you but I know scholars who are using the Quran to fight those guys I belong to a movement called musawa, which is a global movement for equality and justice in the Muslim family was launched in Malaysia in 2009 and he has scholars like Amina would dude who led us in a mixed-gender Friday prayer She led men and women in prayer which many people will say the Quran doesn't allow But she says the Quran doesn't prohibit so you have scholars who are fighting a frontline fight I know exactly we're talking about you know, because I'm from I'm from this But we are at a moment because I know these scholars and I belong to this movement where more importantly Female scholars of Islam are saying we have the right to challenge this and to say you can't use this against me And I do wonder it is a prerequisite of the advancement of feminism a broader kind of secular secularism, right? I mean, can can a can you be a an observant conservative Muslim woman and in a feminist context if you're not part of a Religious minority in the sense that the broader context you're in is one in which in which the the governing rules are secular, right? so I mean I think basically my question is is Religion compatible with with is religion in this way compatible with feminism Well, this is what I call myself a secular feminist But if we had someone like Amina would do to here who is a scholar of the religion and who has studied and I'll ask her You know that Sunni Muslim the Sunni Muslim world's University basically that produces clerics for the whole world She will tell you that she is a practicing Muslim who believes that you can be but she's not conservative You know the problem for me is the conservatism of it if any religion I find the conservative orthodox elements of it not Conducive to feminism which is why I'm much more secular or much more progressive in the interpretation because I for me I don't want to get into the fact of my verse versus your verse, but I think this is a problem for Christians I had I had students at the University of Oklahoma who were Christians who you know Who would admit to having signed a purity pledge now for your average American feminist? This is in the United States for your average American feminist the idea of a purity pledge Well, you promise your father of virginity till you get married I mean this is totally antithetical to feminism, but but these girls identify as Christians You know more progressive liberal interpretation of Christianity perhaps would reject a purity pledge I mean my point here is this this is again not specific to Islam This is a fight that I think all people of religion have to fight and those of us who identify secular have to put The flag down and stop cow-towing and giving in to the conservatives Well, that's why I think the solution at least in sub-Saharan Africa when you're talking about Boko Haram or al-Shabaab That the solution is more political rather than religious. I mean at the end of the day Boko Haram is not a group that I mean yes I mean says it's a original mission did have to do with Islam, but it grew directly out of a political situation Al-Shabaab as well. And so at the end of the day, I mean I think that solution has to be political It has to come from you know governments or on the ground as well from who are willing to engage With the root causes of these insurgencies I mean I always say Boko Haram could have been defeated a long time ago If there are any actual legitimate will on the part of the Nigerian government, but it hasn't it was ignored And so because this sort of battling of verses from the Quran the Bible It's not gonna work in a lot of cases and I think at least in these two cases with the Boko Haram and LRA. It's Yeah, I mean it's interesting. I've I mean I've been following You know this this question and the American obsession with radicalization in the Sahel for years And I think many of my many of my colleagues who worked in West Africa sort of scratched her heads and said, you know Is how likely is it that you know a homegrown insurgency would arise? Out of and this might sound in politics, but the black African Muslim experience Which is a very distinct thing from the the the the Arab African Muslim experience And and which is itself distinct from the Gulf You know there there are many different gradations. So I mean, you know There are certain the house of culture in northern Nigeria is quite conservative and was conservative in the pre-Islamic era And and ported that it conservatism with it Into into Islam, but there are other parts of the Sahel where you know, you know, the the the traditions are very different You go to Burkina Faso where people look quite similar to the people right next door and you'll see women riding motorbikes you know, which would be never seen in In in in a place like Kano in northern Nigeria, so I think I think there's enormous variation in gradation Which again like leads me to the question of You know, how how does you know something that's such as an extreme ideology that has such rigid Gender roles kind of come out of in a place where you've had so much fluidity So well, you know Alexis and I were talking earlier about the black America the black Muslim experience in Africa in that You know, a lot of the excuses that are usually made for the armed radicals of from specifically Arab context of you know colonization poverty Despotism all of that exists in many other sub-Saharan many other countries in Africa, especially those sub-Saharan You don't get African jihadis And I think the element of racism is an important one to look at when you look at dash now Isis because it was a story a few months ago of an Indian man who went to join them and he ended up being giving toilet duties And he said I didn't come here to do it to clean toilets. I came here for jihad But you know in in that very kind of Hierarchical and this is a specifically gold thing But but but in many parts of the Arab world where unfortunately very racist and it's where we're in deep denial about this racism Despite all this song and dance we make about Islam being very very You know equal rights and Bilal and the prophets, you know call to prayer man Was it was a black African? So this man obviously went there and joined Dish and found out that you know, they were racist bastards and left and went back to India So I think this is an important lesson for us because you know for me as again, you know speaking as an Egyptian Muslim I'm really distressed by the way that dash ends up creating and I call them I insist on calling them the lunatic fringe minority of the Islamic spectrum But you know, they keep being that we allow them to set an agenda Obviously, they're very violent and and it's not a good thing But we focus on them in such a way that they create this agenda that the rest of us have to react to And I'm setting an agenda a feminist agenda and there are other people in Egypt and other parts of the Middle East and North Africa setting an agenda that is much more important than the dash agenda But you all and the media keep making a circulate around them And you know telling ourselves inside out and apologizing which I refuse to do because I don't apologize for them because they do not Represent me and I'm not responsible for them But what I wish we would do is when we find examples like this Indian man who had to leave because of the racism You know point out what they're doing wrong But also point out all the other things that are going right so that we're not constantly revolving around the dash agenda Do you know what I mean because we're taking a group that is yes granted very violent But also tiny in terms of numbers of the greater Islamic world and we're constantly told you know apologize for them Justify them and explain why why they do this. Yeah, I mean, it's true Bokhram is a couple thousand people out of a country of a hundred and seventy million And I I even like don't really like calling them an extremist Islamist group because I mean as we said it's a death cult I mean, that's what it is. It's copied. It's it's roots are with LRA It's all these original militias that at the end of the day. We don't know what they want. They're just nihilistic They just want to create havoc and I think that's the best way to describe them I don't think it's even worth calling them extremists. Unfortunately, it's those sorts of people that create history, right? I mean history is not generally made history often. It's bad news done by bad people And the news business covers tends to cover bad news not news is sort of indifferent And there's a natural tendency to cover this because that's I think just human nature I mean that you all try to cover this in great detail CNN where I work does and these guys have seized the news stories I mean, you know Brookings says those 46,000 active ISIS Twitter accounts. That's the most conservative number up to 90,000 So, I mean, I think it's unavoidable that we focus on them Even if maybe, you know, it would be desirable not to but I mean we're living in a world where they're making history and news I mean, they've you know, they've done something unprecedented which is create this jihadist not since you know, the Iqawam took Saudi Arabia in the 1910s 1920s Has a jihadi group done what they have done and we can't take that away from them right now Hopefully we will be able to but we can't ignore it. I'm not saying ignore. Yeah I'm talking about the context that we give them Not even the context the size of the amount of attention we give them of course we can't ignore them I mean, I come from a journalistic background, but just I want to put them in context in in the sense that you're saying What is the population of Nigeria? What what is what what? How does the rest of the Islamic world? Feel about that and what they represent and who are the people resisting against them? And what are they doing? What about the women vigilantes northern India who are like taking up homemade arms recently and like You're Muslim also and the female Kurdish fighters You know that the anarchists and the the anarchists and the feminists of the Kurdish fighters in Iraq who and in parts of Syria as well I mean, these are heroes because you know what we talked earlier as well I mean the idea of women joining radical groups and armed radical groups I mean this is very old. This is not new, but at least they were fighting I mean women of the Badr Meinhof gang in West Germany There's a very famous book on women and violent extremism or terrorism whatever you want to call it That was actually titled shoot the women first because women of Badr Meinhof were extremely fierce Especially when police raided their hideouts and so there was a famous quote from a West German police official Who would advise his police officers to shoot the women first because they fought the police most fiercely So you have you know, this is not new women wanting to join violent groups and in a sense the fact that women are violent Was I mean this is where agency does come in women can be as violent as men I'm not of the feminist belief that if women took over this world will be all touchy-feely love text No It's not about women and men were human beings and clearly men and women are drawn to violent armed radical groups But a woman in the Badr Meinhof gang and a woman in dash are two very different creatures Well, let's just tell us a little bit about these these You know women who are joining these You know Muslim women who are joining vigilante groups in northern Nigeria Yeah, I mean what I found so interesting it was that That because I mean so northern Nigeria, I mean it is Described as mainly Muslim, but there are a lot of Christians living there It's always been a religiously diverse place And so, you know, maybe one would think that maybe be Christians who are staying up to book around But I mean it's Muslims like development believers who don't believe book around represents anything that's to do with their religion And so, you know in the beginning it was thousands of men boys who were just taking up homemade guns and other types of arms and fighting against book or M and now Women are joining because I mean it sort of you know in tune with the local context Met women have usually even a conservative more conservative areas in Nigeria been able to do most of what men have been able to do And so now they're joining vigilante groups protect their towns their villages And and and you know, it's just an interesting care counter narrative You know, we hear so much about book around attack these people and female suicide bombers But not much about the people who resisted on the other side and it's there. I mean Actually, it's several key Attempted attacks that book around launched recently to take over a major northeastern city was only repelled because of the vigilante It's as opposed to Nigerian military So they're very crucial right now in the war in Nigeria I mean, I think women have played a really crucial role as peacemakers in my experience in in in in conflicts in Africa What role do you see for women in countering extremism? I mean like in Europe, for example What where where is there a place for you know for for the mother of that girl who's going to ISIS to play that role? To to detect and understand when someone's at risk Yeah, that mother has gone to Somalia. She says that if I live in in Norway, my children will either be Fundamentalist or a fist so she brought the rest of the children because the girl I mentioned Somalia So she brought the whole family back to Somalia But when you study the girls who have gone To Syria, for instance, you see they're just as bloodthirsty when you read their Twitter accounts or their Facebook's just like I love that beheading or I really One of the most one of the blogs I read this was a woman who was so happy to be living in a villa Of course taken from the Syrian people who used to live there and she said that the most happy I am when I get Good spoils of wars from the kufars from the infidels which are you know hoovers and washing machines and Just so so the and still the same woman is on a marked. You don't mission But she's so happy for the new kitchen utilities you could get from infidels So it's the housewives of Rocco. Yes But this is just one little point before I I get to them what women can do is also how a religion How it's being abused whether it's here In with the dash and I says or like in in Breviks case that I've written about He says he's fighting for Christian culture. That's why he did it for Christian European culture and then when he was asked in court About his Christianity. He's like well, I'm a cultural Christian So the judge had to ask him but okay, but what do you believe and do you believe in resurrection? Oh, I'm not that Christian. He had to answer And the judge also have you read the Bible? Oh, yes, I read it in primary school until the Labour Party took it off the of the school Curriculum so of course that means he hasn't read the Bible. So it's it's just that religion. It's so easy to adhere to It's been all those thoughts have been thought and approved before you even you're just like an angry whether it's a angry white supremacist supremacist like rabbit or Angry the angry to French Quachi brothers in Paris is like you can always say it's it's about Religion yeah, but I'm sorry the question about what women can do I think we also have to think women can do the same as men. I think that's Actually one of the what I learned from My mother who's a written feminist literature for children Always told me you can do whatever a boy can do and a boy can do whatever you can do So I was like in Norway that I think one thing that became far with with Norway's like We don't really have so much gender gap like what can women do what can men do? But what can we all do and after all this is a anti whether it's Bravik or I says it's anti-human movement? anti-feminist but most and for Foremost anti-human so I think Most important thing is that we just expand the civic organization That work with the kids work with those who are at risk because it's not randomly who goes or who becomes radicalized Like there's patterns the clear patterns of them Whether they're men or women in the radicalization process and of course a guy like Bravik very difficult to find because he is You know he's why he could buy all the weapons he liked he could buy all the fertilizers And it nobody asked a question because he was not there was no red flags if his name was Abu Abu Dulla or something he couldn't have rented that farm and bought the wrong fertilizers for the carrots that he did and the neighbors would have known so of course those Terrorists to live among us are much more difficult to to Yeah, well, I mean, you know terrorists like You know the the the young man in Islamista the fellow in Pittsburgh who gunned down a bunch of women, you know, you see these incidents where they they They, you know, it's leave these misogynistic Tracts behind Do these do these men have something in common with with ISIS or with Boko Haram? I mean, do they share DNA? Well, the men I mean the men are move on and particularly young men I'm more likely to be I mean with a new America. We have a data set of 250 Americans Since 911 who've involved in some jihadi terrorist crime 13 of them are women. So I mean just you know and well, which is I mean which makes sense because at the end of the day This is a highly misogynistic view of the world. They don't want women to be involved in an active way, right? And then and they want them just to be passive, you know, kind of part of the You know come and be part of the jihadi family, but that's it So I mean, no, I think there are commonalities It's a supposed return us to like something that's more pure right when when men had you know I think especially in In a subs here in Africa in North Africa to the Middle East as women gain more agency as women gain more rights When men are threatened by it in a lot of situations And so the these such these groups are seen as a way to return when they had power not over just You know there may be situations but also over the women in their lives and things like that And I think you can still even see that in a very developed country like this where Yeah, men are still threatened by by the gains women are making and yeah I mean I you know in Hannah Rosen's book the end of men. I mean she you know She she wrote you know, what if the modern post industrial economy is simply more congenial to women than men? You know, we're living in a society where you know blue-collar jobs are on the wane You know, we have industries like health care and you know various other things where you know so-called female Virtues and skills are more valued You're seeing societies like like South Korea where where the balance is tipped and parents prefer that were once very much You know male dominated and sons were vastly preferred now people prefer daughters You know because they worry about who's going to take care of us when we get older where girls have a more earning power So I think we are living in a world I mean our men wrong to feel threatened by by the the the the environment in which in which they live I mean in in You know in Europe in Muslims is you know in in you know, Egypt or in in Nigeria You know, is this is the space that men control shrinking? For weak men at least I think we're talking about a certain type of men who feel that there's they don't get They don't have the position that their fathers had or the privileges that their grandfather's had It's shrinking and they they because we have to they have to fight on equal terms with women So it is definitely if you are you know a guy who like all these White killers, whether it's private or the guys you mentioned it is a feeling of yes It is a feeling and he's written extensively about he how he hates feminists and women Roger and and those who are They felt they lost privileges and they felt they should they disturb better and That is like brevick his main Goal on 22nd of July on the island Well, he ended up killing the kids, but his main Target was the former Norwegian Prime Minister who was the Prime Minister all through his Childhood from he was to till 17 with some governments in between So she was the one the person who defined his miserable childhood his Miserable a miserable teenage period and is a symbol of you know self-assured women who just Take their plans place and take for granted that they So they feel threatened. Yeah, definitely. I think that's a common trait My question is is it men who feel threatened or is it the notion of masculinity that is under threat? Because I think it's how we approach masculinity what it means to be Masculine because whether I look at Egypt, which is where I'm from or the US where I lived for almost 13 years before I Was back to Egypt I think it's this notion of masculinity because I think of you know Egyptian where we are in Egypt now if you think of like the mad men era where the US was kind of about to tip over where Don Draper's losing everything to Peggy and you know all the other women all being threatened by them You know this this is kind of like where we're kind of trying to push it up in Egypt But here in the US. I mean, I mean I saw it I oh and I continue to see it and and for me and the struggle for me is that especially as an Egyptian feminist And I find a lot of inspiration from black feminists because I look at women like Bell Hooks and Audrey Lord and others Who have taken all those notions all those strands of fighting racism and sexism and looking at things like say black notions of masculinity in an environment where you feel beleaguered Because you know that you have racism and so the community kind of you know hunkers down and says, okay This isn't the time to talk about notions of masculinity and and sexism and stuff because we've got all these people hating us But as a feminist who is fighting these different isms you have to say I'm fighting racism and sexism So my fight is against this constructed notion of masculinity that that promotes the patriarch over that and that Patriarch tells me to shut up when I want to fight against misogyny within and without and also against the Islamophones And that's how I connect Egypt and and the US together because masculinity is under threat here as well About you know and everything from Susan Feludi's book backlash which looked at kind of like white male masculinity So what is going on now when I when I look up black Twitter and I see a lot of young black women on Twitter Talking about black black masculinity and that's where I kind of get a global sense And you look at what's happening in India right now Indian women fighting back against sexual violence Especially because we're hearing more about these horrific Gang rapes and I honestly think as someone who you know I like to think of myself as a global feminist rather than just as an Egyptian feminist I think we're a moment in global feminism where we're kind of looking at across You know I look at African feminists. I look at feminists in India I look at feminists in Latin America, and I feel genuinely it's a moment where we're recognizing this global movement And we're asking men who are trying to move beyond these traditional notions of masculinity again to choose sides It's not men who are under threat. It's these traditional notions of masculinity that are under threat But you know you also have women who are reinforcing these these you know Really terrible practices against women. I mean, you know you cited FGM earlier This is a practice that you know it varies from place to place But it's often you know carried out and continued, you know from mother to daughter to you know and Enforced in that way, you know when I was a correspondent in India I interviewed the the mother of a man accused of of raping of a young woman and You know she basically said to me well if he did it, you know It's really the girls fault because she shouldn't have been you know away from her parents home And this was a woman who was sitting there surrounded by her daughters So I do think that there there is a you know There's a role but positive and negative that women play in these contexts so I mean how you know how important are women in in sort of Reinforcing these kinds of beliefs and values Well, I think FGM and other examples I think the way I usually try to explain it is these women understand what is expected of them by their society And unless you try to change this side. Oops. I'm not sounding like Star Trek Unless you try to change these societies Helistically you can't I think a lot of mothers in these scenarios like the weakest link mothers that I've spoken to about FGM They will tell you if I don't have this done to my daughter She will not be able to find a husband so these women these these mothers This is gonna sound crazy But these mothers cut their daughters out of love not out of hate because they understand what they need to do to Their daughters to present them to a society that they will then provide and protect So unless we do this holistic change in which and you know many families in Egypt For example will stop cutting their daughters when their grandfather dies Why because it's the Patriarch that the mothers know they have to follow the rules of even if it's the mothers who continue the tradition So I think women understand women know how to survive and that survival says what does this patriarchal patriarchal society? Require of me and my daughters. We will do it for the crumbs that this patriarchal society throws us That's how I explain it I'm in Europe. There's a huge discussion underway about what to do about Radicalization what to do about foreign fighters both male and female Going over. I mean, I think and we were talking before the panel It seems that the United States is likely would in confronting this problem would take the kind of approach that it's taken Elsewhere, you know the kind of Guantanamo like lock them up and throw away the key European countries seem to be experimenting with different ways to to you know rehabilitate to track You know people who are who are who are any of these places? What what are you what are you what are some of the different things that you're seeing in in Europe to deal with this problem? Yeah, I think the European countries haven't really found out what to do. It's still early. So to make policy is There it's it's a great discussion about it But there are of course the hard line approach and then there's the soft approach and I think I think that Of course if you have committed crimes abroad you should be Be sentenced for that, but I think the soft approach actually would work better because when you look at there's no Organization called exit which is for X neo nazis and who were the best The ex specialist in Sweden this worked where where this organization where the neo nazis was strong Who are the best person? To get someone who's about to go into neo nazism to get him out of it It's someone who's been there himself. It's someone who can tell the youth like you know I understand how you're feeling because I was there myself and this is what's gonna happen to you when you go into these organizations and they gonna Take you over and the same happens with those who go to Syria who are the best people to fight Against other young people going. It's those who can said, you know, I went Do you know what happened to me in Raqqa? This happened to me. This is you know Place or whatever they will know what how to speak to these young people and I think that is why it's I know cases now of people Norwegian citizens in Syria Who don't who want to come home? But then they're so afraid of the you know, what will happen to me Will I be incarcerated for the rest of my life? There's a trial now going on that they sit in Syria and they follow online what is happening to that first trial So I think it's it's very important to get them back De-radicalize them and and and have them around and and speak to those who are about to go Controversial both in Uganda and then later in Nigeria when they both floated the idea of having an amnesty program You know saying a lot of these people these fighters probably regret being there. They probably thought this was gonna be one thing It's turned into another And then you got a little bit different because a lot of the fighters were abducted at first And then they became sort of more hardened and a lot of them went to escape anyway in Nigeria though I mean, there's still that that sense that a lot of these fighters Do want to get but do want to get out but they aren't able to because now, you know, if they do they'll be killed They'll be punished But I know that Nigeria is still thinking somewhat about having a spring which in my opinion I think would be good because I'm sort of the belief that Not all hope is lost for some of these fighters. Have there been any women who've come back from Syria and been caught? I'm not Familiar with any cases a lot of this is what you know a lot of these are one-way tickets I don't know Party party also, you know, it's very dangerous serious one of the most dangerous conflicts for the modern era It's five times more violent in Syria right now than during the Iraq war, which is also very violent So Nicole Mansfield from Flint, Michigan 33 year old African-American woman went over there and was killed About two years ago. So I people aren't coming back, but I will say on the United States front I mean, there's a sort of zero tolerance of any form of risk And so I'm reporting on a group of teenagers from Chicago to 1917 and 16 the Khan family and They were stopped at O'Hare Airport. They were going to join ISIS. They all the brother was going to be a fighter Like the 17-year-old sister was going to be a sort of wife to one of the fighters And they have a 68 year old Irish Catholic lawyer called Thomas Durkin who said look at a fundraising dinner I attended he said look if this was an Irish Catholic kid who'd gone You know who was kind of doing something online, you know The FBI would have gone to their parents and said hey, you know something's up with your kid Instead he's facing, you know 15 years in prison for something that at the end of the day He didn't do he didn't leave Chicago didn't go anywhere and he was excited by the sort of online media And so right now we have this sort of very, you know, we're putting people in prison for very long periods I don't think that will change it was at DHS yesterday We had a discussion about it could we come up with some kind of off-ramp for these kids The point is is that you're you're gonna take some risk if you do that because somebody was being you know You end up being with people who then go ahead and do what you didn't want them to do anyway But I so I don't see the I don't foresee the government doing what the Danes are doing or other You know European countries are thinking about we should have amnesty programs or rehabilitation programs I don't see it happening. Well, I mean I think this gets to one of the sort of fundamental issues here with Which is that the the question of collective guilt versus lone wolf, you know the the you know someone like Brevik or like you know, Elliott Roger is seen as a lone wolf, but Someone who goes to join in Islam Islamic insurgency is seen as being you know, but in the case of You know the young woman who who joined who is part of the Charlie Hebdo Plot the girlfriend of Kulub Ali, you know, I mean, she's kind of like a lone wolf to me So it's a it's an interesting distinction between sort of how you how you treat people who get caught up in these things You know, even to use that passive language of get caught up as opposed to you know You know go and join up Making it passive rather than active I think also an important an important element of this can everybody hear me because I can't hear myself again I told the microphone guy. I'm loud anyway, but I can't do myself I think an important thing that we also need to discuss is the radicalization that happens when These men are put away forever or for long periods of time like, you know There have been people in Daesh who have said they spent time in Abu Ghraib, you know So the United States unjustly unfairly in prisons people Tortures people and then what do you think is going to happen to those people because we go through this in Egypt, too You know, you put someone in jail for a really long time and you treat them terribly and you talk to them What do you think is going to happen when they come out? Do you think they're just going to go back and live in the suburbs again? Do you think they're going to go back and you know, just erase those years of their lives? It's important to remember that some of those men in Daesh I don't know how many maybe you know Peter, you know We're in Abu Ghraib and we're perhaps tortured by the United States and what did the United States do to Iraq? That created an environment I'm not saying that Daesh is an American invention because there's a lot of conspiracy theories out there But honestly as US citizens you have to ask yourself What do things like Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and the United States terrible history in foreign policy in the Middle East? Do in creating groups like Daesh that then we have to apologize and clean up for it. You have to face this I think the entire Daesh ISIS leadership was sitting together in Kampukkah Which is another prison camp in Iraq So it's like definitely not a place to a prison is not a place to deal radicalized people Yes, that seems Yeah, you mentioned the lone wolf and being part of a bigger group The Norwegian social authorities wanted to take him away from his mother and they said when he was five years old They said that if this guy is not taken away from his mother, we are fearing for Abnormal development in him that did not happen. And when you look at the two French brothers They also grew up with a mother who was not able to take care of them just like Breivik's mother She was the lone mother with Five kids none of them had fathers around the French authorities wanted to take away the kids same as with Breivik She fought back so they took three and left her with two and that's those two The others were placed in foster care and then she takes to the street. She becomes a prostitute When the younger brother sheriff is 10 he finds his mother have committed suicide in the flat Then he's placed in foster care and orphanage Then we say they were radicalized by the Iraq war by the caricatures by Abu Ghraib the oblation and we don't ask you about what made these kids fertile ground for those ideas And I think we also have to talk about childhood here And we have to talk about our societies and when you in France the Muslims as you mentioned, you know It's an underclass. They're not accepted. So it's like we also have to talk about integration This of course is the long-term Degradualization, it's not the quick-fist fix, but this is going to carry on and we Yeah, the minister here. We have to talk about childhood Adolescence teenagers and how we integrate and yeah, I'll leave it together I wonder if wives can play any role in this. I mean, I thought about wives a lot both when you have Isis recruits going to join the war they bring their wives their kids With Boko Haram in Nigeria a lot of the founders of that group a lot of the key leaders Their wives were left behind in these northern towns and cities and then they were detained by the military And then when Boko Haram kidnapped the 300 girls last spring One of their when they're so willing to negotiate with the government They said well, you know if you one of their points was well if you release our wives and you leave them alone You know then and do these other things then maybe we'll release the girls and I'm just wondering if you know maybe that can also Be something that could be employed as a tool because a you know whether if they're not being brought along with the fight And they're being left behind but they're still considered to be family by these fighters Do they play any role in and in the conflict and in either way pushing it back forward, you know I think that there are some interesting sort of Clues that we can glean From Isis and its its views on women One of the cases that's really fascinated me is Kayla Mueller who was the only Surviving female surviving American in Isis custody and You know a lot of us who knew about her plight long before it was publicized had Speculated, you know would would Isis be willing to to be head a woman on camera. Would they bring a female jihadi to do the beheading? Is there anything about sort of how those events and of course eventually, you know Isis claimed that she was killed in the You know strikes after the the Jordanian pilot was was was Killed but is there any is there anything I mean what sort of what does that bring to mind for for you all in terms of How Isis views some is it true that she I read that she was given as a wife before she was killed She was given to be a lot clearer. Okay. I mean, I just think it was a bridge too far for Isis to do that And that's what happened. I think it was I was I was I thought that they wouldn't execute her And I think they did but they didn't behead her and a bit in a public fashion because they do have certain limits But I wanted to address the foreign policy question because I think it's an important one You know American foreign policy certainly, you know the invasion of Iraq set the conditions for what we See today, there's no doubt about it, but The Iraqi government begged us to come in to get rid of this scourge So and you know when we intervene in Indonesia and save hundreds of thousands of people from the tsunami or when we intervene very belatedly And when Bosnians were killing the Serbs when the Europeans were doing nothing and stopped that sort of genocide essentially so I just I would just sort of qualify with what you said is that Yeah, you have to look at a sort of a little bit more holistically American foreign policy sometimes has very bad outcomes But also have some pretty good outcomes particularly for most of them So I mean when the Indonesian tsunami happened that one of the most striking things to me was how little the Muslim community did for this For the these victims and it's really the United States that led the relief effort So I just want to mention that as a sort of county at while I agree I was specifically talking about Daesh and the environment and radicalization and things like torture and you know an incredibly legal set-up Called Guantanamo in which you've had men imprisoned for years with no charge and no trial And you know you can rescue all the people you want an astronomy But in the United States in the Arab world in the Middle East and North Africa Most people associate the United States with militarization Invasion and the only Americans they see are soldiers And so and then at the same time when we're fighting against torture and Despotism and we're fighting against dictators that the United States administration has continuously supported against their own interest What happens in Indonesia is very far from what happens in the Middle East So I'm talking about you know these young men who see what the United States does and see how the United States sides With the people we're trying to liberate ourselves from and that's the form That's the end of the foreign policy. I'm talking about I hear what you're saying, but I'm talking about another part of foreign policy The paradox is we over for Gaddafi who was absolutely the worst person and it was really a US-led effort obviously with the Arab League and others And now we've created a sort of potentially another ISIS state in Libya So I know it's very complicated because in this case we did exactly what you're suggesting Which is we got rid of this terrible desperate that a US-led effort But it's now produced an absolutely worse outcome probably than Gaddafi himself So I did say it's just not that it's very complicated is what I'm trying to say One thing I wanted to make sure we had time to talk about was the environment for women in the post Arab Spring Middle East It was very inspiring to see women at the barricades And then horrifying to see women being attacked as they were out there either protesting or reporting on the protests And then you see the elected Islamic parties were then overthrown and now where are we now? Well when it comes to Egypt which I can speak about the most because I'm from there but I'll touch on other countries very quickly I think what we're doing in Egypt is we began a political revolution that has basically ended up replacing one man with another And it's basically two forms of authoritarianism in the form of military rule and Islamism And for me they're two sides of the same coin, they're both very hierarchical, they're both very misogynist And clearly not conducive to feminism or gender equality So the challenge on the political level is to create alternatives to these forms of authoritarianism And where I see the alternatives coming in is that the ground up change what I call the social and sexual revolution So to kind of put it a bit more poetically if you want, we removed the Mubarak from the presidential palace as I often write But we need to remove Mubarak from the bedroom, we need to remove Mubarak from the street corner We need to remove Mubarak from our mind because it's those levels of revolutions that you're talking about If you look at the other countries across the region that you're dealing with You have everything as violent as Syria is to the mess that Libya is but then Tunisia Where the Islamists who were a form of authoritarianism that I mentioned have learnt the lesson of coalition building And you've had many more women involved in the politics there because of the specific situation of a country like Tunisia So I think that what we realise is happening is, and I think this is much more of an internal thing It's like very frustrated when we hit anniversaries, on the outside over here Your quickest conclusion is the Arab Spring has failed which really pisses me off Because we're fighting over there every day, it has not failed what has happened is This is the consequence of 60 years of trying to unravel military rule as we are in Egypt And we're four years into it So this is the mess that is the natural outcome of just four years into trying to create alternatives to Islamism and military rule What concerns me the most is are we going to be given a space to create those alternatives And that's why I constantly refer to those Western allies For whom now someone like CeCe is someone who's going to keep the country stable So we can have an economic conference in Saini so we can go back to business as usual But we refuse business as usual because we've paid a really high price to get to where we are So where it comes to women, I think the social and the sexual revolution is at its heart a feminist revolution Where women realize that neither of these forms of rule is to their benefit So I think we can take a couple of questions Hi, thank you all for your insight My name is Hezhar Naili, I'm a reporter for Women's Zee News I wanted to add a little bit to what has been said I met with three families in France over the past summers, whose daughter went to Syria And one thing that came back during the interviews is these girls could not identify anymore as belonging to the French society So it's indeed something that the recruiters of I.C. are playing with However, I think it would be very insulting to the other Muslim women Who live through discrimination every day in France and who did not decide to join the rank of I.C. in Syria To think it's the only reason behind that Another thing is the family said we don't really know who is talking to us when our daughters send us text messages Or discuss with us through Facebook At least at the beginning when they join I.C. it seems that the people that are taking charge are writing Eventually the last thing that I would like to say is I don't know if these people will necessarily need a deradicalization A lot of these women want to return to France But of course they're not allowed to I talked to one brother who went to Syria His sister is detained by Al-Nusra Front He met her twice but they did not allow him to return with his sister So I think these women a lot of them want to return They're not allowed to do so and I think the experience itself with I.C. has deradicalized them They have seen beheadings and they just realized that I remember one father telling me that my daughter told me that what they're doing is far from what I've learned about Islam We talked about these Twitter accounts and there was a Buzzfeed piece with what were claiming to be tweets from women who were pledging allegiance to ISIS And the truth is we don't know who's writing these tweets I mean they could all be an elaborate ruse that are all written by men This all feels very theoretical Okay folks keep them brief Hi, I'm Alessandra Massey at International Business Times We talked a lot about Daesh and Boko Haram But I was wondering what the role of women is in Shia militia groups and Shia extremist groups In Shia? In Shia radical groups? Peter you want to tackle that one? Not to put you on the spot? Some of the first female suicide bombers were with Hezbollah But I don't really know the answer to that in any detail But if you talk about Iran, I mean this isn't Shia radical groups But if you talk about Iranian society and feminism in Iranian society If you have an active feminist movement in Iran In a way say that doesn't exist in Saudi Arabia So it's not something that can be dismissed because of I told the Khomeini and the way that the Islamists or the Shia fundamentalists Co-opted and hijacked the Iranian revolution Is one thing But the Iranian feminist Sino, they're like eons ahead of saying What Saudi feminists have been able to achieve But that's not your question, the question is about radical groups and I don't know Thank you so much