 This conference had its origins in the very first conference that the Bell School and the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies put on in December last year. We put on a conference on the crisis in the Levant and we were interested, pleased, intrigued by the number of times the issue of women Angie had came up during those conversations. In the sidebar conversations that we had with Vanessa and Raihan, we started to suggest that it would be really useful at some time in the future to put on a specific event looking at that particular issue. And in that sense, I guess it may be the only sense that we should be thankful to the so-called Islamic State because the Islamic State movement has really brought the issue of women in Jihad and women in rebellion to the forefront. According to one recent statistic that I've seen, over 600 women from Western countries and countless more from non-Western countries have gone to Syria and Iraq to join the Islamic State. And this really has brought to our attention and brought out of the shadows what has been the occluded role of women in Jihadism and in rebellion movements really throughout the history of those movements. Once the scales fall from our eyes, we realise that women have played very important roles in these movements in the past and they continue to do so. And it challenges a lot of our assumptions about why people rebel, why people become involved in these millenarian religious movements and take up arms against their fellow humans. We all know the familiar trope of the angry young man and we have assumed that religious fundamentalism, religious fanaticism and rebellion has been very much the province of young men. We understand the issues of testosterone, we understand the issues of male role performance and the literature of rebellion is full of theories that really focus around maleness and assume that this is a behaviour set that is confined to males. Well, we have really started to be unsettled in some of those assumptions and this is exactly what today is about. We have a stellar cast of speakers to take us through different aspects of the issue of women in Jihadism. The first session looks at the appeal of violent Jihad to women, the push and pull factors. We then move on to the roles of women in Jihadi groups. Then we move to look at the role of Islamophobia as a driver of women into Jihadi movements and we finish with looking at preventive measures, what are the preventive measures available to us. But ladies and gentlemen, to get us started this morning, our keynote address will be presented by Professor Amin Saikal, the Director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies. Amin is someone who needs no introduction to this audience. He is a many published and much respected author on Islam and political movements within Islam, beginning with some really groundbreaking work on the Iranian Revolution and the downfall of the Shah. He writes, I think, about five books a year. It's bewildering to keep up with Amin and I'm convinced now that Amin just doesn't sleep, so I'm sure that he will tell us some really important things to get this conference underway. So Amin, if I can call on you. Thank you. Thanks very much, Michael, for that very kind introduction. No, I do get some sleep, otherwise I wouldn't be here this morning. I'm very, very thankful to Vanessa Wendby and Rayhan Ismail for co-convening this conference and of course there have been two very strong teams behind them that have been really working very hard over the last few months actually to convene this conference. So good morning to all of you. It's not really keynote speech, I'm supposed to do the warming up, but the real expertise really come after my talk. This concept of combative jihad has become very complex and assumed a very controversial dimension. The ways in which this concept is deployed and conducted by such entity as the so-called Islamic State or what originators of it have called it Khilafat in Iraq and Syria. It falls outside the perimeters of mainstream Islam as many Muslim scholars and thinkers have argued. Even so, this has not really prevented a noticeable cluster of young Muslims from around the world joining the Islamic State and fighting for it. Whilst patriarchal in nature, Islamic State is attracted, in addition to thousands of males, a good number of Muslim women from abroad to fight for its Khilafat and jihad. What I would like to do this morning is to focus on three major issues. One is to clarify what is meant by combative jihad in conceptual terms, and the second is to discuss Islamic State in its underlying appeal to a range of foreign Muslim male and female enthusiasts who have gone to serve Islamic State for constructive or deceptive reasons. And the third issue that I would like to look at is to see what distinguishes Islamic State from other extremist groups and to harness some ideas about how to deal with violent Muslim extremism in the greater Middle East. The concept of combative jihad or holy war as it's popularly dubbed is not specifically mentioned in the holy book of Muslims, the Quran. It is rather the concept of jihad or sustained struggle or exertion in general that is repeatedly discussed and elaborated in the holy book. The Quran does not specify different types of jihad but leaves the concept open to a range of interpretations as is also the case with many other Quranic concepts. However, in the course of Islamic history two types of jihad have emerged. The bigger jihad that is a struggle against one's own self to be a selfless, decent and virtuous human being and the smaller jihad combating the enemies of Islam in defense of the religion. The origins of the smaller jihad go back to Prophet Muhammad's military struggles against the Macan pagans to defend Islam in the Islamic Ummah or borderless Muslim community centered in Medina. As such, it was conceptually preferred within a defensive rather than an offensive posture. Although the Prophet was engaged in combative jihad in this specific sense, he nonetheless stressed the primacy of the bigger jihad over the smaller one in the following story. When a troop of Arabs returned from battle boasting of their jihad, the Prophet rebuked them telling them that they had engaged only in the lesser jihad or physical battle. The great jihad was the struggle against one's own basal instincts. And this he gave great moral prestige to bigger jihad and it was applied metaphorically to a great many meritorious action. Yet it is important to note that the line between what constitutes a defensive and offensive action was as thin during the Prophet's era as it is now and at times offensive measures are adopted in order to achieve defensive objectives. It was within this paradigm that the Islamic writ was legitimized and expanded from Medina in Makkah to the rest of the Arabian Peninsula and well beyond. The defensive dimension of combative jihad has not always been observed as the criterion in determining the course of action and pursuit of the spirit of Islam in history. Different interpretations and applications of the term have come to dominate state and society behavior in the Muslim domain. Combative jihad has been used from time to time purely to justify offensive actions for geopolitical and sectarian purposes. There have been many examples of this from time of the Umayyad to the Abbasid to the Ottoman dynastical rules and to the present. In history, many political leaders have appropriated jihad as a positive symbol to confer legitimacy on their own activities. There is a view of Islam as a violent jihadi religion which is lately influenced by the rise of extremist jihadi groups in opposition to the West. Such a view has gained increasing currency among certain circles in today's known Muslim, especially Christian world. In the wake of Al Qaeda's 11th of September 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, several Christian political and religious leaders and opinion makers condemned not just the perpetrators of the actions but also the religion of Islam. For example, whereas the former Italian Prime Minister Salveo Beriscone proclaimed that the Christian civilization was superior to the Islamic one, as the former promoted human rights and the latter produced terrorism, such American Christian leaders as Pat Robinson and Jerry Forwell directly attacked the Islamic doctrine as being at the root of terrorism. Such views of Islam continue to echo strongly in the West and do so to the present day and one of the main exponents of it in Australia, for example, somebody like Andrew Bolt. Consequently, physical jihad has gained a wider publicity over the more widely sanctioned concept of greater jihad. Money in the West and indeed in the Muslim domain itself have often seen jihad to through the prism of smaller rather than greater jihad due to either a poor understanding of the concept as a whole or deliberate exploitation of the term for political and geo-strategic objectives. It has become common for figures, including the former leader of Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, his successor Iman al-Zawahiri and Islamic State self-proclaimed Amir al-Lider Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to declare combative jihad. The question is, who is qualified to declare combative jihad in today's world? Anyone in Islam can claim to be a mushdahid or creative interpreter of Islam based on independent human reasoning and call for combative jihad within a traditionalist or reformist context. However, not just anyone's declaration of jihad can result in an actionable jihad. The person or organization that calls for jihad must, at the very minimum, be deeply versed in the religion of Islam and not only be recognized and endorsed as such by a range of authoritative Islamic sources but also command followers from a cross-section of the multifaceted and politically and socially divided Muslim domain. Presently no such figure or organization exists and recent history only the Afghan Islamic resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s may have come close to a physical jihad. But even that struggle could not succeed without the western or more specifically American support for reasons that were not religious. It is against this backdrop that al-Baghdadi's declaration of himself as Khalifa or deputy to the prophet of Islam and his declaration of a violent jihad against all those who oppose his highly conservative and extremist Salafist version of Islam has proved to be very controversial. Al-Baghdadi in his cohorts including many experience but aggrieved, both as supporters of Saddam Hussein have almost universally been disowned by a great majority of Muslims and rejected by most Islamic authorities. They have nonetheless been able to skillfully twist and manipulate a number of Islamic doctrinal decades and events in Muslim history to come up with their own interpretation of Khalifa's role and what defines Khilafat and how to give reality to their version of Khilafat and make their jihad actionable. Those variables have most importantly included the war-torn conditions and presence of a power vacuum in Syria and Iraq, the symbolism of Khilafat and other historical Islamic signs, the disenchantment of the Sunni segments of the Syrian and Iraqi populations, the Saudi-Iranian geopolitical-driven sectarian rivalry, the prevalence of authoritarianism and socioeconomic disparities and injustices across the Muslim Middle East. This together with a general sense of disempowerment and humiliation amongst Muslims and the face of repeated major power, most importantly American interventions, not to mention Israel's depressive colonial secular occupation of the Palestinian lands in the Middle East and why the Muslim domain to shape and reshape them according to their ideological and geopolitical preferences has enormously aided Al-Baghdadi's leadership not only to establish Islamic state and put it on a path of extreme theocratic consolidation but also to entice some Muslims to its narrative and support this project. Many of those who have opted to actively participate in Islamic states declare jihad have come from within the zone of the conflict, the Arab world and across the globe. Some have opted for a life as Islamic state activists out of religious convictions irrespective of the soundness of these convictions. Others have included a number of fringe elements from Muslim communities who have no more than a mundane understanding of Islam have been a void of a purpose in life and agree that by a sense of disposition and alienation for different reasons are driven by mental problems and a sense of remorse about their past bad behavior, which have therefore make them vulnerable to Islamic states slick and effective social media propaganda. Contrary to or because of the patriarchy and brutal nature of Islamic state and the suffocating jihadi political and social culture that it has engendered, a sizable number of young Muslim girls and women have also been lured to Islamic state to participate in its jihad to defend it either in an active or supporting role. Undoubtedly many women have played a prominent role in the defense of Islam in the Islamic communities and the course of history. Female participation in jihad originated with the Prophet's spouses serving as behind the scenes sources of counsel and support in his jihadi struggle against the Makan enemies. It therefore did not involve them in combat operations. However, a debate has raged about women's role in jihad ever since the first few years of Islam. Some Islamists, and by Islamist I mean the person who believes in Islam as an ideology of political and social transformation of his or her society, but most of them do not believe in violence. Some of them may believe in violence as a means to achieve their objectives. However, a debate has raged about women's role in jihad ever since the first few years of Islam. Some Islamists have argued for women's participation in an indirect or passive capacity to provide support for male jihadis and to produce the next generation of jihadis. A number of other Islamist figures have advocated an active role for women in dozing their participation in combat. One of the early exponents of this position was the Islamic scholar who lived in the 12th and 13th century. He argued that jihad was not obligatory for women. He listed seven conditions that would make a jihad obligatory. First being Muslim, being an adult, being of sound mind, being free, being male, being physically sound and being able to afford it financially. Prophet Muhammad is quoted as saying that a woman cannot be a fighter and that when a woman fights the aura of the Muslims may become exposed and a mushriqeen. That is the polytheists, the pagans, idolaters, disbelievers and the ones of Allah who worship others along with Allah and also those who set up rivals with Allah or partners with Allah will rejoice at that. Arguing in this context and the tradition of his predecessor, bin Laden, al-Zawahiri he said that whilst women can participate in passive jihad, as was the case during the Prophet's time, there is no room for them to engage in active combat. He has also not allowed the presence of women in al-Qaeda ranks. Yet such views on the subject have been challenged by a number of other purportedly Islamist figures, some of whom have disputed the claim that participation in a non-combat role does not necessarily constitute fighting and some have intimated that Islam does not prohibit women from taking part in direct military action against an enemy. In the modern era, not only such extremists as Abu Musab al-Zalqawi who led a violent Sunni insurgency against the US occupying forces and share majority in Iraq between 2005 and 2006 refuted al-Zawahiri's stance by calling for women's active role in jihad but so did several female supporters of al-Qaeda. One female jihadist warned that the woman whose heart is burning for her faith and goes out in a suicide operation seeking Allah would not be deterred by the words of thousands of al-Zawahiri's like. Quite a number of female jihadists defied al-Qaeda's leadership ruling and executed al-Qaeda-linked jihadist suicide missions under the auspices of the precursor of al-Baghdadi's Khilafat, the so-called Islamic State of Iraq, headed by al-Zalqawi in Iraq in the mid 2010s or in the mid of the first decade of 2000. In all, there is no consensus on the role of women in active jihad but there is also no religious ordinance that bans women from engaging in passive or active combative jihad although the weight of opinion appears to be on the side of the permissibility of playing a supportive rather than active combat role. Islamic State has made use of this ambiguity by deploying women jihadists in varying capacities as deemed desirable. In July 2015, Islamic State released a comprehensive document entitled Woman in the Islamic State Manifesto in Case Study. In this highly propagated piece, it endorses women's participation in both supportive and active roles in jihad. It calls on women in particular to join Islamic State and play a sedentary role in its jihad, not only as homemakers, wives and mothers but also as defender of Islamic State in an active combat role. It paints women's life under Islamic State's rule as holy and self-satisfactory and a service in defence of Islam. The document is directed not just at women from the Arab and Muslim domain. It also speaks to Muslim women whether born or converted as such in the West to act as recruiters for Islamic State. Reportedly, some 3,000 women from the Arab and Muslim domain as well as the West have joined Islamic States. Most are tasked as morality activist police and rule enforcers with some also wearing the mantle of jihadi brides. However, they do not include those who are not Muslim or who are coerced into serving as what are euphemistically called comfort providers. One of Islamic State's fighting female unit Al-Khansa Brigade operates more prominently in Islamic State's capital or the so-called capital Raqqa and contains some 60 young women devotees of Islamic State in its ranks. It functions predominantly as ferocious enforcer of Islamic State's moral and dress codes for women. Its members who are armed also roam the streets and control checkpoints in order to ensure that the female subject complies with Islamic State's rules and codes. Those who are caught in violation are lashed and given more severe punishment as deemed by the head of the brigade. They are authorized to engage in active fighting and be combative jihadis whenever required. Al-Khansa operates more or less as a counter-insurgency force within Raqqa. Although unconfirmed, units similar to Al-Khansa operate also in other population centres under Islamic State's control including Mosul in Iraq as part of Islamic State's system of governance. As one writer has argued, many of the Al-Khansa female fighters are of Chisholm descent but women from Yemen and Afghanistan have reportedly joined the battalion. The recruitment network is allegedly related to the phenomenon of black widows enlisted for suicide attacks. Some members are believed to have joined in response to the deaths of husbands or other family members assassinated by the Russian army in Chishnia or at the hands of the US military in Afghanistan. Many of these women are attracted to join the Islamic State jihad for a number of reasons. Theological motivations, religious obligations, political, social and economic alienations, a sense of revenge as well as the various aspects of the jihadi culture that the Islamic extremist narrative has promoted and depicted as an alternative to a variety of oriental or western ideological dispositions and political order. These appeal to many female recruits as well as to many of their male counterparts. Jihadi poems, songs, music, rituals, customs, art and sartorial styles of dressing a spiritual relief, distinctiveness and empowerment also form part of the attraction to the so-called Islamic State. The Islamic State's notion of jihad considered suicide bombing to be entirely legitimate and an important instrument of jihad against the enemy. It does so despite the fact that suicide is strictly forbidden in Islam. Islam places a high premium on the sanctity of life and as only God is empowered to give and take away life. The Islamic State has regularly attracted and deployed many female suicide bombers, not only in Syria and Iraq but also in other parts of the world either through their affiliates or directly. The Islamic State is not the first or only extremist group that is attracted and deployed women and both passive and active jihadi role. Nor, for that matter, does its sexist treatment of women set it apart from other like-minded groups as times on women and misogynist culture that characterizes most of the Muslim world in general and traditionalist and radical Muslim groups or movements in particular. All other militant groups acting in the name of Islam, including Boko Haram, since its declaration of allegiance to the Islamic State in 2015, it has become known as the Islamic State of West Africa and also includes Harakat al-Shabaab, commonly known as al-Shabaab, Jabhat al-Nusra, who has just changed its name overnight in order to disassociate itself from Al Qaeda and the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, the Palestinian Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade and the military wing of the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, which is called as the Deen Al-Qasim Brigade have also made use of girls and women as suicide bombers and jihadi activists. Islamic State is distinguished from these other groups by the scale of its deployment of females and the task with which they are assigned or coerced to perform. Jihadi females are used as a means of governance, enforcement of politics of brutality and slavery and coercive processes of state building. The question remains, how can one persuade girls and women not to join Islamic State and encourage those who already belong to opt for a more peaceful, constructive and virtuous Islamic life outside the Islamic State? Under the prevailing circumstances, this is not an easily achievable objective, but it is not insurmountable either, provided that the global community, more specifically the United States and its allies, as well as Russia, as yet another although belated critical actor in the region, has an appropriate workable strategy in dealing with Islamic State and its affiliates as well as other like-minded groups. So far, the United States and Russian approaches have put too much emphasis on the use of brute force and less importance on adopting policies that could result in shrinking the arena for Islamic State and extremism in general by addressing the very conditions that have given rise to Islamic State and other militant groups in the Middle East. There is an urgent need for a new approach to conflict resolution in the region where military interventions and operations have done little to bring peace and stability to the peoples of the region. If anything, the use of force to change the regional paradigm for better is repeatedly proved counterproductive, as we have seen in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Yemen. This together with the tightening of the anti-terror laws and measures that have fueled Islamophobia in the West and elsewhere has substantially played into the hands of the extremists and has allowed them to widen their cycles of recruitment and operations. The most viable way to address the Levant crisis is to convene a regional conference with the participation of Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, as well as the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council to hammer out a balance of power-based interlocking regional and international consensus for a resolution of the main conflicts in the region as a whole. Just not the Levant crisis, but there's a series of conflicts which basically feed the Levant crisis. They also have to be addressed at the same time. The regional political and territorial contours which were generated largely by colonial powers after the Second World War have changed in the post-Cold War era to such an extent that a number of Middle Eastern states have either disintegrated or are in the throes of pulverization. Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Libya cannot be restored to their pre-conflict status. Many indications point to the need for a political and strategic remapping of the Middle East involving some territorial alterations. A consensual agreement at interlocking regional and international levels might be the way to achieve this objective. There is no figure at the moment who could really lead this sort of process from the region. Therefore, the responsibility must fall on one of the states' organizations that can have the confidence and respect of the regional actors as well as those of major powers. And probably one of the Nordic states could possibly take the lead because there's not much confidence in the United Nations at the present either. Thank you very much.