In the aftermath of the horrifying terrorist attacks in the Russian city of Volgograd, people keep asking me why so many of the perpetrators of these terror acts in the Russian Federation are women.
Consider the situation of women in places like Chechnya and Dagestan. In the USSR, It never occurred to anybody to doubt whether women were fully human or make them shroud themselves like old, useless pieces of furniture. Religious fanatics had to hide from persecution and had no power to impose their barbaric ideas.
Now that these areas of the Russian Federation have turned to religious fanaticism, there is a single path in life open to women: being sold into marriage in early adolescence and being treated worse than an animal in the husband’s house. No education, no career, no friends, no money, no control over one’s own life. Imagine being 16, 17, 18 (these are the ages of some of the most recent female terrorists) and realizing that this is all that awaits you. In a society that has never known anything else, this can be accepted with resignation. In a place where things used to be very different just a short time ago, it is much harder to conform to this form of intense barbarity.
This is why so many women in Chechnya and Dagestan choose the only kind of protagonism that is still available to them and join terrorist organizations. They get to control their own destinies, even if that control is reduced to choosing death.
Mind you, this is not specifically about Islam. The Russian Orthodox Church’s official position on women is exactly the same as that of the Muslim fundamentalists: shrouding, no control over any aspect of their lives, yearly reproduction as the only goal of female existence, etc. The good news is that this is a religion only practiced by 2% of the population or we would see veritable horrors take place in Russia on top of the horrors we are seeing already.
As you all know, I hate the Soviet Union. Still, it has to be recognized that beating down religious fanatics was an enormous and amazing achievement on its part.
Clarissa's Blog 
They get to control their own destinies, even if that control is reduced to choosing death.(Clarissa)
Control, really? I think that belief is almost as twisted as blowing yourself up in the name of God.
LikeLike
This is a choice all combat soldiers make. It isn’t that rare.
LikeLike
Here is one of your combat soldier making his choice.
LikeLike
Sounds like desperation to me.
LikeLike
In the early days of the Soviet State, the religious fundamentalists attempted to continue their patriarchal ways. In the Muslim areas of the USSR, women were told that they were free to dress as they pleased and encouraged to seek employment. Atheism as an ideology was counterposed by State forces to religious ideology. When women were attacked for chucking the hijab, State authorities came down harder and harder on the fundamentalists. As a result, the attacks stopped, but the religious ideology remained, smoldering amongst many and after the collapse of the USSR, that ideology was combined with nationalism to produce the current spate of jihadist uprisings in the south of Russia for national separation under sharia law. If I’m not mistaken sharia law exists amongst the Uzbeks and Kazaks now in their separate States.
Women are regularly used by political Islam for suicide bombing missions throughout the world. Interestingly, the political Islamists got this idea from the non-Islamist nationalists, the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka. The ideology of the Tamil Tigers was Marxist-Leninism.
My opinion is that as long as people insist on becoming an identity object of an ideology, they will remain pawns in the political games of sadistic ruling classes and want to be ruling classes. We should never forget the Japanese suicide bombers of WWII who flew their planes into U.S. Naval ships with individual hopes of going to Shinto heaven.
LikeLike
There is no sharia in Uzbekistan and certainly not Kazakhstan which remains a thoroughly secular state with a multi-confessional population under Nazerbayev. There is an official Soviet inspired Islam in Uzbekistan, but it was imposed by Karimov as a way of opposing Islamic fundamentalism. Both Nazerbayev and Karimov are old Soviet holdovers and as such are extremely wary of public displays of religion not under strict control of the secular state.
LikeLike
“Both Nazerbayev and Karimov are old Soviet holdovers and as such are extremely wary of public displays of religion not under strict control of the secular state.”
– It would be great if Putin and Medvedev followed their example.
LikeLike
Of course its desperation and its also wasteful. That is why you will never see leaders doing it or even offering their beneficial troops. The reason women are probably now doing it is because they are starting to run out of expendable men.
LikeLike
How are the women running out of the men?
LikeLike
Come on Muster, you know, the patriarchy. The women cant get anymore men to do their bidding so they start doing it themselves. 😉
LikeLike