Talk:Brides of the Islamic State/Archive 1

Archive 1

Concerns over the lead...

I have some concerns with the most recent lead paragraph, which says "Since the formation of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), hundreds of women (particularly in the West) volunteered to travel to fight for ISIL, sometimes disobeying domestic travel restrictions to ISIL-occupied territories in doing so"

1. Are the volunteers particularly from the Western World? Or are the Western volunteers disproportionally reported by the Western Press? The list includes two women not from the Western World. I suggest we shouldn't say they are particularly Western unless an RS says so. If the Press is not widely saying they are western women, then the RS that said so should be named... IMO.
2. Who says they volunteered to fight for ISIL. ISIL was just about the most sexist organization on Planet Earth. You can find a lot of women posturing with guns, but they did not fight. Further, many of these women seem to have no intention of fighting, they intended to marry a fighter, or work in a hospital.
3. The supplied references to the lead paragraph don't say anything about the women having "disobeyed domestic travel restrictions" I suggest the lead should not say this unless we cite RS that say this. Sharmeena Begum (mis)used her grandmother's passport for her travel. That was illegal, but I don't think it would be accurate to characterize this as disobeying domestic travel restrictions.

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 00:44, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

Hi! Sorry about the lead confusion, I will agree that I wrote it in a hurry and probably agree with you that these bits should be removed (particularly the last one, as I completely misread the source). On the other two points mentioned:

1. I wrote that they were particularly from the west as that seems to be how the narrative of "ISIS brides" in the media, and most studies on the subject tend to focus on westerners. Yes, the list includes two non-western women, but that is hugely outnumbered by the number of western women that are included on this list, hence why I wrote what I did. However, without any official statistics I agree that this is conjecture that should probably removed.

2. Very valid point here; the emphasis should be on the idea of marrying fighters rather than fighting themselves. Some ISIS brides likely have been in combat roles; the only statistics I could find on the issue are from 2015, which says that Muslim women who joined ISIS "[exceed] 550 ... 10 percent of the number of all ISIS' Western foreign fighters" ([1]), a number which is said to have increased since then ([2]) However, neither source mentions any "ISIS brides" specifically, so I guess this should probably be removed from the lead.

Thank you! Bangalamania (talk) 01:17, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

particularly the west

This government site shows western women were outnumbered... Geo Swan (talk) 08:46, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

I reverted what looked like POV editorializing...

I thought an IP edit looked like POV editorializing, so I reverted it. Yes we all hate terrorists, personally. In our role as wikipedia contributors we are supposed to aim for neutrality.

IP added "Many of them have assisted and committed terrorist activities and are terrorists", misleadingly using a reference that doesn't say that. Some of the women listed here have had allegations of support for terrorism levelled at them, or even allegations of actual involvement in terrorism. And their individual notes say that. That should be sufficient.

If a couple of RS explicitly state that many ISIL brides were terrorists, or supported terrorism, the article could summarize that -- provided those statements were specifically attributed to the actual RS. Geo Swan (talk) 18:52, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Four individuals don't make a trio

In this edit someone made what I am sure they thought was a good faith correction, that introduced an inaccuracy. Mahood was actually alleged to have influenced four students from Bethnal Green, not merely the Bethnal Green trio. I changed it back.

There is extra need for precision here because Sharmeena Begum's name is so similar to that of her friend, Shamima Begum, who followed her two months later. Geo Swan (talk) 19:33, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

Changing headings on table

Going to change it to

Name, birth year, date of join, status (this will be dead, defected or missing and include a year), home country, notes

A lot of these women didn't leave, but died. I hope this will be clearer instead of a mess of "dead" in the notes Naihreloe (talk) 11:21, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

Spelling of Al-Hawl/Al-Hol

I changed the spelling in the notes from Al-Hol (which appeared 4 times in the body) to Al-Hawl (which appeared 15 times throughout.) Although Al-Hawl appears less commonly in a google search (230K results for "Al-Hawl" vs 624K for "Al-Hol"), the Wikipedia article on the camp is called Al-Hawl refugee camp and using different spelling in the same article to refer to the same space is confusing. --Dustinmacdonald (talk) 01:22, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

Noted, I'm going to going to copyedit at some point, Al-Hawl tends to be used in non-Western sources, and is the closest to the Arabic name, which I believe is where the confusion comes from Naihreloe (talk) 20:40, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Tareena Shakil inaccuracy

I notice that the section on Tareena Shakil is incorrect. She didn't spend six years in prison, she only served half of her sentence and was released in 2018 on licence.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/tareena-shakil-isis-bride-uk-prison-jail-release-syria-son-terror-a8780891.html 87.114.9.163 (talk) 18:04, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

Archive 1