Tuesday, November 24, 2015

"He who sups with the devil . . .


. . . should have a long spoon."

That goes for women, too, as shown in Azadeh Moaveni's report, "ISIS Women and Enforcers in Syria Recount Collaboration, Anguish and Escape" (New York Times, November 21, 2015)
Dua had only been working for two months with the Khansaa Brigade, the all-female morality police of the Islamic State, when her friends were brought to the station to be whipped.

The police had hauled in two women she had known since childhood, a mother and her teenage daughter, both distraught. Their abayas, flowing black robes, had been deemed too form-fitting.

When the mother saw Dua, she rushed over and begged her to intercede. The room felt stuffy as Dua weighed what to do.
Dua told her friends that they were guilty and deserved a lashing, but there were consequences to Dua's decision:
The mother and daughter came to Dua's parents' house afterward, furious with her and venting their anger at the Islamic State.

"They said they hated it and wished it had never come to Raqqa," Dua said. She pleaded with them, explaining that as a young and new member of the Khansaa Brigade, there was nothing she could have done.

But a lifelong friendship, with shared holiday gatherings and birthday parties, was suddenly broken. "After that day, they hated me, too," she said. "They never came to our house again."
And so begins a report on two female insiders' disillusion with the Islamic State . . .

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4 Comments:

At 1:37 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

cph here--thanks, Jeff, I'll definitely read this. Just last PM Leigh and I completed a shameless binge-watching (~9 hrs in three days, that's definitely 'binge-watching' where we come from anyhow...whew) of a really pretty thoroughly chilling TV series on Amazon (of all things), an adaptation of P.K. Dick's "The Man in the High Castle"; a pretty pioneering at the time, I believe, alt-history thing where the US and co. did not win WWII (or at least, so it appears; it is a sci-fi novel after all). Aside from the good potential to depict American life under uneasily-shared Nazi/Japanese regimes, etc., I think the most effective thing about it was how it shows how 'ordinary Americans' get sucked into a pretty insidious life of 'getting along' that resonates sharply with the article you note here. Yeah, I’d say helping set up longtime friends for “a lashing”, will definitely put a dent in the friendship…! Jeez louise.

 
At 4:00 AM, Blogger Horace Jeffery Hodges said...

Even a tongue-lashing would probably kill a friendship.

Jeffery Hodges

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At 11:31 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

And causing a bit of controversy NYC subway ads

Jay

 
At 4:21 AM, Blogger Horace Jeffery Hodges said...

Thanks, Jay. Sounds like some ads are still up.

Jeffery Hodges

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