Why the West Loves 'ISIS Brides'

Angry Planet

Matthew Gault

War, Politics, Conflict, Government, History, News

4.3 • 882 Ratings

🗓️ 17 April 2023

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Islamic State has largely fallen out of the western press with the weird exception of ISIS brides. And when we talk about the Islamic State, western press often ignores its broader crimes. The plight of the Yazidi, specifically, is largely ignored by press and NGOs.

The plight of the so-called “ISIS bride,” however, is very much in fasion. But I wanted that photo and that testimony to lead off this post. Today’s episode is mostly about the women of the Islamic State, but the Yazidis are a crucial part of that story and we shouldn’t forget them.

When Islamic State still had a caliphate that galvanized Western militaries, young men and women from around the world left their homes to join up. Their reasons were varied but their passion seems unwavering. Now the Islamic State is fractured and the Caliphate is in ruin but many of the fighters and so-called ISIS brides remain. Now, some of them want to go home, and Western media has looked at them with a shockingly sympathetic eye.

Today’s show is a long interview with journalist Norma Costello, who has spent time in al-Hol where many of the women of the Islamic State now live. She’s written about them in UnHerd.

Around the beginning of the pandemic, family and friends of Isis members began to gently craft a new narrative about their women. They had never supported the caliphate. They were innocents forced to travel there by men. They were, in their own way, victims. These grown women had been “trafficked” into Isis territory. Ignore the fact that many of them bought their own tickets.

After we’re done talking about the Islamic State, Norma and I switch gears and get onto a very Angry Planet topic: Irish tankies and their strained relationship with Russia and its war in Ukraine.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Love this podcast support this show through the a cast supporter feature
0:05.1	It's up to you how much you give and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. People live in a world with their own making.
0:25.0	Frankly, that seems to be the problem.
0:31.0	Welcome to Angry Planet.
0:34.0	I am Matthew.
0:36.0	Hello and welcome to angry planet I am Matthew Gault. When the Islamic State
0:46.9	still had a caliphate that galvanized Western militaries young men and
0:50.4	women from around the world left their homes to join up.
0:54.4	The reasons were varied, but their passion seemed unwavering.
0:57.7	Now the Islamic State is fractured and the caliphate is in ruin, but many of the fighters and so-called ISIS brides remain.
1:05.0	And now some of them want to go home, and Western media has looked at them with a shockingly
1:09.9	sympathetic eye.
1:11.9	With us here today to talk about this is Norma Costello.
1:14.9	Costello is a journalist whose work has appeared in vice, foreign policy, and unheard. Her latest on this specific subject is in unheard. It's called how the media whitewashed ISIS
1:25.6	brides. Norma, thank you so much for coming onto the show once again and walking
1:29.8	us through this. Good morning Matthew. Yes, so the last piece that I wrote about them, God we're going back like a few months, was just
1:39.7	in relation to a trend that I started to notice with the men and women who traveled to join ISIS in 2013,
1:49.6	or 2014, 2015 and 16. And I started to kind of notice the headlines were changing. So it just became, it went from everybody being terrified of these ISIS guys, you know, like who were traveling across vast plains of
2:06.1	Ninnava enslaving women and children, which I think is a pretty scary thing to do.
2:11.0	To suddenly, they were innocent victims who had no control over their
2:16.6	surroundings and were not in fact like gleefully clapping on these men in white
2:23.7	coyotes, but were actually traumatized by the whole thing.
	...

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