Intersectionality and rehabilitation: how gendered, racial and religious assumptions structure the rehabilitation and reintegration of women returnees

ABSTRACT

Women associated with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) are returning to their home countries from camps in northern Syria and require prosecution, rehabilitation and reintegration. Yet, as feminist security and terrorism scholars have demonstrated, rehabilitation and reintegration programmes are mostly focused on men and neglect women’s experiences. The absence of rehabilitation and reintegration programmes designed for women is influenced by gender stereotypes around women’s peacefulness and their lack of agency. Alongside gender, further intersecting Islamophobic dynamics also shape these practices through, for instance, racial profiling or the trope of associating Islam with “terrorism”. This paper, thus, explores to what extent rehabilitation and reintegration programmes are influenced by underlying assumptions. I build upon feminist security and terrorism scholarship and draw from interviews with practitioners and policy- makers who have worked with ISIS women returnees across juris- dictions and countries. I argue that intersecting gendered, racial and religious assumptions influence the rehabilitation and reintegration practices of women returnees. This analysis is illustrated with three themes: 1) vocational training in rehabilitation programmes, 2) the freedom in the expression of religion and 3) the stigmatisation of returnees.

KEYWORDS:

• Rehabilitation and reintegration
• intersectionality
• women returnees
• ISIS

Introduction

In 2019, Kosovo was the first country in Europe to repatriate their citizens from formerly ISIS-held territory in Syria and Iraq and received international praise for their efforts (Ní Aoláin 2020b, 10; Radio Free Europe 2019). Male returnees were immediately imprisoned, whereas most female returnees were put under house arrest and prosecuted at a later stage (Kosovar Practitioner & Researcher, pers. comm., 18 March 2021). This policy meant that women and children quickly had access to exclusively designed rehabilitation and reintegration measures for returnees, whereas men participated in “generalised” rehabilitation programmes in prison, not specifically targeting terrorist offenders (Kosovar Practitioner & Researcher, pers. comm., 18 March 2021). The Kosovar Ministry of Internal Affairs established the “Division of Reintegration of Foreign Fighters and their Families” to oversee rehabilitation and reintegration programmes (Azinović and Bećirević 2017; Ní Aoláin 2020b, 10).¹ In partnership with international and civil society organisations, the government implements a programme for women and children called “Repatriation” which focuses on disengaging individuals from violence (Plesch and Haxhia 2019).² The programme provides medical support, psychiatric treatment and counselling, housing, social services, vocational training, free legal counselling and access to “Mualima”³ (Plesch and Haxhia 2019; Kosovar Practitioner & Researcher, pers. comm., 18 March 2021). This renders Kosovo one of the few examples globally that has a focus on women in their rehabilitation and reintegration programmes incorporating, for example, female preachers.

Kosovo’s case is not the norm, and feminist security and terrorism scholars have argued that rehabilitation and reintegration programmes tend to focus on men and neglect women’s experiences (Brown 2019a; Henshaw 2020). What is more, rehabilitation and reintegration programmes are often designed and implemented in contexts that value patriarchal norms and are Islamophobic. Consequently, as female ISIS members are returning to their home countries, the way in which structural norms and assumptions affect rehabilitation and reintegration practices is relevant to understand for scholars as well as practitioners. Indeed, the absence of programmes designed for women is influenced by gender stereotypes around women’s peacefulness and their lack of agency. Alongside gender, further intersecting religious and racial dynamics also shape rehabilitation and reintegration practices through, for instance, the trope of associating Islam with “terrorism” (Bhattacharyya 2008; Gentry 2020; Schmidt 2020b). This paper, thus, addresses the question: To what extent are the rehabilitation and reintegration of ISIS women returnees affected by gendered, racial or religious assumptions?⁴

In this paper rehabilitation refers to globally implemented programmes and practices which attempt to convince beneficiaries to “lay down weapons”, eschew violence, reintegrate back into society and, according to some, also reduce commitment to an ideology (Webber et al. 2018, 540). The term, thus, broadly encompasses either disengagement (focuses on eschewing violence) or deradicalisation (focuses on ideological distancing) measures.⁵ Generally, rehabilitation programmes need to be holistic, multifaceted and empowering for the beneficiaries, which includes vocational or educational, ideological, psychosocial and community engagement elements (Barelle 2011; Koehler 2016; Webber et al. 2018). Rehabilitation programmes may also include reintegration components that occur post-release and tend to encompass long-term work with the individuals as well as with the communities where beneficiaries are reintegrated. Programmes are run all over the globe because there is a consensus among academics and practitioners that they prevent “re-radicalisation” and lower recidivism (Webber et al. 2018, 540; Morrison et al 2021, 6).

To understand the underlying assumptions of rehabilitation and reintegration, I build on the research of feminist terrorism and security scholars and draw from scholarship on critical race theory and intersectionality. This literature helps me to understand how gender intersects with other dynamics such as those based on heteronormativity, religious norms or racial constructions in the context of rehabilitation and reintegration. This includes how rehabilitation and reintegration practices push for a specific national identity and a certain behaviour in the individual that “reintegrates”. The expectations of programme beneficiaries are crucial to investigate because inherent in some programmes, specifically in deradicalisation programmes, is the aim to change the ideology of a person. As a result, some governments have refrained from including such aspects in their programmes, because it may lead to infringing political freedom (Koehler 2016, 3). Nevertheless, most rehabilitation and rehabilitation programmes include some form of ideological aspect which is why it is important to understand the gendered and religious dimensions of the programmes. The rehabilitation and reintegration practices that are being examined in this paper are all targeted towards Islamist violent extremists, which creates specific caveats – specifically in Western countries – that are being discussed in this paper.

I argue that intersecting gendered, racial and religious assumptions influence the rehabilitation and reintegration practices of ISIS women returnees. This analysis is illustrated with three themes: 1) vocational training in rehabilitation programmes, 2) the freedom in the expression of religion and 3) the stigmatisation of returnees. The first theme explores how gender normative vocational training is offered across various countries seemingly irrespective of the interests of the beneficiary or local context. The second highlights how returning women are restricted in their expression of religion through, for example, Islamophobic expectations relating to national identity and reintegration. The third reveals that women returnees experience “double stigma” because they are thought to have transgressed prevalent gender norms by joining a violent extremist organisation.

The scholarly contribution of this paper is the connecting of literature on intersectionality, security and terrorism studies and showcasing the importance of critical, feminist literature to understanding current security challenges, specifically, rehabilitation and reintegration programmes. This paper responds to scholars’ recurring call to adopt an intersectional perspective of rehabilitation and reintegration in Islamist violent extremism, not least of all because of the unprecedented situation with regard to women returning from ISIS-held territory (Koehler 2016, 43; Davis 2019; Brown 2019b, 3). The objective of the article is, thus, twofold: the analysis of the gendered, religious and racialised dimensions that underwrite rehabilitation and reintegration programming as well as the discussion of practical policy and programming implications. Before diving into the analysis of the rehabilitation and reintegration programmes, I will set out the theoretical framework of this paper and describe the employed methodology.

Feminist scholarship on violent extremism

Feminist scholarship on security and terrorism studies – and the broader field of feminist international relations (IR) – is helpful to understand underlying assumptions of rehabilitation and reintegration programmes because it broadens the traditional perspectives on violent extremism. Specifically, as scholars in mainstream terrorism or security research as well as in conventional international relations have largely not considered a feminist perspective as relevant to understanding the phenomena (Fair and Hamza 2018, 963 True and Eddyono 2017, 20; 2021, 5). There is a depth of feminist scholarship examining the role of gender norms and power dynamics in violent extremism (among others Parashar 2011; Sjoberg and Gentry 2015; Brown 2019a; True et al. 2019; Duriesmith and Ismail 2022; Huckerby 2020). Particularly, when it comes to motivational factors for women to join violent extremist groups, the literature goes beyond the victim/perpetrator binary and “monolithic frame” that is often present in violent extremism research (Chatterjee 2016, 201). In the context of female ISIS members, there has also been a broad range of research in the last decade examining motivational factors, recruitment strategies or wider narratives. Feminist research showed that the public narrative around female ISIS members from governments and the media is highly gendered and neo-orientalist, stereotyping women as “jihadi brides” (Evans and da Silva 2021; Martini 2018). Importantly, this public discourse has implications for the criminal justice response and rehabilitation and reintegration of female returnees (Davis 2020, 3), which Harmonies Toros (2020) demonstrates with Tunisian and Moroccan ISIS female returnees.

Apart from some notable exceptions (e.g. Brown 2019a; Brown and Mohamed 2021; Eggert 2020; Schmidt 2020a), there is a paucity of research when it comes to understanding the gendered or Islamophobic dynamics of rehabilitation and reintegration programmes. Hence, scholars and policymakers have looked at comparable programmes and investigated scholarship on Demobilization, Disarmament and Reintegration (DDR) programmes for combatants in post-conflict settings (Altier 2021; Schmidt 2020a).

Feminist literature on DDR programmes has long critiqued their gendered dynamics, such as gender normative vocational training for beneficiaries (Friedman 2018; Hills and MacKenzie 2017). After the Sri Lankan war in 2009, for example, the vocational training in the rehabilitation programme for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) was highly gender-specific, reinforcing gender stereotypes (Davies and True 2017, 1327–1328). Male ex-combatants could choose between welding, fishing or carpentry, and female ex-combatants between hairdressing, sewing, beauty therapy or becoming married. Feminist scholars criticised the Sri Lankan programme for forcing female ex-combatants back into traditional roles after they became “empowered” within the LTTE (Davies and True 2017, 1327–1328). Some female ex-combatants have even described the rehabilitation process as “infantilizing” (Friedman 2018, 638). Similar gendered dynamics were reported in the vocational trainings of DDR programmes in Sierra Leone (MacKenzie 2009), Nepal (Goswami 2015) and more recently in Colombia (Henshaw 2020, 73, originally ACR 2016: 12).⁶ The discussed gendered practices of DDR programmes are replicated in currently ongoing rehabilitation and reintegration programmes (Brown and Mohamed 2021; Schmidt 2020a) which is why this scholarship is useful for understanding the underlying gender assumptions of programmes.

The underlying assumptions of rehabilitation and reintegration practices are often not openly discussed but rather subtly integrated into programmes; as Henshaw (2020, 72) describes, “patriarchal power dynamics can be rendered invisible by policies and programmes that present themselves as gender-neutral”. The assumptions and expectations shaping rehabilitation and reintegration vary and are highly dependent on the local context. Yet, there are global patterns and key dynamics informing rehabilitation and reintegration processes, such as the wider social and political environment. This includes, for instance, the rising Islamophobia in many countries since the “War on Terror”, particularly with regard to the conflation of “terrorism” and Islam (Allen 2010; Loken and Zelenz 2018; Rajina 2021; Schmidt 2020b). To uncover not just gendered assumptions but also other intersecting power dynamics, including racial and religious dynamics, a focus on intersectionality is key.

Intersectionality in rehabilitation and reintegration

Feminist IR scholarship provides a solid foundation to investigate rehabilitation and reintegration programmes, yet there is no sufficient theoretical framing to analyse the racialised and religious dynamics that are underlying programmes.⁷ While there is some feminist IR scholarship that takes an intersectional approach (among others Achilleos-Sarll 2020; Henry 2021; Parashar 2016), most literature has failed to uncover the power dynamics within and among feminism(s) and viewed it as “universal” (El Said, Meari, and Pratt 2015, 10). I am, thus, also drawing from post-colonial feminists and critical race theorists such as Chandra Mohanty (1984) and Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989) who have underlined the importance of being attentive to intersectionality in order to dismantle marginalisations and hierarchies within feminist theories. Mohanty (1984) criticised scholars from the Global North for homogenising women’s experiences and silencing, for example, racial phenomena. Crenshaw (1989) later coined the term intersectionality, which highlights how intersecting markers of identity, including race, class, religion, ethnicity and gender influence experiences.⁸ She described how intersectionality helps to uncover how multiple systems of oppression are intertwined and can lead to cumulative structural discrimination. Theorising their own experiences led critical race scholars to criticise and implode feminist thinking and scholarship and provided an analytical tool – namely, intersectionality – to understand the complexity of power hierarchies, including patriarchy, capitalism and racism. As Henry (2021, 4) outlines, intersectionality “has an obvious appeal for those thinking through the complexity of experiences in conflict and post conflict contexts as it allows an examination of the multiple layers that structure women’s (and men’s) lives”.

In the context of rehabilitation and reintegration of Islamist violent extremists, such as ISIS returnees, intersectionality is important to understand. This is because women ISIS returnees have been constructed as what Mohanty (1984) might call “third world woman”, through white Western (feminist) discourse as a gendered subject informed by Islamophobia, racism and nationalism as it is demonstrated in this paper (see also Parashar 2016, 372).

Intersectionality allows the identification of power dynamics, such as how the gendered, racialisation of certain identities influences which ISIS returnees are judged to be a “terrorist” which, in turn, has implications for reintegration practices. Bhattacharyya (2008) has demonstrated, for instance, how employing the concept of “the dangerous brown men” is crucial to understanding the gendered, sexualised and racialised dynamics of the War on Terror. Gentry (2020, 130), drawing from Spivak (1988, 297) and Mutua (2001), encapsulated Bhattacharyya’s (2008) observation and argues that white men are seen as counter-terrorists, “black/brown men” as terrorists and women are neglected entirely (Gentry 2020, 130). Specifically, since the War on Terror, women, and in particular Muslim women, have been constructed as victims – feeding into colonial and neo-orientalist dynamics that played out in the invasion in Iraq and Afghanistan.⁹ Twenty years after the invasions in the Middle East, a similar gendered and Islamophobic narrative is still present for ISIS members, however, now ranging from victim to villain (Brown and Mohamed 2021; Stenger 2023).

When analysing rehabilitation and reintegration programmes, critical scholarship examining the state is also helpful because states are often the ones carrying out or funding rehabilitation and reintegration programmes and are therefore perceived as a legitimate entity to counteract “terrorism” (Parashar, Tickner, and True 2018; Tickner 2014: 25). The legitimacy of states to fight “terrorism” needs to be critically assessed as the state itself often contributes to the preservation of (political) violence (Jackson 2012: 12; see also Heath-Kelly 2010). Crucially, states and their policies, in particular “counterterrorism policies”, reproduce racialised logics of who is seen as a “terrorist” and who as the bulwark against it (Parashar, Tickner, and True 2018) and specifically Western states “exhibit qualities of white supremacy” (Abu Bakare 2022, 230, originally Kapoor (2018). The racialised logic reflected by the programmes aimed at preventing or countering violent extremism (P/CVE) has long been critiqued (Kundnani and Hayes 2018), specifically in the United Kingdom (UK) (Abbas 2018; Abbas and Awan 2015; Ali 2020; Taylor 2020).¹⁰ Research on P/CVE programmes in different geopolitical contexts, such as Indonesia or Kenya, draws different conclusions. True and Eddyono (2017, 2021), for example, uncovered the bottom-up benefits of PVE programmes for Indonesian women in building capacity and agency.

In this paper, I argue that there are underlying gendered, racial and religious assumptions in rehabilitation and reintegration programmes as they are not “disconnected from globally relevant systems of oppression” (Abu-Bakare 2020, 94). This is particularly true in Western contexts (as well as non-Muslim majority countries), where extremism is viewed as “Muslim culture” (Kundnani 2014, 10), and where “government counter-extremism institutions problematically perpetuate a link between Islam and ‘terrorism’ in the name of counterradicalization” (Abu Bakare 2022, 237).

Method and analysis

For this paper, I interviewed 21 practitioners, policymakers and researchers in different countries to explore their experiences with rehabilitation and reintegration processes.¹¹ The majority of my research participants are practitioners working for civil society organisations that conduct rehabilitation and reintegration programmes with women returnees in multiple roles, including as psychologist or social worker or in combined roles as researcher and practitioner. In five of the countries where my research participants work, rehabilitation and reintegration programmes with ISIS returnees are implemented – that is, in Kosovo, Indonesia, Germany, Western Balkan and the UK.¹² Other practitioners I interviewed from Singapore, Nigeria and Pakistan work with women associated with the Taliban, Jemaah Islamiyah, Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP) or Boko Haram. I also interviewed policymakers and researchers involved in programming for returnees in the United States (US), UK, Abu Dhabi, Indonesia and Austria, as well as one Southeast Asian woman ISIS returnee.¹³ Taken together, I interviewed participants from 12 countries helping me to identify global patterns and key dynamics. Drawing from this global dataset allows me to reveal similarities and differences in the design and implementation of rehabilitation and reintegration practices, while specifically focusing on ISIS returnees.

My interviews were semi-structured with open-ended questions which allowed me to flexibly tailor the questions to the research participants’ field of expertise and experience. During the interviews, I inquired about the structure and content of employed programmes and practices and attempted to understand the assumptions underlying them. I asked key guiding questions regarding the intersectional dynamics of rehabilitation and reintegration of ISIS returnees. I tried to ask questions that “are sensible for gender differences and power dynamics” (True and Eddyono 2017, 22).

In my analysis of the interview data, I followed an inductive approach and let different topics emerge from the interview notes and transcripts (Hedström 2019, 65). Although the interview questions differed between my research participants, together they provided insights into the role of intersectional dynamics in rehabilitation and reintegration. Throughout the analysis, the coding and the interpretation of my data, I practiced reflexivity (Abu-Bakare 2020, 192). In particular, this involves the acknowledgement of the social and political background of my research participants (and myself) when analysing their interviews.¹⁴ Whereas policymakers tended to provide more macro-level insights on programme structures and processes, practitioners and the returnee herself had a more in-depth understanding of the programme’s implications on returnees’ lives. Moreover, I let “pregnant pauses”, which refers to silences during the interviews, shape my analysis as they oftentimes offer valuable information (D’Costa 2006, 148).

I am drawing from feminist IR (critical terrorism and security research), critical race and postcolonial scholarship, and perform an intersectional analysis to analyse the interviews. This allows me to uncover hidden power dynamics in rehabilitation and reintegration (Brown 2019a; Gentry 2016, 154). Crucially, as Scott (1986, 1072–1073, emphasis added) argued, “attention to gender is often not explicit, but it is nonetheless a crucial part of the organization of equality or inequality”. This speaks to my analysis as gendered dynamics were often not explicitly mentioned, but they nevertheless shaped the structure of programmes and experiences of returnees. An intersectional analysis helps me to analyse not only the underlying gendered assumptions but also its intersection with racialised and religious dynamics, such as the role of women returnees’ religious clothing. This is crucial because the “inherently unequal aspect of gender and its intersections with other systems of domination and inequality have not been sufficiently considered and reflected upon in policy formulation and programme design” (Ertürk 2004, 9). Employing an intersectional analysis, thus, allows me to deconstruct the complexities of how multiple systems of oppression shape rehabilitation and reintegration practices across a global set of programmes.

Rehabilitation and reintegration programmes for women returnees: the influence of intersecting assumptions

Governments and civil society organisations planning and facilitating rehabilitation and reintegration programmes hold certain expectations of “rehabilitated” individuals. So does the receiving community where the individual is being “reintegrated”. What is expected of a male rehabilitated returnee? What about a female returnee? What about a Muslim woman of colour? Is she allowed to practice her religion, wear a hijab and be considered rehabilitated? As outlined in the theoretical framework, recent (War on Terror) and historical (colonialism and patriarchy) developments shape what is expected of certain citizen. These dynamics influence rehabilitation and reintegration practices by setting expectations for men and women to behave or look certain ways, often reflecting the ideology of the state, facilitating organisation or the society. More specifically, I argue that programmes often aim to produce women who are disengaged, loyal to the nation, married, do not wear a niqab, and do “gender appropriate” work. To uncover these intersecting gendered, racial and religious assumptions shaping rehabilitation and reintegration, I analyse three themes: 1) vocational training, 2) the freedom in the expression of religion and 3) the stigmatisation of returnees.

Vocational training

The first example where underlying gendered assumptions shape rehabilitation and reintegration processes is vocational training. This training aims to provide the beneficiary with skills to earn a living and can take the form of a skills development course, apprenticeship, financial support for entrepreneurial endeavours or further education. Although most programmes are for male and female beneficiaries, the design and implementation of these vocational trainings do not happen in a “gender-neutral” space (Henshaw 2020, 72). When conducting an intersectional analysis regarding which training is offered to whom, the alignment with gender normative occupations is evident.

Rehabilitation and reintegration programmes for ISIS returnees are reminiscent of gendered dynamics in the DDR programmes discussed above (Schmidt 2020a). This includes the internationally praised programme employed by Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan is one of the few countries which has organised comprehensive repatriations of their citizen from Syria and Iraq and established rehabilitation and reintegration programmes. Yet, the programmes were only for returning women and children; the returning men were indicted and imprisoned (Ashimov 2019b). Hence, gender norms structured the initial response to returnees, as women were infantilised by equating them with children – and men were viewed as dangerous “terrorists” (Stenger 2022; see also “womenandchildren” Enloe 2014).

In the Kazakh rehabilitation and reintegration programmes, vocational training is part of the women’s schedules and includes courses to learn new gendered skills, such as becoming a hairdresser or beautician (Najibullah 2019). Similarly, Uzbekistan, a country also praised for its proactive repatriation policy, organised rehabilitation facilities for women and children where women receive training in sewing, folk crafts or candy making (Yeniseyev 2020).¹⁵ In both countries, the vocational training is, thus, structured along traditionally ascribed gender roles.

During my interviews, I asked research participants about the vocational training in their programmes and gender stereotypical jobs were often named: “So it’s different [for] women and males. So with males you find that they all [… do …] hand work like shoemaking or carpentry […] and then for women they’ll learn how to become a seamstress” (Nigerian Practitioner, pers. comm., 23 March 2021). Interestingly, across the globe sewing training seems to be particularly common for female returnees, as it was mentioned as common vocational training in Kosovo, in Nigeria,¹⁶ in the UK and in Southeast Asia (Kosovar Practitioner & Researcher, pers. comm., 18 March 2021; Nigerian Practitioner, pers. comm., 23 March 2021; UK Practitioner & Researcher, pers. comm., 17 March 2021; Former Southeast Asian ISIS member, pers. comm., 24 March 2021). In the UK, for instance, this was quite explicit:

Frustratingly, we still see pushing women towards sewing classes. And for some women that might well be appropriate, but … Like one of the women I’ve worked with, they put her in sewing classes and I’m like, I didn’t know you liked sewing, and she said, I don’t, I like cooking. I said, well, why didn’t they sign you up and get you qualified in catering instead of sewing. And she said, because that wasn’t where the funding was, that wasn’t available to her in her area. But her aim was to become a dietician and work with people in diets […] and this has taken us two and a half years to get it to a point where she had an interest in something and instead, they get her to […] these sewing classes. (UK Practitioner & Researcher, pers. comm., 17 March 2021)

This quotation shows how rigid frameworks for vocational training in rehabilitation and reintegration programmes can backfire. It suggests that vocational training is often based on gendered assumptions and a “woman’s place” within society, rather than on the genuine interests of the beneficiary (UK researcher, pers. comm., 22 April 2021). As Fionnula Ní Aoláin (2016: 34, from Gordon 2018, 10) has maintained “reintegration is conceptually gendered” because women are reintegrated into the country’s political and social status. Indeed, requiring women to take up gender normative vocations can be interpreted as an attempt to socialise them into behaviour appropriate for their gender identity. As the state or a civil society organisation pushes the women towards these vocational trainings, it also illustrates the gendered expectations of the respective nation.

Importantly, sewing is not just a “gender appropriate” activity, as it is not only associated with femininity but also with women of colour, particularly Asian and South Asian women. The promotion of sewing through DDR as well as other development programmes as a means to “empower” women in the Global South has been widely criticised (Kabeer 1994). Focusing women returnees’ vocational training on sewing illustrates the liberal feminist imagining of empowering “third world women”, evident in the racialised assumptions of Muslim women around docility and dexterity (Mohanty 1984).

The quote by the UK practitioner above alludes to another important dynamic that is rarely discussed in the rehabilitation and reintegration context: the power dynamics inherent in funding. The funders of rehabilitation and reintegration programmes can be the government itself, foreign governments or (international) organisations, and they tend to influence vocational opportunities.¹⁷ In Kosovo, for example, the rehabilitation and reintegration programme is supported by international organisations that decide which vocational training is offered (Kosovar Practitioner & Researcher, pers. comm., 18 March 2021). This shows the power dynamics between the funder and the executing organisation, where the funder can push their gendered expectations through the offered vocational trainings, such as sewing. Moreover, when international organisations – that are predominantly funded by countries in the Global North – can dictate the type of vocational trainings, the racialised logics of “counterterrorism policies” might be reproduced (Parashar, Tickner, and True 2018).

There is also another factor in why sewing classes might be a common choice for funders: “You have to be careful because you cannot provide money directly, because many international organisations have restrictions [on what] support can look like, so it can be like a sewing machine and then you provide training” (Kosovar Practitioner & Researcher, pers. comm., 18 March 2021). Similar dynamics were discussed in Southeast Asia, where the two options for the government-funded vocational support for female returnees were learning to operate stoves and sewing machines (Former Southeast Asian ISIS member, pers. comm., 24 March 2021). These training options illustrate how vocational training is often limited by funding requirements and the gendered assumptions of the funder.

Vocational training in rehabilitation and reintegration programmes that conform to gender stereotypes can have disadvantages, specifically for women. Stereotypical “female” jobs tend to generate little income, leaving women vulnerable to exploitation, an issue already identified in DDR programmes (Davies and True 2017, 1327). Moreover, by choosing to only offer gender normative vocational training for women, the gendered assumptions are projected onto beneficiaries which force the returning women to take their societal “gender role” back. Although under ISIS, most women had gender-conforming roles in the domestic sphere, for many, there was an empowerment dynamic to it, because these roles were valued and acknowledged (Mahmood 2005; Nuraniyah 2018). Within the rehabilitation and reintegration programmes, however, women should not be pushed into gender normative vocations that reflect racialised assumptions of Muslim women; the vocation should rather reflect the women’s interests.

Importantly, vocational training must be tailored to the needs and skills of the beneficiaries as well as to the local context. Yet, when planning and implementing the training, it is central to realise that many returning women

are not going to be scientists or engineers three days after coming back […] many of these women were in ISIS territory for sizable portion of their childhood or adult life. Most of them did not have educational opportunities or their educational opportunities were severely interrupted. […] So I think on the one hand we might, as liberal Western feminists say they should be allowed to do whatever they want to do. That is fine. But I also would say that [we should] take a culturally situated view of who these women are, where they’ve come from also their own religious beliefs and practices about their own appropriate role. (US Policymaker, pers. comm., 13 April 2021)

This quote is illuminating the tensions that are underwriting many rehabilitation and reintegration programmes. The liberal feminist imagining of empowerment through sewing is based on the racialised imaginings of docile Muslim women, illustrating how the gendered dimensions of such programmes cannot be understood without an analysis of religion and the nation. The rehabilitation and reintegration programmes are, thus, not “politically neutral project[s] with respect to racial and religious identity” (Abu-Bakare 2020, 94), as they reflect similar racialised logics than many P/CVE programmes (in a Western context) (Kundnani and Hayes 2018).

Overall, it is necessary to aim for a “balance between finding a vocation that’s acceptable in society and also understanding what the gender dynamics are, because let’s say you train a woman on how to fix a car, but no one’s going to take their car to be fixed where a woman is the one fixing that might be pushing the boundaries too much for that particular society” (Abu Dhabi Practitioner & Researcher, pers. comm., 22 March 2021). This demonstrates that it is crucial to not criticise certain vocational choices by virtue of them being stereotypical or traditional. Nevertheless, it is still surprising “that in most cases, the vocational training do sort of reinforce those gender stereotypes” and providing sewing classes across the globe irrespective of local contexts reflects the gendered expectations and assumptions of the funder or government rather than a gender-responsive approach (Abu Dhabi Practitioner & Researcher, pers. comm., 22 March 2021).

Alongside tailoring the vocational training to the local context and interests of the beneficiaries, the main objective is to enable the individuals to live autonomous and economically independent lives. Specifically, given that the majority of women were financially dependent on their husbands during their time under ISIS, they therefore “need some sort of alternative to provide for themselves and their children, because their husbands were either killed or are still in prison or conflict zones” (Kosovar Practitioner & Researcher, pers. comm., 18 March 2021). Another example where gendered assumptions might be reinforced in the rehabilitation and reintegration process is through marriage as a “vocation”.

Rehabilitation through the “conjugal Order”?¹⁸

In the LTTE rehabilitation programme, female combatants were encouraged to “marry quickly and have children”, as this would decrease their chances for future “re-radicalisation” (Friedman 2018, 67). The attempt to rehabilitate beneficiaries through marriage has also been common practice in rehabilitation and reintegration programmes for male beneficiaries, such as in Saudi Arabia (Boucek 2008, 20). The aim of marriage might be the “same” for women and men, namely to “stop their fighting” and to provide them with “a reason to live, as opposed to a reason to die” (Striegher 2013, 26, originally from Hoffman 2001: 9–10). However, when women are “encouraged” to marry as a form of rehabilitation, they are often subject to remarginalisation (Duriesmith and Holmes 2019). Moreover, when men have a female partner during their rehabilitation, the women are “presumed to be law-abiding, anti-violent and offer familial stability”, which also illustrates the underlying gender dynamics (Brown 2019a, 5).

Rehabilitation through marriage is still common in, for example, the context of Tehrik-i-Taliban returnees in Pakistan. One Pakistani practitioner told me that women in the rehabilitation programme were “married off” to male family members of the police officers employed in the project (Pakistani Practitioner, pers. comm., 11 March 2021). Interestingly, a programme for male Taliban defectors employed vocational training rather than marriage as part of rehabilitation (Pakistani Practitioner, pers. comm., 11 March 2021). According to the Pakistani practitioner, these practices are influenced by the local context where women usually cannot be set up to live independently. Yet, this demonstrates that for women marriage can be sufficient as a vocation, reinforcing the private-public divide and likely reinforcing their marginalisation (Duriesmith and Holmes 2019). Moreover, the idea “that somehow marriage rehabilitates, settles people down, removes violence” (UK researcher, pers. comm., 22 April 2021) seems ironic considering that many violent extremist groups use the prospect of marriage as a recruitment enticement (Nuraniyah 2018). Overall, the practice of rehabilitation through marriage shows how the “conjugal order” is promoted by some programmes and how a state’s gendered expectations, more specifically its heteronormativity, are pushed upon the citizen (MacKenzie 2012; UK researcher, pers. comm., 22 April 2021).

The first theme explores how gender normative vocational training is offered across various countries seemingly irrespective of the interests of the beneficiary or local context. It also showcases the racialised underwriting of the programmes aiming to “empower” Muslim women through sewing. Thus, the gendered dimensions of rehabilitation and reintegration programmes cannot be understood without an analysis of race, religion and the nation (which will be further explored in the next section).

Religion, national identity and female bodies

The second theme, where gendered and religious assumptions intersect with rehabilitation and reintegration, revolves around the expression of religion and national identity. In a French rehabilitation programme, for instance, beneficiaries were forced to stop eating halal food (Souris and Singh 2018). This is particularly worrisome as in this case a “secular” government imposes their normative religious assumptions on a religious minority. What is considered “normative” is of course highly context specific, yet there seem to be certain practices that are expected from beneficiaries of rehabilitation and reintegration programmes.

As one UK researcher argued: “[R]eintegration is going to have a normative expectation of what it means to be reintegrated. And so then are we expecting that the end of the reintegration of a returned foreign fighter […] are they going to have a strict kind of government religious divide where they are going to be asked to keep their faith quite separate? Are they going to be expected not to wear a hijab anymore?” (UK researcher, pers. comm., 22 April 2021). This comment was meant to be an exaggerated statement regarding the UK context; however, current rehabilitation and reintegration practices as well as societal expectations across several countries are not far away from this sentiment.

In Kazakh rehabilitation facilities for ISIS returnees, gendered and religious assumptions are evident in their regulations regarding religious clothing for girls and women. Reports from Ní Aoláin (2020b, 17) stated that “for key personnel in these centres, successful deradicalisation was measured by the absence of religious garments and the length of women’s clothing”. Moreover, the girls in the rehabilitation centres were prohibited from wearing hijabs to school (Weine 2019). These practices illustrate the “overemphasis on religious normalization” and the restrictions in the expression of faith (Ní Aoláin 2020b, 17). Crucially, these normative religious expectations and restrictions are gender-specific because they only pertain to female bodies and show the importance of intersectionality and how multiple systems of oppression affect individual experiences.

In other rehabilitation and reintegration programmes, the wearing of religious clothing was not directly restricted by the programme itself, but the gendered and religious assumptions of the societies in which they operate have “encouraged” beneficiaries to remove them. One practitioner from the Western Balkans noticed that “women returnees foreign fighters […] take off their niqabs and hijabs in European countries” (Western Balkan Practitioner, pers. comm., 17 March 2021). When asked why she thinks that is, she argues: because it is “a sign that might tell them apart from Christians [and] this is their way to integrate into the community” (Western Balkan Practitioner, pers. comm., 17 March 2021). As such, reintegration practices push for a certain appearance and national identity in the individual that “reintegrates”, “disguis[ing] underlying intentions to assimilate” marginalised bodies (Naji and Schildknecht 2021, 11).

The practitioner from the Western Balkans recounts another example from a regional workshop where a psychiatrist who works with women returnees shares that after having gone through her sessions, her clients decided

“We’re not going to wear the niqab anymore”. I mean, what really? And she was saying that so nonchalantly and I was like, “what the hell is she talking about?” […] I mean, people take these things lightly when you are from the outside. But when you are from the inside, let’s say from the point of view of that woman who has decided that suddenly she will not wear a niqab. What is the psychology behind that? I mean, what the kind of mental state is she in that she’s deciding suddenly that she’s not going to wear it anymore? (Western Balkan Practitioner, pers. comm., 17 March 2021)

When women returnees decide to take off their niqab or hijab once they return to their home country, it might suggest that gendered and religious normative assumptions of societies have influenced their decision-making. Indeed, this decision should be viewed in a larger socio-cultural and political context. For instance, within majority Christian countries in Europe Islamophobia leads to discrimination against women wearing a hijab and niqab. Whereas in Kosovo, a majority Muslim country, hijabs are more accepted yet women wearing niqabs are still suffering from discrimination. As a Kosovar preacher recounts: “[T]here were people that were actually scared to have them [niqabis] in the same apartment or near their house” (Kosovar Preacher, pers. comm., 1 April 2021). Considering women’s decision to change their religious clothing in this context shows how gendered and religious assumptions of a society, including national identity considerations, might impact their choices. It renders the power dynamics in a given society visible – how the “dominant group” decides who belongs (Yuval-Davis et al. 2018) and who is a security threat (Ali 2020, 585).

Women returnees do not only stop wearing religious clothing once they are back in their home country but frequently also within the camps in northeastern Syria. Multiple (European) newspapers have reported that several ISIS-associated women, including Shamima Begum (UK), have taken off first their niqab and then their hijab and are now pictured with “modern Western clothes” (Pleasance 2021; Sancha 2019, 2021). Some women returnees claimed they have undergone these changes to “dress…to get used to [their] return” which might suggest a tactic to “win back the hearts and minds of the British public” (Pleasance 2021); whereas other women argued that it is not a strategy to foster a “positive” image for their repatriation (Sancha 2021).¹⁹ Yet, regardless of the women’s intention, it is probable that Western countries welcome the change of clothing because it might be (falsely) perceived as the women becoming “less radical” (Rajina 2021). This shows just how deeply ingrained Islamophobia is and that “being Muslim” is perceived as oppositional to belonging to a western nation (Abu Bakare 2022; Yuval-Davis et al. 2018). The role of nationalism and belonging in this context is reminiscent of P/CVE programmes that help to manage individuals who might appear to be visible threats to the nation (Ali 2020; Kundnani and Hayes 2018).

In the discussion around the religious clothing of ISIS-associated women, it is important to take their treatment under ISIS into consideration as well as the broader Islamophobic narrative this has played into. In the “Caliphate” women’s dress code was violently enforced by moral police which was commonly depicted in the media with pictures of “ISIS-brides” wearing black niqabs (Hoyle, Bradford, and Frenett 2015).²⁰ This depiction of female ISIS members wearing black niqabs has “play[ed] into established Islamophobic views about a perceived correlation between Islamic clothing and extremism” (Rajina 2021). The entrenchment of extremism and women’s religious clothing, as a UK research participant noted, goes alongside the recent banning of the niqab and veiling in many countries, including in Sri Lanka (Al 2021) or Switzerland (Oltermann 2021; Naji and Schildknecht 2021, 6; UK researcher, pers. comm., 22 April 2021). It demonstrates how extremism is regarded as “Muslim culture” (Kundnani 2014, 10) and how governments’ “counterradicalization” policies perpetuate a connection between Islam and “terrorism” (Abu Bakare 2022, 237).

Fatima Rajina (2021) further points out that the narrative of changing from Islamic to “Western clothing” suggests that only the West can liberate Muslim women and has a distinct colonial touch to it, as it is a reminder of the public unveiling of Algerian Muslim women in the 1950s to signify their “liberation”.²¹ Thus, the change of religious clothing is perceived as a “symbol” to the women’s commitment to “Western ideals of democracy or freedom” which they have “betrayed” through joining ISIS (UK researcher, pers. comm., 22 April 2021). This further demonstrates the Western arrogance that returning female ISIS members need to be socialised into appropriate behaviour and looks, also demonstrating the apparent tension between being “Western” and “Muslim” (Brown 2020, 3). The treatment of women’s religious clothing showcases how gendered and religious assumptions are imposed on female’s bodies through rehabilitation and reintegration practices – directly and indirectly.

Nationalism

Within the context of underlying normative assumptions, it is also crucial to outline how education on “nationalism” is part of many rehabilitation and reintegration programmes. Specifically, when considering that states are viewed as the legitimate bulwark against “terrorists”, which includes funding and carrying out rehabilitation and reintegration programmes (Parashar, Tickner, and True 2018). Several states have incorporated “nationalism” as part of their programmes. For example, a French programme for Islamist violent extremists required beneficiaries to study French history and literature as well as to sing the national anthem, aiming to “replace” the Islamist ideology with a “secular” one (Souris and Singh 2018). The focus on national identity is also prevalent in Kazakhstan and Indonesia. In Kazakhstan, women and children are singing traditional Kazakh songs as part of the rehabilitation programme (Ashimov 2019a). In Indonesia, beneficiaries are required to sign a declaration that they are loyal to the Indonesian state and the national philosophy Pancasila (Sumpter 2018), as well as “recite a pledge of allegiance to the Indonesian republic in front of an Indonesian flag” (IPAC 2023, 17). Promoting nationalism as part of rehabilitation and reintegration programmes suggests that individuals join groups because they “lack” nationalism, which is usually not a reason for joining extremist organisations. Moreover, in some countries, integrating a nationalist agenda into programmes might also be a strategy to manage racialised populations, specifically Muslims, who are seen as a threat to the nation (Ali 2020).

The focus on nationalism and fostering the national identity might also increase the marginalisation and discrimination against religious and/or ethnic minorities. Indeed, the French rehabilitation programme not only taught history and literature but also prevented beneficiaries from eating halal food. These practices show how the beneficiaries’ national identity should become more “French” and less “Muslim”. From a post-colonial perspective, this portrays Muslims as “inherently prone to be radicalized unless they assimilate to the white, [Christian] heteronormative nation-state” (Naji and Schildknecht 2021, 9; see also Ali 2020, 591). The nationalism practices in rehabilitation and reintegration programmes might, thus, be interpreted as an attempt to foster a religiously constructed national identity.

The second theme highlights how returning women are restricted in their expression of religion through, for example, their religious clothing. This shows how Islamophobic expectations relating to national identity are imposed on female’s bodies through rehabilitation and reintegration practices.

“Double-stigma”

The third illustration of how gendered, racial and religious assumptions structure the rehabilitation and reintegration of beneficiaries is stigmatisation. Stigmatisation refers to discrimination of an individual or group, leading to the experience of hostile attitudes and behaviours by the community or family. This can result in social isolation of the beneficiary (Annan et al. 2011; Ladbury 2015, 7). Research on DDR programmes across the globe has demonstrated that women ex-combatants tend to face compounded stigma and often struggle with reintegration, such as in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Hauge 2020), in Sierra Leone (Coulter 2009) or in Sri Lanka (Friedman 2018). The reasons for increased stigmatisation often concern the expectation that female combatants have endured sexual violence, were not suitable for marriage or have engaged in violence (Altier 2021, 48). The fact that women tend to experience more stigma from the receiving community and the wider society than men can be traced back to gender norms which women, through the virtue of joining armed or violent extremist groups, have transgressed (Ladbury 2015, 7).

ISIS returnees are also stigmatised in the reintegration process. In my interviews, research participants agreed that both men and women can experience stigma for being a “terrorist”. An Indonesian practitioner illustrated this dynamic: “So, when I visited the deportees,²² the mother said, the society is insulting us, stigmatising us as terrorist […] whenever I go out, they always call me terrorist. I am not a terrorist” (Indonesian Practitioner, pers. comm., 29 March 2021). Although women and men can both be stigmatised upon their return, most research participants argued that stigma is highly gender-specific. For male returnees, it was often mentioned that they are stigmatised for their imprisonment. Despite women being increasingly prosecuted for belonging to ISIS, men tend to have longer prison sentences and are still more likely to be imprisoned (CTED 2020; Kosovar Practitioner & Researcher, pers. comm., 18 March 2021).

The stigma women returnees receive was so-called “double stigma” – referring to the much stronger stigma for female than for male returnees (German Practitioner, pers. comm., 1 June, 2021). As one Nigerian practitioner summarised, “there is gender perspective to stigma […] it is easier for the men compared to the women” to reintegrate into society without being ostracised (Nigerian Practitioner, pers. comm., 12 March 2021). This was reported across the globe in Kosovo, Indonesia, Nigeria, Germany and the UK (Kosovar Practitioner & Researcher, pers. comm., 18 March 2021; German Practitioner, pers. comm., 1 June, 2021; Indonesian Policymaker, pers. comm., 17 March 2021; Indonesian Researcher, pers. comm., 26 March 2021; Nigerian Practitioner, pers. comm., 12 March 2021; UK Practitioner & Researcher, pers. comm., 17 March 2021). One Indonesian practitioner argued that “we still face gender discrimination […] the blame towards anyone associated with that terrorist group, it’s harder to women than to men. And, that has been the most challenge that women face, the social stigma and discrimination” (Indonesian Practitioner, pers. comm., 10 March 2021). In the Nigerian context, a practitioner shared: “Women wouldn’t be able to fetch water from the local stream […] or fetch firewood for themselves. […] They’re monitored very closely and they face verbal abuse from other women who look down on them” (Nigerian Practitioner, pers. comm., 23 March 2021). This finding reflects scholarship on Boko Haram that shows how incorporating a simplistic view of “women” actually enables gender-specific security harms (Pearson and Nagarajan 2020).

These experiences show that stigma is gender-specific and affects women more than men. This is caused by gendered normative assumptions of societies, namely gender norms (Ladbury 2015, 7). In other words, women receive more stigma because “counter to gender role expectations they were part of a violent extremist group” (German Practitioner, pers. comm., 1 June, 2021). Thus, “it goes back to social norms and cultural, cultural biases” (Nigerian Practitioner, pers. comm., 23 March 2021), reflecting the above-mentioned research findings from DDR programmes (Altier 2021, 48; Ladbury 2015, 7). Similar to the DDR context, women returnees are stigmatised because they transgress gender roles through, for example, committing violence (US Practitioner, pers. comm., 8 April 2021). Across the globe, “there is a deep social discomfort with that [women executing violence] […] especially in the case where the woman is ideologically convinced herself” (US Practitioner, pers. comm., 8 April 2021). Importantly, for men, executing violence “actually reinforces their gendered position in society” as it is somehow expected that men carry out violence (US Practitioner, pers. comm., 8 April 2021). When women commit violence, it furthers the stigma as “violent women interrupt [the] gender stereotype” of being peaceful and helpless (Sjoberg and Gentry 2008, 5).

Women returnees also receive stigma because it is assumed that they experienced sexual violence (Nigerian Practitioner, pers. comm., 12 March 2021); or that, in case they have children, they were either born out of rape and/or that they are from several different men, which again resembles women’s experiences in the DDR context (Altier 2021, 48; Nigerian Practitioner, pers. comm., 23 March 2021; Indonesian Policymaker, pers. comm., 17 March 2021; Kosovar Preacher, pers. comm., 1 April 2021). Having children from different men plays a major role in the ISIS context, as ISIS was known to re-marry women quickly after their husband passed away (Moaveni 2019, 187). This is evident in an example from Kosovo:

[T]he other aspect of stigma is that they were married with one or two or three husbands … and, you know, their morality, how can you find your place back in the community after having gone through that […] So for women there can be stigma, because of how they behaved there or that they had these different marriages. (Kosovar Practitioner & Researcher, pers. comm., 18 March 2021)

This research participant’s experience shows the gendered assumptions around women’s morality, illustrating that women are blamed for having multiple husbands. In other words, “there is some affiliation of impurity when someone has been […] probably raped, forced to marry. They still somehow assign some blame to that individual, even though clearly they’re not to blame” (Abu Dhabi Practitioner & Researcher, pers. comm., 22 March 2021). This shows how women are stigmatised “due to deep-seated gender norms in families and communities that apportion blame” to the survivor (True 2018, 184).²³ Blaming and stigmatising women for multiple partners, the experience of sexual violence and possibly children has also been reported in other contexts, such as for former female Boko Haram members, which led to difficulties in their reintegration process due to the rejection by families and communities (UNICEF and ICAN and UNDP 2019, 12, 94; International Alert 2016).

Women are not only blamed for their participation in violent extremist groups but also for their family members’ actions, as the next quotation demonstrates: “[M]aybe someone’s son joined and then the mother actually is being associated, even though she has nothing to do with the group. There’s like a stigma attached to her as well” (Abu Dhabi Practitioner & Researcher, pers. comm., 22 March 2021; see also Nigerian Practitioner, pers. comm., 23 March 2021). Similar dynamics were reported when women’s husbands were involved in violent extremism: “[T]hey still get a stigma from society as ‘the main actors’ and take full responsibility for the incident also their children, the society tend to avoid her family” (Indonesian Policymaker, pers. comm., 17 March 2021). It was argued that women are blamed because “the wife didn’t protect or didn’t prevent the husband for being influenced by the terrorist network” (Indonesian Researcher, pers. comm., 26 March 2021). This illustrates how by virtue of being “the woman” in the family they are blamed for their family members’ actions, emphasising the gendered underlying assumptions of societal expectation that women must be “good person[s]” (Indonesian Policymaker, pers. comm., 17 March 2021). This is a dynamic that Elizabeth Mesok (2022, 11) describes in Kenya too, where “mothers suffer from shame and ostracisation if their children or family members join a violent extremist organisation as they are made responsible due to their” familial and social roles.

Stigma has various effects on women’s lives and may even lead to women choosing to return to the violent extremist group. In the Nigerian context, a practitioner recounted that the stigmatisation was so dire that some women chose to return to Boko Haram and the number of recidivism was higher among female compared to male returnees (Nigerian Practitioner, pers. comm., 23 March 2021). Stigmatisation can also lead returnees to move into other cities or into isolation and self-stigma, as a practitioner from Indonesia recounts: “They experienced self-stigma, meaning that they stigma themselves as being associated with the terrorist groups. And because of that, because of the threat, because of the fear being discriminated by the community, they keep themselves at home” (Indonesian Practitioner, pers. comm., 10 March 2021). Or as a practitioner from the Western Balkan puts it: “I don’t think that they [women returnees] will parade through the streets, be proud of what they’ve done. […] they will do it in a very secretive and shy way” (Western Balkan Practitioner, pers. comm., 17 March 2021).²⁴

Another dynamic that influences the reintegration process and stigma is Islamophobia. Specifically, a German practitioner outlined that the discourse around Islam, the “connection” with violence and “constant racist devaluation” impacts the reintegration process (German Practitioner, pers. comm., 1 June, 2021). She further pointed out that because discrimination is a motivating factor for joining extremist organisations in the first place, returning to a society that still discriminates against you for your hijab or niqab can negatively influence the feeling of belongingness and reintegration. Another practitioner from Kosovo mentioned that “some individuals may see them [returnees] as dangerous, especially because if they wear a burqa or something that they associated with something that’s threatening to them […] and they are also labelled as terrorists” (Kosovar Practitioner & Researcher, pers. comm., 18 March 2021). This shows how intersecting religious and gendered assumptions can compound the “double stigma” and thus weaken the social reintegration process. Moreover, it emphasises that rehabilitation and reintegration programmes cannot be “disconnected from globally relevant systems of oppression” (Abu-Bakare 2020, 94).

In summary, the third theme reveals that women returnees experience “double stigma” because they are thought to have transgressed prevalent gender norms by joining a violent extremist organisation. Moreover, women from an ethnic and religious minority or migrant status are specifically subject to scrutiny and thus discriminatory and harmful narratives.

Towards intersectional rehabilitation and reintegration?

The aim of rehabilitation and reintegration programmes is to reintegrate someone (back) into society. Yet, to be reintegrated, the person needs to be perceived as belonging to society, which might not be “achievable” for everyone (Cainkar and Selod 2018, 169). Sarah Gharib Seif reminds us that “racialisation, and consequently racism, continue to play an integral role in the construction of who does and doesn’t ‘belong’” and are the result of colonialism.²⁵ As such, the “dominant group” decides who belongs (Ali 2020, 585; Yuval-Davis et al. 2018). This logic is highly relevant in a rehabilitation and reintegration context as the racialised and religious power dynamics “disguise underlying intentions to assimilate and pacify” marginalised bodies (Naji and Schildknecht 2021, 11). Indeed, the analysis emphasises that intersecting gendered, racial and religious assumptions are affecting the rehabilitation and reintegration process for women returning from ISIS-held territory. Specifically, the themes demonstrate how societal norms might guide expectations for beneficiaries to reintegrate by becoming less “visibly” religious, performing gender normative vocations and ideally getting married and singing national songs. The expectations are particularly high for women from an ethnic and religious minority or migrant status who are subject to increased scrutiny.

Importantly, rehabilitation and reintegration programmes are not disconnected from the power dynamics inherent in patriarchy and white supremacy. As such, the programmes are not “neutral” in relation to gender, racial and religious identity (Abu-Bakare 2020, 94; Henshaw 2020, 72). Moreover, the stigmatisation theme demonstrates that the marginalisation of women returnees has implications for the effectiveness of programmes to rehabilitate and reintegrate (see also Altier 2021; Ladbury 2015). The findings of this paper should, thus, inform the design and implementation of gender-responsive rehabilitation and reintegration programmes while being cognisant of how gendered, racial and religious assumptions can undermine their purpose and effectiveness.

Conclusion

This paper uncovered how intersecting religious and gendered assumptions affect the rehabilitation and reintegration of women ISIS returnees. The impact of the assumptions on the processes was analysed in three different themes drawing on interviews with practitioners, researchers and policymakers. The first finding is that gender normative vocational training is employed in rehabilitation and reintegration regardless of the beneficiaries’ interest or local context. Second, religious expression is restricted across a number of countries due to Islamophobic expectations relating to national identity and reintegration. Third, women ISIS returnees experience gender-specific “double stigma”, which demonstrates that ISIS-associated women are not only penalised for belonging to a violent extremist group but also for transgressing societal gender norms.

The scholarly contribution of this paper links security and terrorism studies with scholarship on intersectionality. I demonstrated the importance of critical, feminist literature when examining Islamist violent extremism, specifically in the context of rehabilitation and reintegration. The practical contribution of this paper is that it demonstrates how an intersectional analysis is crucial for planning and implementing rehabilitation and reintegration of women returnees. Further research should investigate how specific trainings on gender, Islamophobia and racism can support entities – civil society organisations and governments – that are implementing rehabilitation and rehabilitation.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Jacqui True and Patricia Salas Sanchez for their helpful comments and guidance in writing this article. I also want to thank the anonymous peer reviewers for their pertinent reviews.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Helen Stenger

Helen Stenger is a Research Fellow at the Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (CEVAW) at Monash University, Australia.

Notes

1. See Stenger (2023) on why the name “Foreign Fighters and their Families” is gendered. Interestingly, Kosovo is – to my knowledge – the only country in the world that has established a dedicated government department for returning foreign fighters.

2. The name of the programme was changed in 2020 from “Deradicalisation” to “Repatriation” because women returnees felt that they do not need to be deradicalised (Kosovar Preacher, pers. comm., 1 April 2021).

3. Female Preachers from the Islamic Council of Kosovo.

4. Throughout this paper, I am referring to women and sometimes men, yet I wish to acknowledge people with diverse gender identities. During my data collection, people with diverse gender identities were not mentioned. This could be due to the fact that rehabilitation and reintegration programmes do not “include” them; most countries do not acknowledge gender identities at all. Moreover, in the context of ISIS it is unlikely that people other than cis men and cis women have joined the group, due to ISIS strict gender norms. Nevertheless, where possible, I tried to avoid the reification of gender binary (Weerawardhana 2018).

5. There is an absence of consensus regarding the “terminology and priorities among the policy, academic and practitioner communities” surrounding terrorism (ICAN and UNDP 2019, 10), resulting in a lack of coherent concepts and theoretical frameworks (Bjørgo and Horgan 2009: 3). This manifests in the debate around terms describing the “process of turning from a position of endorsing and using violence to abstinence from violent means and/or attitudes” (Koehler 2016, 3), including disengagement, deradicalisation, rehabilitation and reintegration.

6. Although there is anecdotal evidence that gendered skills may foster the empowerment of beneficiaries (Basini 2013), gender normative vocational training in DDR programmes has long been critiqued (Hills and MacKenzie 2017).

7. It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss the debate surrounding variations of Islamophobia, religion and racism; however, as Abu-Bakare (2020, 227, originally Garner 2010) contends Islamophobia is anti-Muslim racism because it “a system generating practices, institutions, narratives and inequities based on the perceived non-whiteness of Muslimness as an ethnic category”. Importantly, individuals who are discriminated against because they are perceived as “Muslim” often fit into a “the socially constructed racial identity” but can be of a different faith and are just caught in a racialisation, such as Arabs or South Asians (Love 2020, 461; see also Cainkar and Selod 2018). As such, while race and religion may be “distinct” categories, in an intersectional analysis they are intrinsically interrelated.

8. It is important to note here that Crenshaw built her ground-breaking 1989 essay on contributions by other black feminist theorists and activists, including The Combahee River Collective [1978] and Angela Davis (1981).

9. For more insight into this, there is a depth of feminist scholarship critically examining the role of gender, religion and race in the “War on Terror” (e.g. Shepherd 2006; Pratt 2013; Lee-Koo 2008; Thobani 2007).

10. Preventing and countering violent extremism are not clearly defined in the literature (Kundnani and Hayes 2018, 10). I define rehabilitation and reintegration as outlined above and as separate to P/CVE.

11. This study was approved by the Monash University Human Research Ethics Committee (Project ID 18,358).

12. I am not naming the actual country to protect the research participant’s identity.

13. I am not naming the actual country to protect the research participant’s identity.

14. Specifically, it required that I am reflective about how being a young, white, woman from an university in the Global North shapes my research. This may mean that some interview partners are more or less willing to share information with me because of who I am and how I act (see Stern 2006: 185).

15. In Uzbekistan the returning women received amnesty whereas the men were imprisoned (Mironova 2021).

16. Please note that this concerns rehabilitation programmes for Boko Haram who were associated with ISIS until 2016.

17. There are broader critiques regarding funding in the P/CVE space, including short-term rigid funding cycles that “increase pressure on practitioners to show results and overstate the impact of their interventions” (Holmer, Bauman, and Aryaeinejad 2018, 10).

18. “Conjugal order” originally from (MacKenzie 2012).

19. There are also women in the camps who keep wearing their niqab as a security measure because ISIS women within camps still enforce ISIS dress codes (Sancha 2021).

20. For example: Sancha (2019); Bonn (2018); Anindya (2019).

21. See also: Loken and Zelenz (2018) and Lazreg (1994).

22. Deportees refers to individuals that were deported from a third country on their way to join ISIS in Syria or Iraq.

23. Although I am only discussing sexual violence committed against cis women here, it is important to note that ISIS also executed sexual violence against men, boys and people with diverse gender identities and sexualities (Ahram 2015; Human Rights Watch 2020).

24. An Indonesian practitioner underlined that the extent of stigmatisation depends on the socio-cultural and political context of where the individual is reintegrated and recounted a story where an ISIS returnee was celebrated as “war hero” upon returning (Interview, Researcher, Indonesia, 26 March 2021).

25. Sarah Gharib Seif presented her conference paper (unpublished) “Beyond the ‘jihadi bride’: reconceptualising feminist approaches to agency” at the International Feminist Journal of Politics Conference 2022 in Seoul, Korea.