On the street, Malika El Aroud is anonymous in an Islamic black veil covering all but her eyes.In her living room, El Aroud, a 48-year-old Belgian, wears the ordinary look of middle age: a plain black T-shirt and pants and curly brown hair. The only adornment is a pair of powder-blue slippers monogrammed in gold with the letters SEXY.But it is on the Internet where El Aroud has distinguished herself. Writing in French under the name “Oum Obeyda,” she has transformed herself into one of the most prominent Internet jihadists in Europe. She calls herself a female holy warrior for Al Qaeda. She insists that she does not disseminate instructions on bomb-making and has no intention of taking up arms herself. Rather, she bullies Muslim men to go and fight and rallies women to join the cause. “It’s not my role to set off bombs— that’s ridiculous,” she said in a rare interview. “I have a weapon. It’s to write. It’s to speak out. That’s my jihad. ”El Aroud has not only made a name for herself among devotees of radical forums where she broadcasts her message of hatred toward the West. She also is well known to intelligence officials throughout Europe as simply “Malika— an Islamist who is at the forefront of the movement by women to take a role in the male-dominated global jihad.”The authorities have noted an increase in suicide bombings carried out by women— the American military reports that 18 women have conducted suicide missions in Iraq so far this year, compared with 8 all of last year— but they say there is also a less violent yet potentially more insidious army of women organisers, proselytisers, teachers, translators and fund-raisers, who either join their husbands in the fight or step into the breach as men are jailed or killed. “Women are coming of age in jihad and are entering a world once reserved for men,” said Claude Moniquet, president of the Brussels-based European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center. “Malika is a role model, an icon who is bold enough to identify herself.”El Aroud began her rise to prominence because of a man in her life. Two days before the attacks of September 11, 2001, her husband carried out a bombing in Afghanistan that killed the anti-Taliban resistance leader Ahmed Shah Massoud at the behest of Osama bin Laden. Her husband was killed, and she took to the Internet as the widow of a martyr. She remarried, and in 2007 she and her new husband were convicted in Switzerland for operating pro-Qaeda websites. Now, according to the Belgium authorities, she is a suspect in what they believe is a plot to carry out attacks in Belgium.For her, the Taliban was a model Islamic government and reports of its mistreatment of women were untrue. Her only rebellion was against the burqa the Taliban forced on women, which she called “a plastic bag.” As a foreigner, she was allowed to wear a long black veil instead.
