on women and jihad

LA Times piece about women asserting their importance to the jihadi movement.

The meat of the article deals with the ways that Zawahiri responds to female arguments that it is their right to participate in jihad as much as it is men's. (Basically he says that it is a woman's duty to care for the children of the mujahid she marries - for a first-person account of that experience, read I, Nadia, Wife of a Terrorist). There is a profile of a mujahida (?) in the IHT as well. (A colleague of mine refers to female jihadis as 'jihadistas' - offensive or just silly?)

This certainly offers a compelling counterargument to the idea that women are inherently more peaceful than men.