Women Jihadis are taking an ever-prominent role in Germany’s Islamist underground, the country’s domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for Protection of the Constitution (BfV), says in a recently-released document. These all-women networks are nearly impossible to detect and infiltrate, the spy agency admits.

The temporary shortage of male Islamist leadership in Germany due to recruitments by the Islamic State in recent years have seen women take up a critical role in running the terrorist operation within the country, the German intelligence report reveals. Muslim women are involved in terrorism financing and may even be involved in plotting future terrorist operations, the report further indicates. 

According to the German domestic intelligence agency (BfV), women are also filling up ideological positions within the Islamist movement and producing propaganda for Jihad against the West. “We are observing that women are turning into, sort of, producers of ideology. In other words, they are creating instruction material,” says Burkhard Freier, chief of the intelligence agency in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

The German newspaper Westfälische Rundschau published the excerpts of the reports:

Islamists are directly approaching women on the instant messaging service Telegram, addressing them as “sisters and mothers,” inciting them against the “unbelievers” and recruiting them for Syria. On another platform, women collect donations for [Islamist] prisoners, write letters, and buy groceries for other women whose men have been killed while fighting for an extremist group.

Since the leading male figures within the radical circles have been arrested, shot or have gone underground, women have risen in importance for the radical Islamists in Germany. This “network” is “difficult to infiltrate for the intelligence operations,” writes the German Federal Office for Protection of the Constitution [the country’s domestic spy agency] in its latest report.

According to the report, women organize themselves in “small circles of conspirators,” mainly on the internet. This makes it difficult for the intelligence service to spy on young Muslim women – provided they catch our attention by making radical statements. We are observing a “privatization of Islamism,” explained the chief of the Federal Office for Protection of the Constitution. (…)

And yet the number of Islamists, referred to as Salafists by the security agencies, is at an all-time high. At present that number is at 10,800 individuals, the agency estimates. In December 2016 that number was 9,700; in September 2017 it rose to 10,300 (…) [Translation by the author]

This is the second public acknowledgment by the German intelligence community within a span of few weeks that warns of the growing threat posed by female Islamists to the country. Earlier this month, the head of the BfV spoke of the danger posed by “highly radicalized” ISIS women and children returning from Syria and Iraq.

Despite clear warnings, Merkel government has decided to ignore the warnings of its own intelligence chief and intensified its diplomatic efforts to bring back the wives and children of German Islamic State terrorists currently under Iraqi detention.

German Foreign Ministry cites “humanitarian considerations and Germany’s duty to protect its citizens” to justify its decision to bring back the relatives of German terrorists who left the country to join the ISIS terror militia in Syria and Iraq.

Most of these ‘ISIS brides’ are themselves staunch believers in the ideology of Islamism and their children have been indoctrinated in ISIS- run theological schools, or madrassas.