Self-Renunciation and State Formation
While the legal defenses of martyrdom-seeking operations of al-Qaʿida jurists and their sympathizers emphasize individual acts of self-renunciation, the state-building project of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s self-declared caliphate of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) instrumentalized martyrdom-seeking operations as fundamental to its political objectives. Alongside the arguments of Abu Bakr al-Naji and Abu ʿAbdullah al-Muhajir, the authors and jurists of ISIS—foremost among them Turki al-Binʿali, a former student of Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi and grand mufti of ISIS—maintained Jihadi-Salafi narratives of theodicy and self-renunciation but identified specific gender roles for men and women in the state-building project. Women were to practice self-renunciation away from the battlefield and within the household, where they were to prepare the next generation of fighters. Men, on the other hand, were expected to go forth and fight in God’s cause, seeking martyrdom if necessary.