VOA慢速英语2014 Women Use Twitter to Support Jihad

 

AS IT IS 2014-09-16 Women Use Twitter to Support Jihad 

The tweets show pictures of baby cats, nice shoes and bloody¹ battlefields. The so-called "Umm network" produces the tweets. They claim to be foreign female jihadists on Twitter.

Many Arabic people use “umm” before names. The word means “mother” or “mother of.”

The Umm network and what some call the Islamic State use Twitter to urge both men and women to serve the jihad movement. They also use it to send Islamic State pictures, videos and messages.

One of the best known members of the Umm network is @UmmLayth. She is also known as Aqsa Mahmood. She identifies herself as a teenager from Scotland with Arabic ancestry². She says she left home for Syria. An unconfirmed report says she married a militant³.

Ms. Mahmood no longer tweets. But officials think online communications urged her to go to Syria.

The Centre for the Study of Radicalization in London said only about 30 European women are jihadists. But some fear more may join. Officials express concern that Western jihadists could return from Syria and Iraq and carry out terrorist attacks in their home countries.

Erin Saltman of the Quilliam Foundation in London said about 200 western women have traveled to Syria. In contrast, she said about 3,000 men traveled there. 

“With the influx⁴ of men, women are needed to serve as wives,” Ms. Saltman said. “Social media accounts of jihadi wives serve to spread Islamic State propaganda, encourage other women to join and describe the life of a jihadist wife in order to reassure⁵ and give an idea of how life will be for potential recruits.

“Women are more likely to recruit fellow women to join IS, which is the primary goal of most of the female social media accounts.”

Islamic State militants⁶ want to establish their version of a fully⁷ operating Islamic society, known as a caliphate. They believe they need women as wives and mothers to gain that goal.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is the caliph, the leader, of the so-called Islamic State. He has urged both men and women to join in building the state.

1 bloody   

adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染

参考例句：

• He got a bloody nose in the fight.他在打斗中被打得鼻子流血。
• He is a bloody fool.他是一个十足的笨蛋。

2 ancestry   

n.祖先，家世

参考例句：

• Their ancestry settled the land in 1856.他们的祖辈1856年在这块土地上定居下来。
• He is an American of French ancestry.他是法国血统的美国人。

3 militant   

adj.激进的，好斗的；n.激进分子，斗士

参考例句：

• Some militant leaders want to merge with white radicals.一些好斗的领导人要和白人中的激进派联合。
• He is a militant in the movement.他在那次运动中是个激进人物。

4 influx   

n.流入，注入

参考例句：

• The country simply cannot absorb this influx of refugees.这个国家实在不能接纳这么多涌入的难民。
• Textile workers favoured protection because they feared an influx of cheap cloth.纺织工人拥护贸易保护措施，因为他们担心涌入廉价纺织品。

5 reassure   

v.使放心，使消除疑虑

参考例句：

• This seemed to reassure him and he continued more confidently.这似乎使他放心一点，于是他更有信心地继续说了下去。
• The airline tried to reassure the customers that the planes were safe.航空公司尽力让乘客相信飞机是安全的。

6 militants   

激进分子，好斗分子( militant的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The militants have been sporadically fighting the government for years. 几年来，反叛分子一直对政府实施零星的战斗。
• Despite the onslaught, Palestinian militants managed to fire off rockets. 尽管如此，巴勒斯坦的激进分子仍然发射导弹。

7 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。