When Interior Minister Lotfi Bin Jeddo told the National Constituent Assembly on September 19 that young Tunisian women were travelling to Syria to practice “sexual jihad”— providing sexual relief to jihadist fighters— and were returning pregnant, he brought a shred of legitimacy to a news story whose veracity has been widely questioned.

When Interior Minister Lotfi Bin Jeddo told the National Constituent Assembly on September 19 that young Tunisian women were travelling to Syria to practice “sexual jihad”— providing sexual relief to jihadist fighters— and were returning pregnant, he brought a shred of legitimacy to a news story whose veracity has been widely questioned.

A couple of weeks later, however, an anonymous government official told AFP that the number of girls travelling to Syria was actually quite low.

Finding the victims

“We cannot speak about this issue in the absence of evidence and proof,” said Iman al-Tariqi, head of the Freedom and Justice Organization. “The cases of women who returned from Syria or those obliged to travel there, according the interior ministry’s statement, should be transferred to the judiciary and charges should be supported.” 

Iman Hwemel,  Director-General of Women and Family Affairs at the Ministry of Women, however, did not rule out the involvement of prostitution and human trafficking networks in seducing Tunisian girls and women and convincing them to practice sexual Jihad after making promises to help them to find work opportunities in foreign countries.

Hwemel’s ministry, however, does not have any official statistics or information about sexual jihad. The minister, who has been heavily criticized for not dealing with the issues of real concern to women and Tunisian families, said that the ministry planned to collect information on victims and their children and to put an end to the spread of this alleged phenomenon. She also expressed her disapproval of the fatwas allegedly issued by some extremist preachers.

Radhia al-Jarbi, the head of the Union of Tunisian Women, the largest and oldest women’s organization in Tunisia, said that her organization is planning to study the file of young girls returning from Syria. The group hopes to obtain testimonies in order to determine how the group might intervene, help and provide health and psychological support to victims. So far, the union has not had any contact with girls who practiced sexual jihad.

A rape crime  

Bushra Belhaj Hamida, human rights and activists with Tunisian Association of Democratic Women (ATFD), not only doubted that the phenomenon existed, she claimed that “Tunisian women are targeted by those who oppose progress in the name of religion which they wrongly interpret.  They want to change the active role of women in Tunisia and make them mere pleasure commodities in order to satisfy their animal instincts without thinking about the future of these women.”

Belhaj considered the young girls who became involved sexual johad to be victims of methodological acts to tarnish the image of the Tunisian women and to distort the reformist movement led by reformers in Tunisia starting with the Tahar Haddad to Bourguiba. She added that “these women should be dealt with as victims and they should be provided with care and re-integrated in the society after rehabilitating them.” 

Sex, drugs and poverty: the fuel of wars

Professor Bashir Tlili, head the sociology department at the Higher Institute for Human Sciences in Tunis, said that the so-called Jihad al-Nikah is one of the three factors that fuel wars: sex, drugs and the exploitation of the poor.

“The use of sex and drugs politically and socially as a raw material in all wars is common and it is an old practice. This phenomenon exists regardless of the party administrating the war. The poor are often used and exploited,” he explained.

“After the revolutions, the victory of the Islamic streams and their rise to power, new concepts have appeared such as the common-law marriages as well as other concepts. Now there are new connotations for many topics that were not known before.  This has led to new religious interpretations that have enabled contractors to use money to support their religious beliefs and the jihad for the sake of Allah according to their own perception. This is being done by exploiting the poor and ideologically and intellectually influencing them in order to utilize sex to the maximum possible level.”