Alwaght- Germany’s intelligence services have identified a Wahhabi terrorist network made up of 40 women spreading hate and extremist ideology online.
Burkhard Freier, the head of the North Rhine-Westphalian Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper that the local female extremist network of “40 sisters” followed a strict Wahhabi (Salafist doctrine) —informing their advice on everything from raising children to interpreting Wahhabi religious rules and stirring up hatred against so-called “non-believers.”
The network was active on the internet, determined to proselytize Wahhabism, the official religious ideology of Saudi Arabia, to other would-be members.
“The women are now ideology promoters," Freier said. Additionally, the women indoctrinate their own children from an early age. “This makes Salafism a family affair,” and the result, Freier said, could be something “much more difficult to dissolve, namely Salafist pockets within society.”
What’s worse is that these female extremist leaders, some of whom have several hundred Facebook followers, now have a new role in society, feeling accepted and included. “The men have realized that women can network much better and are therefore more capable of expanding the scene and keeping it active,” Freier said.
Wahhabi beliefs provide the spiritual basis for groups like Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Al Shabab, Boko Haram and Taliban.
German intelligence chief Hans-Georg Maassen said earlier this month that the security services are facing a record number of Wahhabi terrorists.
The BfV head added that women returning to Germany from ISIS strongholds “had become so radicalized and identify so deeply with ISIS-ideology that, by all accounts, they must also be identified as terrorists… we have to keep them in our sights.”
Early this month the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency expressed concern about the threat posed by ISIS terrorists' family members returning to the country from Syria and Iraq.
According to official estimates, 950 German terrorists, 20 percent of whom were female, joined the ranks of ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Roughly one third of these 950 German fighters have already returned home, the majority of whom are women and children.
