Women like Nadia who would give into peer pressure of adopting a conservative version of Islam were easy targets. Jihad, war is not about bringing people under control who agree with you. It’s about conquering the minds and conscience of those whose ideology and goals are at odds with yours. Winning any war is about effectively sabotaging your most difficult targets. As far as Jihad is concerned in terms of appealing to women, it is people like me, an Ex-Muslim, before that a liberal non-Hijabi Muslim or a non-Muslim who will not easily give in if a charming Hijabi sister offers expensive bracelets on day one and a hijab on day two. If I was a Hijabi Muslim woman, by the time the ninja sisters approach me to offer me one, I would have figured out and settled on what degree I practice Islam somewhere between spending a rest of my life as a low key devout Muslim wife or seeking a career to further the politically correct agenda evoking my Muslim identity as pious character that is under threat by the ‘’West’s war on Muslims’’. If I was a secular Muslim or even a non-Muslim, I would be less likely to accept the offer to wear hijab as soon as they approach me because I would have already assumed my outlook on life and on religious views will contradict the burka/hijabi-sister from observing them thus making me already build a subconscious guard against them. It’s a lot like: if you are a tobacco smoker and someone wearing a ‘’Smoking kills’’ t-shirt approaches you, you will know what they are up to and would be somehow prepared when they bring up the topic of cancer — you will have an excuse or counter-argument ready when they try to convince you. So the best way to approach a smoker who you are trying to convert into a non-smoker is to approach with an image or impression of as you also smoke, either a tobacco cigarette or an electric cigarette. Once you have their attention in your bag, you gradually start introducing them to your experience of a healthier alternative to smoking, such as an electric cigarette or some herbal remedy. Tell them how you feel about it and why it’s a better alternative. Grow their curiosity. Make them try it one day. Once they like it. Slowly introduce them to greater doses of it. Except in this case. Hijab is no healthy alternative except in a society that enforces a rape culture where you are punished with slut-shaming and rape if you don’t wear it. The whole inception of hijab is birthed on the assumption that a covered woman is more worthy than an uncovered one — another reason sex slaves were kept half-naked in most civilisations and noble women were fully veiled. Such sexist drivel is also confirmed in Islamic teachings where it is viewed non-hijabi women are less pure, and less pure in the eyes of Allah and in some cases, are ‘’permitted to be raped’’. So, people who wear their agenda on their sleeves have their reach often limited by it. That is overcome when people with agenda assimilate well with those who would rather be put off by the former group.

This is where what I previously mentioned “a sorority of hijabi and NON-HIJABI charismatic, glamorous girls that combined stiletto heels, jeans, blouse, heavy make-up” — comes into play. These are basically recruiters from rich and politically wealthy background, star students (about above 3.5 CGPA) and are very well-assimilated with secular Muslims who are not interested in radicalising you so even if you would guess they are radical and trouble, calling them out will have you brand you a anti-Muslim bigot (especially in the West). Their targets are particularly good-looking, well-assimilated, non-Hijab, liberal Muslim and non-Muslim women with high CGPA. That’s how they approached me. As I became more serious about improving my CGPA, became a teaching assistant and came into the limelight among the network of top students and lecturers, a bunch of equally academically bright,career-oriented people found me strikingly fascinating and vice versa. Especially the women among them were academically bright, socially active, pretty, not necessarily wearing the hijab and westernised — they had male friends, Bollywood was the hot topic right after relationship and sex, discussion of lectures, solving macroeconomic assignments together, discussing about long term academic studies in USA or UK etc. dominated the conversation. The conversation would only drift towards religion or Islam in closed groups — when you would get on a car with four people for Nandos or shopping in the upscale area in Gulshan. The entire conversation throughout the travel would be the suffering of Muslims in Palestine, Israel being the ultimate villain and Hamas being the savior. If you got into a closed Skype chat, the discussion will gradually drift towards your long term goals after graduation — they ask you what you want to do in your life, when you plan to get married, casually asking you if you pray regularly, your thoughts on US, if you have relatives there. One way or other, they will manage to pitch in Islam into the conversation.

‘’Hey, it’s time for Isha, are you going to pray?..No? It must be your period, lol?!”

“Haha, I think Sadiq and Parvez are gayzz lol! What do you think?”

“…I mean, my parents have no problem with me that I don’t wear the hijab. I’m not sure I might at some later time. What abt you??”

“So you have a boyfriend? Does your parents know?”

The litmus test to identify where you are on the spectrum ranging from a hardcore freethinker to a hardcore Islamist is very subtly smuggled into regular conversation making it impossible to trace anything suspicious. If you are someone who talks along the line of ….

“Hmmm… I am thinking about wearing the hijab…not sure tho lol…”

Then you are likely to be gradually invited into an inner circle who are on the same page as you but some of them slowly telling you about their experience of wearing the hijab, finding the ‘’liberation’’ in it — added, how their relationship with their boyfriend or fiance has improved with less arguments and more respect, peace out of the patience of waiting for ‘’that big day!’’ — halal sex, they mean halal sex. They’ll basically say how they feel more calm and dignified because they pleased Allah more, tactically making you feel like an idiot — and, psychologically incentivising you to wear the hijab.

In both cases, they start off by adding you on social media- soon you are flooded with a barrage of ‘’likes’’ on selfies, food, statuses — and the conversationn starts off from one of those instances. Then you are rewarded with new friend requests from mutuals with very attractive profile and the process repeats while more people within that sorority starts documenting your character, habits, hobbies and craft the effective way to make their move. For me — I was most approachable when talking about lectures, higher studies, and gradually being asked ‘’Roja Rakhso?” meaning “Are you fasting?”. Sending messages around Salah and asking me if I would go to pray, telling me about secret admirers I had — all coincidentally, as it now turns out, transformed devout traditional Muslim men. Nowhere during such conversation, any element of violent or non-violent Islamism was evoked. The most frequently asked questions I was ever asked at my university was ‘’Do you pray?” — So had I been suspicious just because I was asked general questions about practising Islamic faith, even though I would have been right to suspect them — I would have suspected them for the wrong reasons.

If I spoke somewhere along the line of ‘’Hijab is not mandatory in Islam”… or… “Of course I will work on my career instead of marriage, my parents don’t have any problem with that!”, or “oh yeah, shh, me and my boyfriend had sex!” — then the rendezvous with these recruiters will go down the line of justifying how my western lifestyle was compatible with Islam, using stories of Muhammad, narration from Quran and what not. Things like pre-marital sex, revealing dresses etc. are usually justified if you gradually shift wards a more conservative Islamic lifestyle and once you express an ounce of admittance of that or any interest it in, the gradual process to radicalise you begins — OR, if you are one of them planning to assimilate into the Western culture in USA or Canada fuelling the now rampant politically correct agenda as an integrated liberal Muslim.

As a liberal woman, you will obviously find it ridiculous if someone befriends you out of the blue only to preach you about wearing the hijab, refraining from sexual intimacy before marriage scaremongering you with unnecessary fear of hell or cursing; you would think they are crazy. The path is, like the smoking analogy, to make you curious about Islam by first baffling you with the idea that Islam is modern and tolerant and then taking you through every example and experience to convince you, gradually evoke an emotional bond to it either by relating your identity as a Muslim woman or relating it to Muslim victims in Syria and Iraq by US military forces, using Islamic history to draw parallel between Muhammad’s time and present time, and showing proof of Islamic predictions coming true — it is all about selling you an impression and the impression creates more demand for the ideology. Once you have bought the anti-Western propaganda like one of Gulshan’s ISIS attackers, the induction begins: routinely introducing more and more politics and Islamic philosophy into a friendly gossip packed with sex, relationships, marriage, shopping, Bollywood, going out. Identifying your weakness — such, if you were like me complaining about strained family relationship, thedawah will be praying and using certain Surah to sort it out along with relationship advice; buying you expensive gifts, paying your bills at Radisson. Whether you score on either side of the litmus test of chitchats such as “Does Iraq war caused more terrorism, or did terrorism led to Iraq war”, the goal of this subtle recruiting group is to bend you. If they can’t bend you, they’ll try to break you.

How do they break you? It’s a non-surprising climate of bullying and isolation at the top tier of elite, academically powerful students and teacher: rumours spread from your haters, to their favourite lecturers who would share the same ideology. If you are unlucky, they will write you shitty academic reference letters making any chances of getting a postgraduate offer in the Western universities impossible. The agenda is to occupy the limited quota of foreign students in the West with pro-Islam graduates in economics, computer science or any subjects — previously having lead local university societies as presidents and vice presidents, their next destination is joining the student societies in the Western universities, such as Warwick SU or Goldsmith ISOC. Now, under the umbrella of multiculturalism, they meet people from a diverse background — gay activists, hindu activists, bloggers plugged into the Black Lives Matter movements, etc. No, they don’t tell their new friends that drinking at campus ale festival is haram, or that sex is sinful — they participate in as many social meetings they can. Their goal is not to spread dawah shamign liberals for living a non-Islamic lifestyle, their goal is to import a Sunni version of Islam justifying hijab, radicalisation of British youth, terrorism superimposed by a climate where Western invasion of Muslim lands are seen as a fair justification: importing the politically correct notion that any criticism of Islam is racism and ‘’Islamophobia’’ making a case for deplatforming secular Muslim and Ex-Muslim activists. These emigrant (undergraduate and) postgraduate Masters and PhD students therefore dominate the conversation not just in student societies, but also in social science and political science departments. If you are a white middle class gay student, they’ll make you feel at home while paying your expensive bill at Nandos — it’s nothing for them. At this point, you are convinced Quran says nothing about punishing homosexuals so Goldsmith FemSOC or LGTQ+ society will happily back the heckling of Maryam Namazie.