Peace and Conflict Studies Commons^™

Kittens And Nutella: Why Women Join Isis, Samantha K. Smith

What All Americans Should Know About Women in the Muslim World

On February 18, 2015 CNN published a reported stating that Western women were leaving their homes to join ISIS because of a social media campaign featuring pictures of kittens and Nutella. This reported propagated the notion that women who join jihadist organizations are brainwashed or feeble minded. The reality is not so simple. This paper explores the motives women may have for joining ISIS through comparison to the motivations that drove women to partake in other violent jihadist organizations' activities.

Rachel Weeping: A Christian Pacifist Reluctantly Endorses Military Strikes Against Isis, Kerry S. Walters

Philosophy Faculty Publications

I'm haunted these days by a scene from Matthew's Gospel. Herod, learning that an infant has been born in Bethlehem who will become "King of the Jews," orders the slaughter of the town's male children two years old and under. Matthew captures the deed's mind-numbing horror by imagining that Rachel, one of the traditional Hebrew matriarchs, "weeps and laments and refuses to be comforted, because her children are no more."

How, I ask myself, would Jesus's followers have acted could they've been in Bethlehem on that frenzied day? Would they have remained silent? Would they have shielded the infants with …