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Terrorism and Mothering

Terrorism impacts on the process of mothering in both direct and indirect ways. It impacts upon those mothers who send their sons and daughters to fight in the military, and in its most direct form, mothers may lose their children to acts of terrorism, and in so doing their motherhood may move from the private realm to the public one.

Terror and Maternal Activism

For example, the role of Mother Speak (http://www.motherspeak.org), which began with one mother's worry about her soldier son, has since expanded to share the voices of mothers internationally, and on both sides of the war on terror. Such a public recognition of motherhood may lead to activism, as mothers protest at the fact such acts of violence.

One very prominent example of this are the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina. For more than three decades, they have campaigned to find out the fate of their children who disappeared during Argentina's Dirty War of 1976–83. Not content to let the memory of their children rest, they have grieved in public, thus transforming their motherhood into a political act. Mothers are perceived to be particularly effective in this regard, given the idea, most notably put forward by Sara Ruddick, that motherhood is a distinctive discourse that itself may lead to the development of an advocacy agenda typified by the symbolically elevated moral status that motherhood may hold.

Under these circumstances, the practice of mothering has armed those who mother with a set of skills that may be particularly effective both in the resolution of conflict, and in the management of postconflict environments. Such skills—whether practiced by women or men—are assumed to be one of patience, justice, consideration, and care. This fits in too with the work of Virginia Held, whose work has relevance for the examination of responses against terrorism and political violence, in that it strays from a rights-based approach to political discourse toward one that centers instead around an ethic of care, which she argues has greater significance for the international system as a whole in its recognition of the significance both of personal/familial relationships and communal ties.

Mothers as Terrorist Supporters

Of course the direct impact of terrorism on mothering practices may be perceived from an entirely different perspective, in that mothers may feel that it is incumbent upon them to personally take part in acts of violence, or to support their family members in doing so. Women may see this as a way of protecting their family and wider community, or of becoming recognized as a member of a particular group. This is particularly the case for those women who feel that their access to standard routes of political discourse are closed to them—either as women, or as part of a particular ethnic group. The Western media response to such women is generally negative, particularly if these mothers appear to laud the death of their children, as such behaviors challenge standard conceptions of what it means to be a mother.

In 2002, Palestinian Um Nidal, also known as Mariam Farahat, became famous through a film where she is shown bidding her 17-year-old son Mohammed “not to return except as a shahid [martyr for Allah].” Her son went on to kill five Jewish students and himself, and wound 24 others, in Atzmona on March 7. Nidal's pride over her son's death made her a national heroine and role model. The pressure on Palestinian mothers to celebrate their dead, suicide-terrorist sons as shahids continues under the regime of Palestinian Authority's Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. During March 2005, as part of televised promotions in conjunction with International Woman's Day, Sheikh Yusuf Juma' Salamah announced that the ideal Palestinian woman is like Al Khansah, who said upon her son's deaths, “Praise Allah, who granted me honor with their deaths.”

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