The local English language newspaper is the Jakarta Post. As an American, it’s always interesting to read a foreign newspaper to get their take on world events. In general it’s a pretty good paper and not overly anti-American.
Recently, the police arrested a couple of potential terrorists before they could do their damage. The headline in today’s paper was “Women Playing Greater Role in Terrorism” and the article was about how this local group was planning to use women in their terrorist work and that more and more women are wanting to be more ‘actively involved’.
One particular quote came from left field and causes a classic double-take:
The local militants’ decision to use women to carry out the attack is in defiance of the policy of the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria, which discourages extremists from using their wives to launch suicide attacks and instead mainly relies on children to carry out such missions.
Oh well, aren’t they magnanimous!. On the one hand, they have a policy against using women but then on the other hand make it clear that it’s ok to use children! Wow. Double wow.
