Targeting of women, girls may have been intentional
MANCHESTER, England — At first, this one looked like all the others: randomly deadly, deliberately brutal.
In the last two years, mass killings claimed or inspired by the Islamic State have become a chilling reality in Western Europe: unexpected and impromptu truck attacks, bombings and shootings, in Paris, Brussels, Nice, Berlin and London. Manchester — where 22 were killed in an assault Monday outside a concert — seemed like just the latest chapter in a deadly saga that has claimed more than 300 lives.
But then there were the details. Among other things, this was a concert meant to celebrate female empowerment, and many of the victims were young British women there to take part. On Tuesday, 18-year-old Georgina Callender, a student at Runshaw College in Lancashire, and 8-year-old Saffie Rose Roussos of Lancashire were confirmed to be among the first known victims of the attack.
If, as claimed, this attack was carried out by an adherent of the Islamic State, the targeting of women and girls could have been intentional.
“It’s very well known that misogyny is deeply rooted in the radical Islamist worldview,” said Shashank Joshi, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank.
On the stage Monday night was Ariana Grande, the 23-yearold U.S. megastar — and selfstyled “dangerous woman” — famous for lyrics that seek to champion female power and routines that exalt the female body. Grande often appears on stage in cat ears or lingerie. The meaning of her performance — in Manchester, at least — was not lost on her audience.
As British police continue their investigation into the motives behind the attack, these are questions that do not yet have clear answers.
For analysts, however, a through-line was clear enough even without a letter of intent: The venue was what it was; the victims were who they were.
“If you go back to early Islamist documents,” Joshi said, “misogyny and cultural hostility have often been two sides of the same coin.”
Further, he said, “There’s a connection between the targeting of a concert like this and the enslavement of young girls in northern Iraq.”
Many of the women who gathered in the vigil of thousands in Manchester’s main town square on Tuesday evening saw it the same way: The attack on the concert was an attack on women.
“It moves you as a woman when there are young women involved,” said Sue Platt, 52, a lecturer at the Manchester School of Art. “It attacks freedom. It makes people afraid to gather in a crowd.”
There was also, others said, the particular choice of the Grande concert itself.
Polly Ahmed, 23, who works in a pharmacy and has spent her whole life in Manchester — and who wears a veil — said that she had long seen in Grande a role model for maturity.
“I used to watch her on Nickelodeon when I was in school, because she’s the same age as me,” she said. “Everyone sees her as this Disney Channel princess. But what she’s doing is to show her transition from girlhood to womanhood.”
For Joshi, Islamist ideology has long used the hatred of women as a starting point for condemning Western society seen as immoral and “decadent.” The same persecution of “decadence,” he said, could be seen in a variety of “soft targets” since 9/11 — cafe terraces in Paris, a seaside promenade in Nice and a well-known gay nightclub in Orlando.
But Shahera Khatun, 22, an English literature student at the University of Manchester, said the lesson of Monday’s attack, devastating as it may have been, was clear enough.
“I don’t think anyone should feel less empowered because of this,” she said. “Because of some lowlife.”