Why western women are now the Islamists’ target of choice

There has been an unprecedented development this year in the Islamists’ war on the West. For the first time their foot soldiers are singling out women to kill. Women have been the victims of terrorism before, murdered by paramilitary organisations such as ETA, the Ulster Volunteer Force and the IRA, because of their uniform or their beliefs, or simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, but never solely because of their sex.

In the era when Islamic terror groups hijacked aircraft it was rare that women were harmed. When a Trans World Airlines jet was hijacked in 1985, for example, the terrorists released all the women and children, including the Americans. When a similar fate befell an Air France airliner at the same airport in Algiers nine years later, the Islamists handed out veils to the females passengers but executed only male hostages.

But this year Islamists are specifically targeting women.