Italy’s Lady Jihad: Maria Gulia Sergio of the Islamic State

Italy’s Lady Jihad: Maria Gulia Sergio of the Islamic State

The Islamic State has drawn an overwhelming number of female followers, who play a key role in recruiting other female volunteers, promoting the organization’s propaganda online and even engaging in combat operations. This contradicts perceptions that women are less prone to partake in violent Islamist extremism—an ideology that often openly promotes the sexual abuse and subjugation of women. Over the past two years, security analysts have attempted to paint a general profile of European foreign fighters and the socio-economic conditions that have enabled their radicalization. Still, the story of Maria Gulia Sergio, a 27-year-old Italian woman from Inzagi, an area between Milan and Bergamo, is a peculiar case that defies several preconceptions. Her story, instead, reveals the power of religious indoctrination, and the influence it had on her decisions and, ultimately, her journey to Syria in 2014.

Who is Maria Gulia Sergio?

Maria Gulia Sergio (a.k.a. Fatima al-Zahra), received wide public attention even before police and Italian media discovered that she had left for Syria to join the Islamic State. After she converted to Islam in 2007, she often appeared on TV debates as an advocate on behalf of Muslim women wearing a hijab (headscarf) in Italy. This has been a controversial topic for many European countries as the number of Muslim immigrants has increased in recent years, and more women are wearing the hijab or the niqab (full veil) in cities across Europe. However, Sergio’s story has received particular attention because of her Italian heritage and Catholic upbringing.

She is a native of Naples who moved with her family to Milan when she was only five, and has been described as a regular girl with above average intelligence. She was an excellent university student, initially majoring in humanities, but she developed a dedication to and love for science. She earned her degree in biotechnology, focusing on pharmaceutical research for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases (L’esspresso, October 31, 2013).

In an interview with Italian magazine L’esspresso, she claimed that her conversion to Islam was a journey she undertook on her own. There was no male influence behind her decisions; instead, a series of events starting in 2003 drew her to explore Islam and theology and then to seek other Muslims near her. “An Egyptian brother gave me a copy of the Quran,” she said. “It was unbelievable. I started shaking, sweating. I [would] say to myself, ‘Stop, I [will] continue reading tomorrow!’ but it was impossible to move on” (L’esspresso, October 31, 2013). YouTube additionally played a major role in her religious discoveries, and on September 14, 2007, she became a Muslim by finally pledging shahada (testimonial word) alone in her room.

Her conversion and instantaneous decision to wear a headscarf was immediately received with hostility by her Catholic family. Sergio quoted her mother’s claims that, “Under one roof, there cannot be two religions” (L’esspresso, October 31, 2013). She was then working part-time as a secretary in order to finance her studies, but as she began wearing the veil, her boss allegedly warned that “she would be subjugated for life” due to her decision, and did not renew her contract. Although Sergio was able to find a new job at a call center, life became increasingly difficult as she shifted from wearing just a simple headscarf to a fully covered niqab, which drew even more attention to her appearance. Her decision to wear a full veil partly stemmed from a trip made with a group of other Muslim women to Slovenia: “And to think that not long ago, as an Italian converted to Islam, I was invited [to be on] a talk show and even attacked the wearing of the niqab. But then I reflected, I studied.” In 2012, her sister also converted to Islam. Later on her mother, Assunta, and her father, Sergio, also converted.

Making the Hijra

In 2007, after her conversion, Sergio married a Muslim man from Morocco, though they soon divorced because she believed that “he would [not] practice religion the right way” (Reporter.al, March 5). Even though he was also a Muslim, her former husband disagreed with her strict practices and was shocked when she first fully veiled. This divorce led her to Aldo Kobuzi, a 23-year-old Albanian man from Gërmenj, a village near Lushnje in southern Albania, who had reportedly moved to his uncle’s apartment in Scansano, Italy in 2012. His uncle had moved to Italy in the early 1990s when the collapse of Albania’s communist regime led hundreds of people to cross the Adriatic in search of a better life (Reporter.al, March 6). Kobuzi’s relatives back in Albania had been adherents of Salafist Islam since the early 1990s, when Muslim communities in Albania saw increased funding from Salafist and Wahabbi groups in the Middle East, intended to shift the religious order within the traditional and moderate Hanafi-based predominant Muslim population (Terrorism Monitor, May 15).

But, according to testimony gathered in the wake of their travel to the Islamic State, Kobuzi’s marriage to Sergio drove him to become even more radical than he was when he first left Albania. Italian intelligence reports suggest that up until September 2014, when he and Sergio joined the Islamic State, Kobuzi frequently traveled back to Albania to reconnect with other Islamist groups and followers that would facilitate their travel to Syria (Reporter.al, March 5).

In September 2014, the couple reportedly crossed over to Rrëmenj, an Albanian village near Pogradec, where Kobuzi’s sister lived. This particular village is known for a large number of residents departing since 2012 to join the ranks of Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State as foreign fighters. Kobuzi’s brother-in-law, Mariglen Dervishllari, had allegedly been a key recruiter for a number of fighters from areas around Pogradec, until he died in Syria in 2013. Similarly, the couple’s journey from Italy to the Turkish-Syrian border is believed to have been aided by other key recruiters between Albania and Italy, who were then arrested in a police operation that the two countries conducted this past summer (Ansa.it, July 1). More than ten people were arrested during this operation, including Sergio’s family and Kobuzi’s relatives in Italy who were allegedly preparing to join the Islamic State with the assistance of a wide network of recruiters based in the two countries. Similar counter-terrorism operations are increasingly exposing family connections between foreign fighters, their spouses and other extended family members, which are now becoming ever more visible to security agencies across Europe (Shqiptarja.com, March 25; Repubblica.it, December 1).

Preparing for Family Jihad

Reports of Sergio’s and Kobuzi’s final trip to Syria sparked debates in both Italy and Albania, as more information revealed strong ties between organized groups and individuals that made it possible for them to travel to Syria easily without any interference by the authorities. Sergio was nicknamed “Lady Jihad” in social media, and the Italian media began probing even deeper into the life of her family. A January report generated by the private Italian television channel La7 traced the path of her life, the area where she lived and even spoke to her father, Sergio Sergio. In the report, he openly denied that Maria Gulia was his daughter or that he had any other ties with this young woman. [2] This made for a rather uncomfortable exchange between Sergio Sergio and the reporter, who insisted that it was hard to miss a Muslim girl in Inzagi, a town with no more than 10,000 inhabitants.

Upon her family’s arrest, Maria Sergio spoke via Skype to a journalist from the Italian daily newspaper Corriere della Sera to protest their arrest and justify once more her decision to flee to Syria:

Months of investigation and the ongoing trial of Sergio’s family have also publicly revealed several key Skype conversations she had with her family while she was residing in Syria, including one in which she was convincing her parents and sister to join her “in the land of Shari’a law” (Shqiptarja.com, November 16). In the 41-minute Skype conversation, which is now widely accessible on YouTube, Sergio dominates and often even raises her voice when talking about beheading nonbelievers or urging her father to quit his job and ask his company for 25,000 Euros so he can finance the trip:

Conclusion

The story of Maria Gulia Sergio, however unique, is not singular and uncommon to many others that have emerged in recent years. Women of all ages and social backgrounds have reportedly joined groups like the Islamic State. But in joining the Islamic State, many young women have sought validation and empowerment, not just merely social freedom. The presence of women is becoming key and more instrumental for operations of jihadist organizations, including the Islamic State and Boko Haram, which often utilize women’s invisibility to security services as a way to carry out terrorist attacks and other key actions. Social media posts that promote the Islamic State’s ideology have been a worrying driver for many young European girls who have voluntarily joined terrorist organizations in recent years. The messages that they are drawn to allude to a sense of empowerment in helping to create an Islamic society rather than the subjugation of women, as often reported in Western media. This comes as a shock, notably to social scientists and women’s rights movements, that the Islamic State is seeking young, educated and emancipated women join a violent group with a grotesque human rights record of sexual abuse.

Ebi Spahiu is a human rights activist and an analyst of Western Balkans and Central Asian affairs, currently based in Tirana, Albania.