By Najla Rashad

Okaz/Saudi Gazette

JEDDAH — It is unfortunate that many mothers have played a criminal role by encouraging their sons and daughters to join terrorist organizations and travel to conflict zones in Syria and Yemen.

This goes against the maxim, "A mother is a school. Educate her, and you empower a great nation", which actually was from a poem written by the famous Egyptian poet Hafez Ibrahim.

Between 2009 and 2015, Saudi police arrested 42 women, who included 38 Saudis, a Yemeni, a Syrian, a Filipina and a South African, for their role in terrorist operations.

These mothers of terrorists had actually prepared their children for the industry of death and destruction and left them to be recruited by terrorist organizations like Al-Qaeda and Daesh.

"These mothers also injected extremist ideas in the minds of their children to kill innocent people and destroy vital installations," said Dr. Fahd Al-Ghafeeli, a researcher in intellectual security, while speaking to Okaz/Saudi Gazette.

He denounced these women with an extremist mindset. "For them joining terrorist organizations, going to conflict zones, supporting terror leaders like Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, serving terrorism and execution of terrorist operations and dying in the way of Satan are the best activities for their children," he explained.

"This is because they are influenced by extremist and terrorist ideologies and thoughts," Al-Ghafeeli said, adding that such women lacked proper Islamic knowledge.

These women, he explained, tell their children that there is no meaning for worldly life, and death and the way to it are what determine the purpose of this life.

Al-Ghafeeli spoke about a number of Saudi women who forced their sons to join terrorist organizations and operations inside and outside the Kingdom.

Reema Al-Jeraishi pushed her 15-year-old son to join the fighting in Syria. Sajir, a divorced woman ran away with her three sons to the same war zone in the middle of 2015.

Mee Al-Talq and Ameena Al-Rashid tried to cross the Kingdom's southern border with their six children to join terrorist groups in Yemen. Wafa Al-Shahri, known as Um Al-Hajer, traveled to Yemen with her three children, and Wafa Al-Yahya also crossed the Saudi-Yemen border with her three sons.

"Saudi authorities have arrested a group of women who were associated with terrorist organizations,” Al-Ghafeeli said. Security agencies were able to bring back three sisters who had gone to Beirut with seven children to join Daesh, he pointed out.

"Terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda and Daesh were exploiting Saudi women's special position in society in order to realize their criminal motives and objectives. We know that several Saudi women joined Al-Qaeda, Daesh and the in Awamiya terrorists in the past," he said.

Arwa Baghdadi is another notorious Saudi woman who ran away from the Kingdom and joined Al-Qaeda in Yemen in 2013 while Nada Al-Qahtani joined Daesh and declared her support to Abu Bakr Baghdadi in the same year, said Al-Ghafeeli.

Haila Al-Qaseer, known as Um Al-Rabab, had recruited 60 militants to carry out terrorist operations inside the Kingdom and transferred SR2 million to terror groups in 2010.