At the beginning, there was Aasya Andrabi. The “Islamic feminist” leader of Dukhtaran-e-Millat, a women's group (now outlawed) that threw buckets of paint at girls without hijabs in Srinagar and later became a full-fledged organisation supporting male terrorist groups. Aasya has been in prison for years, but DiM has recently made a forceful return to the headlines following investigations into the suicide bombing on 10 November at the Red Fort in Delhi. And the lady under investigation is not the only woman involved, just as DeM is no longer the only female terrorist group in the area. Also under investigation for terrorism, as part of a network of eleven doctors who, according to investigators, had been stockpiling weapons, ammonium nitrate and even ricin for possible chemical attacks for years, was Shaheen Shahid: a doctor from Lucknow who was allegedly radicalised online and recruited as the Indian representative of the brand new female wing of the notorious Pakistani terrorist organisation Jaish-e-Mohammed. This is because female jihad has recently taken a quantum leap. Unscrupulous terrorists who pursue a very strict application of Islamic law have suddenly become feminists: they now send women to their deaths, promising them a direct entry into Paradise. There, the ladies will not find the female counterpart of the seventy-two virgins promised to their male co-religionists, but where they will finally be able, hopefully, to rest in peace. The facts are simple: in October, Masood Azhar, leader and founder of JeM, gave his weekly sermon of assorted threats from his residence in Bahawalpur, as usual. The recipients and targets of the threats were “female journalists instigated by enemies”, guilty of reporting on the massacres carried out by his organisation and, above all, “Hindu women” enlisted as soldiers by the Indian army. To understand the extent of the affront, it must be considered that, according to the pious terrorists, if you are killed by a woman, you are not entitled to the aforementioned seventy-two virgins. Azhar then announced his strategic response: the creation of an all-female terrorist brigade called Jamaat-ul-Mominat. A brigade of women, for women and run by women: in this case, by Masood Azhar's sisters.  Sadiya heads the Jamaat, Samaira develops the doctrinal modules, and Safia sits on the organisation's board alongside Afeera Farooq, widow of the suicide bomber who killed more than 40 Indian soldiers in the Pulwama attack years ago. A Corleone family with a Pakistani twist, a Dynasty of jihad: without diamonds and shoulder pads, but with explosives instead of necklaces. Azhar initially states that the members of the women's wing will be trained like the male recruits of Jaish. Then he reconsiders, evidently concerned about the excessive freedom granted to recruits, and imposes strict rules on women who join the brigade: they are not even allowed to talk to “unrelated men on the phone or via messaging, except for their husbands or immediate family members”. And to be on the safe side, he launches “Tufat al-Muminat”, a daily digital course that brings radicalisation directly to the sofa at home. To enrol, women must submit their personal details via an online form and make a mandatory donation, thus also creating a fundraising mechanism: in practice, you pay to be indoctrinated and used, if you are lucky, as a spy or otherwise as a suicide bomber. Meanwhile, on the other side of the border, India is putting its women in leading roles: fighter pilots, officers on operational missions, protagonists in sectors that have been male-dominated for years. The photo of Squadron Leader Shivangi Singh with Indian President Murmu did more psychological damage to JeM than an air raid: a woman, in uniform, competent and free, who bombed Pakistan during the last conflict with India. A strategic nightmare for those who base their ideology on subordination and superstition. However, the Lucknow case sounds an alarm bell and reminds us of a couple of things: that recruitment does not stop at borders and that women, for these individuals, are cannon fodder. ISIS, Boko Haram and the Tamil Tigers have demonstrated this abundantly. The recruitment of women is not a sociological oddity: it is a precise strategy. Jihad has understood that where men fail, women go unnoticed. And it has turned them into tools, shields, weapons and bargaining chips. Because if women are worthless in their archaic world, when it comes to blowing themselves up, they suddenly become precious. The question is not whether this strategy will take root here or elsewhere. The question is how long it will take us to take seriously the fact that terrorism, like any well-structured enterprise, innovates, diversifies and invests where it finds fertile ground. Wherever that may be.