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11/21/2024 11:04:57 pm

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From Texas Blonde To Jihadist Dreamgirl

Jennifer Williams is a blonde, blue-eyed, "heavily tattooed" Texan. She's also the unlikely pin-up girl inspiring a deluge of marriage proposals from ISIS.

"One guy told me how beautiful I would look in hijab, in other words, how beautiful I would look once I covered myself up and stopped looking like an infidel," Williams says in New Republic Magazine. "Another just straight up asked me to marry him."

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A foreign policy researcher working for the prestigious Brookings Institute in Washington, DC, Williams was raised a Baptist Christian, but converted to a moderate form of Islam after researching the Koran, the Muslim holy book, to get a better understanding of how so many Muslims turn to terrorist activities compared to other religions.

"If you were to pass me on the street, you would never suspect I'm a Muslim," she writes. "I don't wear hijab. I have platinum blonde hair and blue eyes. And I am heavily tattooed. I grew up in Texas and was raised Southern Baptist. I use the word 'y'all' a lot -- and not ironically. But I am Muslim."

Like many people, Williams is actively engaged on social media, including #MuslimApologies, a facetious Twitter thread started by moderate and liberal Muslims "apologizing" for things Islam has nothing to do with, such as the outbreak of World War II.

Williams instead recounted her own conversion: "Sorry I read the Quran to learn abt terrorist beliefs but ended up converting to Islam b/c of what it said."

Within a day, the message went viral, reposted over 11,000 times, and her picture was splashed across the Muslim world. Not long after, she began to get responses from ISIS fighters, clearly enraptured with her blue eyes and bright blonde hair. One of her new fans sent a picture of himself posing with a sword, and has tweeted pictures showing ISIS beheading victims as well as images of Osama bin Laden.

Williams also found that her Twitter profile picture was being used in ISIS's conversion campaigns, something she abhors. She was also nonplussed that she had become a bone fide on-line celebrity in Saudi Arabia, whose strict brand of Islam she condemns. 

"'I, for one, do not appreciate having my conversion story used to attract more people to a repugnant ideology that spawns suicide bombings and beheadings," she says. 

She goes on to add she using her new-found prominence to urge jihadists to further read the Koran, hoping its softer and more open-minded passages will convince fighters to turn away from the militant form of Islam ISIS espouses and further erodes the image of the religion.

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