The wife of al-Qaeda’s second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has appealed to Muslim women not to join the jihad themselves but to support their men in holy war, US monitoring groups said on Thursday.

In a letter released by al-Qaeda’s media arm As-Sahab entitled “A Message to the Muslim Sisters,” Omayma Hassan Ahmed Mohammed Hassan also called on the female faithful to resist Western pressure to shun the hijab, or headscarf, the monitors said.

The SITE group said that Zawahiri’s wife discouraged women from pursuing an active role in fighting, calling on them instead to support their husbands and male mujahedeen, and properly rear their children.

IntelCentre said she asked Muslim women to donate money and help the mujahedeen, and added that it was believed to be first official release by the Al-Qaeda media arm of a message in her name.

The role of women in armed resistance has always been a controversial one for Islamist groups.

The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas has sent a number of women to carry out suicide bombings against Israeli targets but the tactic was always controversial.

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