A nation-state has a responsibility to protect its women as equal citizens, yet states like Pakistan have structurally disenfranchised women from state protection by making them half citizens and reducing their right to be their own legal person. As a consequence, women have been excluded from discourses on internal and external security. In any armed conflict, women are the ones who suffer the most, yet they are embodied as symbols of honour for the state and society.

Muslim women are generally viewed as victims of prevailing religious and patriarchal discourses. Their subjectivity and subordinate position is discussed as imposed, through textual representations by orthodox and radical Muslims. Radical Islamic movements are examined as militarized masculinities, oppressing women as well as terrorizing the non-Muslims. This paper argues that women are active partners of their subordination within traditionalist and radical religious movements. They are agents of orthodoxy and have carved a new role for themselves within the religious paradigms.