How Cathy and Jessie Became Muslim Terrorists

At the end of June 2026, Catherine Beth Washburn, a 37-year-old white woman from an upstate New York town, was arrested for sending $30,000 in crypto to a member of Islamic Jihad in Israel. Washburn kept texting him, encouraging him that, “you do not need equipment, you only need Allah” and showing off a picture of herself with hand grenades and a Hamas flag.

Now, in August 2026, Jessica Bowie, a 35-year-old white woman in Albany, New York who converted to Islam, changed her name to ‘Aisha Saif’, put on a burka, and began chatting with what she thought were ISIS terrorists and plotting to bomb the New York State Capitol by disguising the bomb in a DoorDash delivery bag. Bowie shared thoughts such as “blowing non-Muslim brains out is beautiful” and said she wanted to “harm the enemies of Allah.”

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But white women in their mid-30s were not the usual Islamic terrorist cohort. Until recently most cases of white women engaging in Islamic terrorism were coming out of Europe and involved the converted wives of Muslim men trying to move to Iraq and Syria to be with their husbands.

The recent shift is likely driven by social media and the more open embrace of Islamic terrorism by radical leftist groups such as the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) within the social justice movement. Bowie mentioned having “picked up some anarchist literature at the social justice center” while Catherine was a leader in a leftist group called Direct Action Movement for Palestinian Liberation (DAMPL) whose members called themselves “Action Comrades”.

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Rather than being repelled by the bloody violence of Islamic terrorism, they were drawn to it and cheered it on, with Catherine declaring “I wish every day were October 7” and Jessica exclaiming, “praise be to Allah for September 11th.”

We don’t know the exact pathway that they followed, but both women seemed to spend significant amounts of time on social media, both began communicating with Islamic terrorists over social media and both eventually agreed to be involved in advancing Islamic terrorism.

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While both Jessica and Catherine lived in areas with large numbers of Muslims, it’s hard to say for sure how much influence that had on their descent into supporting Islamic terrorism. Jessica Bowie lived in an Albany building that appeared to have other Muslims living there, and seemed reasonably acquainted with some of the basics of Islam, but it’s unclear how integrated she was into any Islamic community. Unmarried white women wearing a burka in America have almost always been groomed into it on social media by ‘Niqabi’ influencers of the kind that were being promoted by Vogue shortly after Saudi women were protesting by stamping on their burkas.

DAMPL was a social media movement started by a Muslim, aimed at leftists, that encouraged real-life vandalism. Like much of the pro-terrorist activism after the Oct 7 massacres, it helped fill an activism void left between the implosion of BLM and before the rise of mass anti-ICE protests. Online social justice activism had become so popular because it gave heavy social media users an outlet and a sense of purpose in lives that appeared to be going nowhere.

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And they found it.

Jessica and Catherine were certainly not the first Americans to become interested in Islamic terrorism, but two women living three hours driving distance from each other both being arrested over Islamic terrorism a few months apart is more than random chance: it indicates a trend.

The growing appearance of white women in Islamic terrorism in the United States may be due to the social sanction provided for it by the role of the DSA and other leftist groups in social justice movements. Women often need more of a permission structure than men do before committing illegal actions: that’s why men are far more likely to commit crimes than women.

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The DSA’s decision to normalize and endorse the Islamic terrorist attacks of Oct 7, and the Democratic Party’s decision to normalize the DSA as part of its ‘Big Tent’ are translating into growing support for Islamic terrorism across the spectrum by the Democratic Party’s base.

This isn’t just about Israel. Normalizing Islamic terrorism, against anyone and anywhere, also normalizes it in America and encourages Americans to support it and to join in the attacks.

Just ask Cathy and Jessie.

(***) Global Minority Report in no way supports Israel.

(*) Full article: https://www.frontpagemag.com/how-cathy-and-jessie-became-muslim-terrorists/