'The Devil Has the People By the Throat'

This quote from the movie Casablanca always comes to mind when I read stories like this one:

Sitting on a shabby green sofa somewhere in the ISIS-controlled city of Mosul, Iraq, the militants laugh and joke as one of them films their excited chatter.  “Today is the female sex slave market day, which has been ordained,” explains a skinny, black-clad Jihadi, gesturing at the camera. “With Allah’s permission, each will get a share,” promises another of the fighters. “Where is my Yazidi girl?” asks the first, a wide grin splitting his straggly-bearded face.

In ISIS territory, Yazidi women can be bought and sold for money, bartered for weapons, even given as a gift; but this is not a simple commercial transaction — ISIS has made rape and slavery part and parcel of its — brutal — theology. “ISIS fighters told us, ‘This is the rule of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and we must do it,'” Noor explains. “[They said] ‘Anyone who doesn’t convert to Islam, we will kill the males and marry the girls. They are the spoils of war. ‘”

The Yazidis are an ancient people, followers of a unique religion that blends elements of Islam, Judaism and Christianity with even more ancient practices, including sun worship.

It’s not just the “extremists” of ISIS who use rape as a weapon of military policy; that’s been true of militant Islam throughout its history. A western society that believes in its own professed values would make short work of these barbarians, but we don’t seem to want to — so you figure it out.