Yazidi Kurds hold posters during a protest against the Islamic State group’s invasion on Sinjar city one year ago, in Dohuk, northern Iraq, Monday, Aug. 3, 2015. Thousands of Yazidi Kurdish women and girls have been sold into sexual slavery and forced to marry Islamic State militants, according to Human Rights organizations, Yazidi activists and observers. (AP Photo/Seivan M.Salim)
It’s somehow even worse than you think:
One Yazidi woman who escaped from ISIS’ captivity recalled pleading with an Islamic State fighter to cease raping a child. “He destroyed her body,” the woman said. “I said to him, ‘She’s just a little girl,’ and he answered, ‘No. She’s not a little girl. She’s a slave. . . . And having sex with her pleases God.’” In the theology of ISIS, raping a “female slave who hasn’t reached puberty” is specifically condoned. ISIS has also clearly stated that raping Christian and Jewish women captured in battle is perfectly legitimate.
In August 2014, ISIS moved into the Yazidi areas in Sinjar. When, almost immediately after, stories began circulating on social media and from other sources in ISIS-held districts of Iraq that Yazidis were being enslaved and sold at open markets with a religious license for rape, speculation prevailed. Could this really be true? Previous stories, such as ISIS subjecting every woman in Mosul to genital mutilation, had proven false; it seemed that this fantastical report would also be disproven. Even some of ISIS’ online supporters were taken aback by this. Pro-ISIS commentators argued that nothing so ridiculous as the restoration of slavery could possibly have happened; it was obviously black propaganda from their enemies.
Then came the October 2014 issue of Dabiq, ISIS’ English-language magazine. In an article entitled “The Revival of Slavery: Before The Hour” (“the hour” referring to the apocalypse), Dabiq states: “The Islamic State dealt with this group [Yazidis] . . . how mushrikeen [polytheists] should be dealt with.”
This is the group which President Obama is patient enough to wait for the “community of nations” to deal with.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member