The Islamic State Is Forcing Women to Be Sex Slaves
Version 0 of 1. Women and girls as young as 11 have been systematically raped by fighters for the Islamic State, which has made sex slavery a pillar of its self-proclaimed caliphate. The New York Times interviewed 21 women and girls in Iraq who recently escaped Islamic State captivity, examined the group’s communications and talked to terrorism and religious experts for a chilling report by Rukmini Callimachi, a correspondent who covers Islamic extremism. A year after the Islamic State first institutionalized sex slavery, Ms. Callimachi found that the practice has become ever more deeply enshrined in the group’s organization and theology. A 12-year-old girl who was bound, gagged and raped by an Islamic State fighter while she was held as a sex slave in Iraq said that her attacker would pray before and after he raped her, bookending his brutality with acts of religious devotion. “I kept telling him it hurts — please stop,” she said in an interview at a refugee camp in Qadiya, Iraq, to which she escaped after 11 months in captivity. “He told me that according to Islam he is allowed to rape an unbeliever. He said that by raping me, he is drawing closer to God.” In much the same way as specific Bible passages were used centuries later to support the slave trade in the United States, the Islamic State argues that the Quran or other religious texts and rulings justify their human trafficking, experts say. Scholars of Islamic theology disagree, however, on the proper interpretation of the texts. The trade in women and girls from the Yazidi religious minority who are bought and sold, given as gifts between fighters and offered as prizes in competitions, is widespread in areas that the Islamic State controls, and highly organized. There are warehouses where the victims are held and viewing rooms where they are inspected by prospective buyers. A 19-year-old victim who also escaped described a slave market where she was kept with at least 500 other unmarried women and girls, the youngest around 11 years old. The women and girls were paraded uncovered in front of men and forced to answer intimate questions, including reporting the exact date of their last menstrual cycle. Rape has long been employed as a weapon of war, but what makes the Islamic State’s campaign of sexual violence different is that the extremists are making no attempt to hide or deny their crime. The trafficking of women has been used to reward fighters, and as a recruiting tool to lure men from deeply conservative Muslim societies, where casual sex is taboo and dating is forbidden. The Islamic State’s leaders publicize their enslavement of women and girls in their official publication, offering a theological argument for why the rape of infidels is allowed. The Islamic State made clear in its online magazine, Dabiq, that its efforts to enslave Yazidi women and girls had been extensively planned. But the use of sex slaves initially surprised even the group’s most ardent supporters, many of whom sparred with journalists online after the first reports of the systematic rapes. The Islamic State leadership defended the practice of slavery and rape in the group’s online magazine, and its May issue featured an editorial expressing hurt and dismay over supporters who had questioned the institution of slavery. |