Yazidi women are capture and married, or sold, to Islamic State militants. Young men and boys are captured and forced to join ISIL.
ISIL militants enslaved hundreds of Yazidi. According to a report released today by the Human Rights Watch, the Islamic State has taken hundreds of Yazidi women against their will and forced many into wedlock with ISIL fighters. Young men and boys that are taken captive are trained to become ISIL fighters.
The conflicts in Northern Iraq have left thousands of Yazidi displaced. This is a minority group of Kurdish living in the area. The Islamic State has killed thousands in this people group and labes them as pagan. The extremist group took Yazidi women as “spoils of war”, a theological right in the eyes of the militants.
“They were hitting us and slapping us to make us surrender … As much as we could, we didn’t let them touch our bodies … Everything they did, they did by force,” 17-year-old Adlee told the Human Rights Watch in an interview after she was “claimed” by a “big bearded” IS militant.
Allegedly, after capturing the Yazidi women, IS militants would choose them as their wives. The report by the Human Rights Watch explains that there are no direct accounts of rape from the interviewees, but some claim that they fought off sexual attacks and had heard about IS militants raping the female prisoners of war.
Yesterday, the Islamic State released a fourth issue of its online propaganda magazine Dabiq. The magazine is written in eloquent English and its design and layout is professional. Its writing is targeted towards potential Western recruits.
A section of the magazine labeled “The Revival of Slavery: Before the Hour” attempts justification of the actions of the Islamic State. Slavery and forced marriage are, according to the extremists, theologically proper to the religion of Islam.
“Enslaving the families of the kuffār and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of the Sharī’ah that if one were to deny or mock, he would be denying or mocking the verses of the Qur’ān and the narrations of the Prophet (sallallāhu ‘alayhi wa sallam), and thereby apostazing from Islam,” the magazine states.
The magazine continues to justify that marrying the women of the conquered group is proper, and prevents adultery. Militants have also sold women to fighters. In the report by the Human Rights Watch, 14-year-old Rewshe was told by her captor that she was purchased for $1000. Yazidi girls as young as 12 years old are reportedly taken as wives.
