ISIS issues law regulating sex with female slaves
Islamic State theologians have issued an extremely detailed
ruling on when "owners" of women enslaved by the extremist group can
have sex with them, in an apparent bid to curb what they called violations in
the treatment of captured females.
The ruling or fatwa has the force of law and appears to go
beyond the Islamic State's previous known utterances on the subject, a leading
Islamic State scholar said, reports Reuters.
It sheds new light on how the group is trying to reinterpret
centuries-old teachings to justify the sexual slavery of women in the swaths of
Syria and Iraq it controls.
The fatwa was among a huge trove of documents captured by
U.S. Special Operations Forces during a raid targeting a top Islamic State
official in Syria in May. Reuters has reviewed some of the documents, which
have not been previously published.
Among the religious rulings are bans on a father and son
having sex with the same female slave; and the owner of a mother and daughter
having sex with both. Joint owners of a female captive are similarly enjoined
from intercourse because she is viewed as "part of a joint
ownership."
The United Nations and human rights groups have accused the
Islamic State of the systematic abduction and rape of thousands of women and
girls as young as 12, especially members of the Yazidi minority in northern
Iraq. Many have been given to fighters as a reward or sold as sex slaves.
Far from trying to conceal the practice, Islamic State has
boasted about it and established a department of "war spoils" to
manage slavery. Reuters reported on the existence of the department on Monday.
In an April report, Human Rights Watch interviewed 20 female
escapees who recounted how Islamic State fighters separated young women and
girls from men and boys and older women. They were moved "in an organized
and methodical fashion to various places in Iraq and Syria." They were
then sold or given as gifts and repeatedly raped or subjected to sexual
violence.
Fatwa No. 64, dated Jan. 29, 2015, and issued by Islamic
State's Committee of Research and Fatwas, appears to codify sexual relations
between IS fighters and their female captives for the first time, going further
than a pamphlet issued by the group in 2014 on how to treat slaves.
The fatwa starts with a question: "Some of the brothers
have committed violations in the matter of the treatment of the female slaves.
These violations are not permitted by Sharia law because these rules have not
been dealt with in ages. Are there any warnings pertaining to this
matter?"
It then lists 15 injunctions, which in some instances go
into explicit detail. For example:
"If the owner of a female captive, who has a daughter
suitable for intercourse, has sexual relations with the latter, he is not
permitted to have intercourse with her mother and she is permanently off limits
to him. Should he have intercourse with her mother then he is not permitted to
have intercourse with her daughter and she is to be off limits to him."
Islamic State's sexual exploitation of female captives has
been well documented, but a leading IS expert at Princeton University, Cole
Bunzel, who has reviewed many of the group's writings, said the fatwa went
beyond what has previously been published by the militants on how to treat
female slaves.
"It reveals the actual concerns of IS slave
owners," he said in an email.
Still, he cautioned that not "everything dealt with in
the fatwa is indicative of a relevant violation. It doesn't mean father and son
were necessarily sharing a girl. They're at least being 'warned' not to. But I
bet some of these violations were being committed."
The fatwa also instructs owners of female slaves to
"show compassion towards her, be kind to her, not humiliate her, and not
assign her work she is unable to perform." An owner should also not sell
her to an individual whom he knows will mistreat her.
Professor Abdel Fattah Alawari, dean of Islamic Theology at
Al-Azhar University, a 1,000-year-old Egyptian center for Islamic learning,
said Islamic State "has nothing to do with Islam" and was
deliberately misreading centuries-old verses and sayings that were originally
designed to end, rather than encourage, slavery.
"Islam preaches freedom to slaves, not slavery. Slavery
was the status quo when Islam came around," he said. "Judaism,
Christianity, Greek, Roman, and Persian civilizations all practiced it and took
the females of their enemies as sex slaves. So Islam found this abhorrent
practice and worked to gradually remove it.”
In September 2014 more than 120 Islamic scholars from around
the world issued an open letter to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi refuting the
group's religious arguments to justify many of its actions. The scholars noted
that the "reintroduction of slavery is forbidden in Islam."
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