A Kurdish female fighter from Kurdish People’s Protection Units
Women’s liberation is rapidly starting to seem like scaling a steep mountain side with primitive equipment. For every step forward, we seem to slide two steps backward. But the shocking guidebook issued recently by the Research and Fatwa Department of the Islamic State (ISIS) on how to buy, sell and treat their female sex slaves has once again deposited us right back at the bottom of an abyss. A dark horrendous abyss that makes one’s flesh crawl.
This new propaganda by the Islamic State only serves to reinforce what we already know about the despairing conditions of women living in ISIS controlled areas. Women there are required to observe strict clothing rules and are not allowed to leave the house without a male relative. Violators can be whipped or even executed.
But their worst treatment is reserved for the ‘unbelievers’ as they call them. Rumours had already been floating around for sometime about captives being treated as sex slaves or war spoils and sale of women, adolescent and pre-adolescent girls. Many of them seemed hard to believe, like a fantasy historic novel, not a 21st century occurence. But this guidebook confirms it all.
“There is no dispute among the scholars that it is permissible to capture unbelieving women. Unbelieving [women] who were captured and brought into the abode of Islam are permissible to us, after the imam distributes them [among us],” says the guidebook.
Some of the more horrifying things detailed in the pamphlet include ISIS giving permission to their fighters to have sex with their captive immediately if she is a “virgin”. If she is not, it mandates that “her uterus must be purified” first. It has, however, not given any instructions on how one can ‘purify’ a woman’s uterus.
It gets worse. The pamphlet includes chilling replies on whether women slaves can be ‘shared sexually’ when bought by multiple partners. And it goes on in this vein over 27 questions and answers including treating women like property, meant to be bought or sold – statements that make our blood boil!
“It is permissible to buy, sell, or give as a gift female captives and slaves, for they are merely property, which can be disposed of [as long as that doesn’t cause any harm or damage.”
“Female captives are distributed as part of a man’s estate when he dies, just as all [other parts] of his estate [are distributed]”
It seems pointless to try and reason with a group that is determined to take things back to the dark ages through a red haze of blood and gore. But it is heartening to note that the women there are fighting back. They have held civil demonstrations, repeatedly warned the world about the threat that ISIS poses and even taken up arms. About one-third of the Kurdish battlefield troops in Syria comprise of women and some of top officers at the forefront are women.
This new handbook on sex slaves released by ISIS can only serve to give these women even more reasons to fight back.
And before we all think that this is something happening in a faraway world, several thousand miles away, it is important to remember that it is only in the recent past, that the Taliban too had waged similar atrocities on women. And they are much closer to home.
Image Courtesy: Reuters
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