Islamic State Fatwa Tries to Codify Sexual Use of Females Enslaved by the Terrorist Group: Reuters


12/29/2015



In an apparent bid to curb what they called violations in the treatment of captured females, Islamic State theologians have issued an extremely detailed ruling on when "owners" of women enslaved by the extremist group can have sex with them, reported the news agency Reuters.
 
A leading Islamic State scholar said that the ruling or fatwa has the force of law and appears to go beyond the Islamic State's previous known utterances on the subject. Centuries-old teachings are being used to justify the sexual slavery of women in the swaths of Syria and Iraq it controls as is evident from the most recent fatwa on enslaved women.
 
U.S. Special Operations Forces had recovered the fatwa along with a huge trove of documents during a raid targeting a top Islamic State official in Syria in May.
  
Some of the bans that have been imposed with regards to having sex with enslaved women include 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."
 
Isis has been accused 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 by the United Nations and human rights groups. Many have been given to fighters as a reward or sold as sex slaves.
  
Reuters had earlier reported on the establishment and existence of a department of “war spoils” which shows that the Islamic State does not want to conceal the practice of enslaving women but rather it intends to boast about it.
 
How Islamic State fighters separated young women and girls from men and boys and older women became known after a report by Human Rights Watch in April where the activist group interviewed 20 female escapees. He enslaved women were moved "in an organized and methodical fashion to various places in Iraq and Syria." The enslaved women were repeatedly raped or subjected to sexual violence after they had either been sold or given as gifts.
 
The relations between IS fighters and their female captives were codifed for the first time in Fatwa No. 64, dated Jan. 29, 2015, issued by Islamic State's Committee of Research and Fatwas which was a step forward after a pamphlet was issued by the group in 2014 on how to treat slaves.
 
According to the Reuters, the Fatwa reads: "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?"
 
The Fatwa goes on to then list 15 15 injunctions, which in some instances go into explicit detail.
 
"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," said Cole Bunzel, a leading IS expert at Princeton University.
 
Refuting Islamic State’s religious arguments to justify many of its actions including the reintroduction of slavery which is forbidden in Islam, more than 120 Islamic scholars from around the world had issued an open letter to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in September 2014.
 
(Source:www.reuters.com)