The Complete Infidel's Guide to ISIS (47 page)

And about Those Slave Girls

Similar calculations apply in regard to the Islamic State’s practice of kidnapping Yazidi and Christian women and pressing them into sex slavery. The Qur’an says straightforwardly that in addition to wives (“two or three or four”), Muslim men may enjoy the “captives of the right hand” (4:3, 4:24). These are specified as being women who have been seized as the spoils of war” (33:50) and are to be used specifically for sexual purposes, as men are to “guard their private parts except from their wives or those their right hands possess” (23:5–6).

If these women are already married—no problem. Islamic law directs that “when a child or a woman is taken captive, they become slaves by the fact of capture, and the woman’s previous marriage is immediately annulled.”
²⁸

The Islamic State did not originate this belief in the right that Muslim warriors have to make sex slaves of captive women. Not only is this the traditional understanding of how things should work, firmly grounded in the obvious literal meaning of the passages of the Qur’an quoted above, but also in recent years, Muslim thinkers have been suggesting that it is time to revive the practice. The Egyptian Sheikh Abu-Ishaq al-Huwayni declared in May 2011 that “we are in the era of jihad,” and that “if we could conduct one, two, or three jihadist operations every year, many people throughout the earth would become Muslims.” Those who rejected the invitation to convert to Islam (
da’wa
) should be enslaved:

           
And whoever rejected this
da’wa,
or stood in our way, we would fight against him and take him prisoner, and confiscate his wealth, his children, and his women—all of this means money. Every
mujahid
who returned from jihad, his pockets would be full. He would return with three or four slaves, three or four women, and three or four children. Multiply each head by 300
dirhams,
or 300
dinar,
and you have a good amount of profit. If he were to go to the West and work on a commercial deal, he would not make that much money. Whenever things became difficult (financially), he could take the head (i.e. the prisoner) and sell it, and ease his (financial) crisis. He would sell it like groceries.
²⁹

This statement, understandably enough, touched off a firestorm, leading al-Huwayni to reassure everyone that he wasn’t suggesting that
Muslims
could be enslaved in this way—only infidels:

           
Jihad is only between Muslims and infidels. . . . Do you understand what I’m saying? Spoils, slaves, and prisoners are only to be taken in war between Muslims and infidels. Muslims in the past conquered, invaded, and took over countries. This is agreed to by all scholars—there is no disagreement on this from any of them, from the smallest to the largest, on the issue of taking spoils and prisoners. The prisoners and spoils are distributed among the fighters, which includes men, women, children, wealth, and so on.

                
When a slave market is erected, which is a market in which are sold slaves and sex-slaves, which are called in the Qur’an by the name
milk al-yamin,
“that which your right hands possess” [Qur’an 4:24]. This is a verse from the Qur’an which is still in force, and has not been abrogated. The
milk al-yamin
are the sex-slaves. You
go to the market, look at the sex-slave, and buy her. She becomes like your wife, (but) she doesn’t need a (marriage) contract or a divorce like a free woman, nor does she need a
wali.
All scholars agree on this point—there is no disagreement from any of them. [ . . . ] When I want a sex slave, I just go to the market and choose the woman I like and purchase her.
³¹

Around the same time, a female Kuwaiti activist and politician, Salwa al-Mutairi, also spoke out in favor of the Islamic practice of sexual slavery of non-Muslim women, emphasizing that the practice accorded with Islamic law and morality:

           
I received a message that was a little strange. A merchant told me that he would like to have a sex slave. He said he would not be negligent with her, and that Islam permitted this sort of thing. He was speaking the truth. The topic that he brought up is an old topic. I have been working on it for two years now.

                
I was working with this man, a young man, who (liked) women a lot. I was sympathetic to his situation, and also dedicated to my work. I was given the opportunity to visit Mecca, and when I did so, I brought up (this man’s) situation to the muftis in Mecca. I told them that I had a question, since they were men who specialized in what was
halal,
and what was good, and who loved women. I said, “What is the law of sex slaves?”

                
The mufti said, “With the law of sex slaves, there must be a Muslim nation at war with a Christian nation, or a nation which is not of the religion, not of the religion of Islam. And there must be prisoners of war.”

                
“Is this forbidden by Islam?” I asked.

                
“Absolutely not. Sex slaves are not forbidden by Islam. On the contrary, sex slaves are under a different law than the free woman. The free woman must be completely covered except for her face and hands. But the sex slave can be naked from the waist up. She differs a lot from the free woman. While the free woman requires a marriage contract, the sex slave does not—she only needs to be purchased by her husband, and that’s it. Therefore the sex slave is different than the free woman.”

                
Of course, I also asked religious experts in Kuwait (about this issue), and they told me about the problem with the passionate man, or even the man who is committed to his religion. For every good man in our religion, the only solution for him—when forbidden women come around, if he’s tempted to sin, then the solution to this issue is for him to purchase sex slaves. I hope that Kuwait will enact the law for this category, this category of people—the sex slaves. . . .

                
I hope that a law will be enacted for this category, and they will open the door for this, just as they have opened the door for servants (to come into the country). They should open the door for sex slaves, by enacting a sound law, so that our children don’t waste away in the abyss of adultery and moral depravity. Allah-willing, this will work out. I believe, look, the (sex slaves could come from) a country like Chechnya, where there is a war between an (Islamic) state and another state. Certainly there are prisoners. These prisoners could be purchased. They could be purchased and sold to the merchants in Kuwait. This is better than (the merchants) committing that which is forbidden. There is nothing wrong with this.

                
Harun al-Rashid [the Abbasid caliph from 786 to 809] had many more sex slaves than this. When he died he had 2,000 sex
slaves. But he only had one wife. This was not forbidden. Our
shari’a
permits such a thing as this. Praise be to Allah, here in Kuwait there are many merchants who are committed (to Islam). I hope the best for Kuwait, Allah-willing.
³²

Unfortunately, this isn’t the view of just a couple of nut cases. Boko Haram, the notorious jihad group in Nigeria that ultimately allied with the Islamic State, made international headlines and inspired Michelle Obama to join the #BringBackOurGirls protest on Twitter in April 2014 when it captured over two hundred non-Muslim girls and pressed them into sex slavery.

And for some Muslims living in the West, Islamic justifications for enslaving infidel women captured in war seem to have bled over into an attitude that the daughters of their non-Muslim neighbors are fair game. From Yorkshire to Minneapolis, groups of Muslim men have engaged in sex trafficking and the forced prostitution of non-Muslim women on an appalling scale. Britain has seen a horrifying number of cases of “Asian sex gangs” (“Asian” is a common euphemism for “Muslim” in the British media): groups of Muslim men who cajole or kidnap non-Muslim girls, often in their early teens, and force them into prostitution.
³⁴
As many as fourteen hundred minors may have been abused in this way in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, alone—the British city where the phenomenon first came to light.
³⁵
Meanwhile, Muslims from the Twin Cities area in Minnesota ran an interstate sex trafficking ring until they were caught and indicted in late 2010.
³⁶

But in the Islamic State, the trafficking in girls is not in any way surreptitious. Sex slavery is an institution recognized by law. And where the non-Muslim world sees barbarism and cruelty, devout and knowledgeable young Muslims see the Islamic State’s enslavement of young non-Muslim girls and gain respect for a group that is willing to defy the world’s opprobrium to practice what it regards as pure Islam. The Islamic State made this abundantly clear in the October 2014 issue of its
Dabiq
magazine, in which it said, “Enslaving the families of the kuffar [non-believers] and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of the Sharia.”
³⁷
In a November 2014 video of gleeful Islamic State jihadis laughing and bantering at a sex slave auction, one of the fighters declares, “Today is the slave market day. Today is the day where this verse applies, ‘[Guard your private parts] Except with their wives and the (captives) whom their right hands possess, for (then) they are not to be blamed.’”
³⁸

The Islamic State amplified this point in December 2014, when it issued a pamphlet explaining how sex slaves should be treated and why the practice was acceptable in Islam.