Slaves of genocidal misogyny: women’s fight for survival

Islamic State’s thirst for violence is so insatiable that survivor testimonies are flooding international agencies less than a year after its reign of terror began. ­Amnesty International’s report Escape from Hell documents ­Islamic State’s burgeoning speciality: the torture of women and girls.

The UN recently disclosed survivor accounts of jihadist brutality, among them an adolescent girl who had been raped repeatedly by Islamic State soldiers before being sold at market. The caliphate has reportedly established an outlet where enslaved women and girls are fitted with price tags and sold to jihadists.

Women who disobey Islamic State’s dictates are routinely murdered. A female doctor who participated in a strike against wearing the niqab was killed for her disobedience. The Iraqi Ministry of Human Rights reports 150 women, including pregnant women, were slaughtered in Fallujah because they refused to marry jihadists.

Some captured women are resorting to suicide to escape sexual enslavement. A 19-year-old girl hanged herself after being captured with 20 other girls, as young as 10, and instructed by jihadists to bathe and put on dance costumes.

Yazidis have reported that 3500 women and girls are being held captive by caliphate fighters. Open slave markets selling dozens of women and girls are frequented by jihadists who view slavery as Koranically derived and Islamically correct. Their view is supported in Dabiq magazine, where Islamic State lauds a medieval-style system of institutionalised female slavery under the caliphate: “We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses and enslave your women, by the permission of Allah, the Exalted.”

In the pamphlet, Questions and Answers on Taking Captives and Slaves, Islamic State sets out rules for its caliphate slave system. Translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute, it concludes that while Islamist scholars demur on some matters of slavery, there is firm consensus that “unbelieving” women and girls are legal chattel. The fatuous pejorative “unbeliever” is applied to people of all faiths except for Muslims, and Muslim men are given licence to rape prepubescent girls ­captured in war.

The institute also has exposed the depraved misogyny of foreign fighters in Islamic State. Online conversations between French and British jihadists reveal their amusement at the sexual enslavement of women, one writing: “They are idolaters, so it’s normal that they are slaves, in Mosul they are closed in a room and cry, and one of them committed suicide LOL.”

While most jihadist slavers are Syrian and Iraqi, there have been several reports citing the involvement of foreign fighters. Amnesty International reports that four women and girls were imprisoned by two Australians of Lebanese origin, one of whom shared a home with his wife and children.

Australian Mohamed Elomar reportedly shared his virulent ­hatred of women in a tweet offering a Yazidi “slave girl” at a price of $2500 with the execrable comment: “don’t worry brothers she won’t dissapoint (sic)”.

Despite the genocidal misogyny of Islamic State, between 200 and 300 women have left the West to join the group. An Australian woman, Zehra Duman, left last week to marry a jihadist after reportedly spouting hatred of non-Muslims on social media.

Islamic State women have formed a morality militia, al-Khansaa, to conduct border patrol checks and enforce sharia law. According to the International Business Times, the Syrian branch comprises 50 women, many of whom are wives of immigrant ­jihadists from Britain, France, Morocco and Tunisia.

The sharia militia is sadistic, committing violence against women who do not submit to sharia law. The militia also operates the brothels where enslaved women and girls are raped by ­jihadists. Researchers from the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation believe at least four English Muslims have joined the sharia brigade. Among them is Khadijah Dare, whom London’s The Telegraph reports celebrating the decapitation of James Foley and inciting violence on Twitter: “You Christians all need beheading with a nice blunt knife and stuck on the railings at Raqqa … Come here I’ll do it for you!”

Despite widespread condemnation of Islamic State violence the fact is its constitutional ­ideology and beliefs, including the validity of theocratic sharia law, are shared by Islamist regimes and some Western-based organisations. On its website, the Islamic Association of Australia provides advice on zakah, a mandatory form of sharia taxation whose proceeds are purportedly given to charity. The advice illustrates the considerable conflict between even apparently beneficent principles of sharia and the foundational values of modern Western society in polytheism, freedom of belief and human equality.

The IAA advises that charity must be paid only to Muslims, excluding “non-religious sects or institutions”. Its advice on slaves is of even greater concern. The ­association stipulates that zakah can be used for “ransoming of slaves” and that all Muslims, ­including “free and slave”, must pay it.

A succession of bloody civil wars and revolutions across the Western world ensured the establishment of secular law and the prohibition of slavery. Why then would an organisation in the 21st-century West presume the ­existence of slavery, counselling the treatment of slaves in a sharia-derived practice?

The idea that secular liberal democracies should tolerate the return of theocratic governance and jurisprudence under sharia law is becoming manifest. In Britain, the Law Society established guidelines last year that effectively enshrined sharia as legal practice, introducing sharia-compliant wills that allowed bequests to Muslims only and denied women an equal share of inheritance.

Caroline Cox, a Tory peer appointed by Margaret Thatcher, is fighting to prevent the return of theocracy to Britain and said of the sharia-compliant wills: “This violates everything that we stand for. It would make the suffragettes turn in their graves.”

Despite the problematic nature of Islamism, demonstrated by its extreme manifestation in Islamic State, many Australian univer­sities have courses on sharia ­finance and law, while Muslim student associations across Western colleges frequently demand that critics of Islamism are ­censored.

And despite Islamic State’s genocidal misogyny, many people wonder why the feminist response has been so muted. Brandeis University recently withdrew its offer of an honorary degree to Islamist critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali after the Muslim Students Association joined with academics and the Council on American-Islamic Relations to petition against her. In its letter to the university president, CAIR denounced her as a “notorious Islamophobe”.

The University of Massachusetts censored a film critical of ­Islamist practices, Honour Diaries, after it received a complaint from CAIR calling it Islamophobic.

The result was the silencing of Muslim women who were trying to expose the harms of honour killings, ­female genital mutilation and forced marriage in Islamist contexts.

Islamic State is betting that once the caliphate has been cleansed of “unbelievers” and the blood has stopped running, when the dissenters have been silenced and the world has moved on, it will claim and win recognition as a legitimate state.

If the West continues to capitulate to Islamist ideology, allowing the erosion of the liberal democratic state and core freedoms to pacify theocrats, it will have little choice when the caliphate comes knocking on the UN door but to open it.

Jennifer Oriel is a political scientist and commentator.