South Asia Muslims condemn ISIS's admission of sexual enslavement

South Asia Muslims condemn ISIS's admission of sexual enslavement

Outraged Muslims ignore ISIS threats and denounce the sale and rape of Yazidi women and girls by the jihadist group.

By Khabar South Asia

October 18, 2014
 
 
Muslims across South Asia joined the global condemnation of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria ( ISIS ) after it tried to justify its sexual enslavement of captured Yazidi women and girls.

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  Displaced Yazidi women queue for food at Bajid Kandala camp in Kurdistan on August 13th. Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) jihadists admitted to using some captured Yazidi women and girls as concubines while others were sold as slaves and raped. [Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP] 
  

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An October 12th article in the ISIS propaganda magazine Dabiq entitled "The revival of slavery before the hour" argues that by enslaving people who hold "deviant" religious beliefs, ISIS has restored an aspect of Islamic sharia law to its original meaning.
The extremist group launched a four-month assault on the Yazidis in northern Iraq, in which it executed hundreds and forced thousands to flee.
According to the Dabiq article, captured Yazidi women and children were divided among ISIS fighters who participated in the Sinjar offensive in Kurdistan territory.
But renowned Islamic scholar Maulana Wahiduddin Khan said the Qur'an and the Hadith are firmly against what ISIS does with its captives.
"In the 7th century, it was a common practice among nations to enslave people who were held as prisoners at the battlefield when the other party was not ready for repatriation," the Centre for Peace and Spirituality founder told Khabar South Asia.
"This practice was totally abandoned later and now it has no relevance at all."

South Asian clerics, citizens denounce ISIS

"One should remember that enslaving the families of the kuffar (apostates) and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of the sharia ," the Dabiq article read, according to Zee News.
Islamic history scholar and Dhaka University professor Shafik Ahmed dismissed such beliefs as "certainly against the spirit of Islam".
"Those who are saying that Islam permits enslavement of apostates and their wives as concubines are simply distorting the teachings of Islam," Ahmed told Khabar. "In those days, enslaving the vanquished in the battlefield was a normal thing.
"But in the modern world this is simply not tenable, and since Islam is a modern religion, there’s no room for slavery in the present context."
In Lucknow, Eidgah Imam Maulana Khalid Rasheed Farangi Mahli declared ISIS's treatment of female captives "un-Islamic" and said only experts have the ability to correctly interpret the Qur'an.
"Hurting old people, children , women and the weak is not permitted," Mahli told Khabar. "They should not forget that Islam calls for severe punishment for such rape and adultery."
Muhammad Ibrahim, a small goods vendor near Dhaka's Baitul Mukarram Mosque, said people are "indulging in berating Islam any way they can".
"It is the foremost duty of true believers to be vocal against those people who are out to destroy our religion, especially those who are fighting in the name of protecting Islam from the infidels," Ibrahim said.
Escaped Yazidi women share harrowing stories
Human Rights Watch (HRW) in an October 12th report chronicled tales of abducted Yazidi women sold and subjected to sexual assault by ISIS fighters, saying they "may amount to crimes against humanity".
One 15-year-old girl who escaped September 7th told HRW of the Palestinian fighter who boasted of paying $1,000 for her. He took her to his flat in the group's main hub of Raqa, Syria and sexually assaulted her.
All Ceylon Jamiyyathul Ulama (ACJU) Assistant General Secretary M.S.M. Thassim condemned ISIS's actions and said ACJU would never allow the group to build a base in Sri Lanka.
"This is not Islam. They cannot justify it by Islam," Thassim told Khabar. "Our religion promotes and respects people's liberty and freedom. Enslavement, in any form, is unacceptable."
Kandy school teacher Mohamed Irfaan said ISIS shines Islam in a bad light.
"Their activities have tarnished the image of the religion. We in Sri Lanka never support them," he said. "Their activities are in fact a hindrance to communal harmony in a multi-ethnic society such as Sri Lanka."
Akhtar Ali in Lucknow, Pradeep Seneviratne in Colombo, Shahriar Sharif in Dhaka and AFP contributed to this report.

'Treated like cattle': Yazidi women sold, raped, enslaved by ISIS

By Ivan Watson, CNN
November 7, 2014 -- Updated 1054 GMT (1854 HKT)


Erbil, Iraq (CNN) -- Jana was a 19-year-old in her final year of high school, with dreams of becoming a doctor. Then, ISIS came to her village last August, and her world collapsed.
She described to me in chilling detail, how the jihadis first demanded that members of her Yazidi religious minority convert to Islam. Then they stripped villagers of their jewelry, money and cellphones. They separated the men from the women.
A United Nations report explained what happened next. ISIS "gathered all the males older than 10 years of age at the local school, took them outside the village by pick-up trucks, and shot them."
Among those believed dead were Jana's father and eldest brother.

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A different fate lay in store for the women.
Jana described how girls like herself were separated from older women, then bussed to the city of Mosul.
There they were put in a big three-story house with hundreds of other young women. The men of ISIS came periodically, and chose up to three and four girls at a time to take home with them.
"These women have been treated like cattle," explained Nazand Begikhani, an adviser to the Kurdistan Regional Government on gender issues.
"They have been subjected to physical and sexual violence, including systematic rape and sex slavery. They've been exposed in markets in Mosul and in Raqqa, Syria, carrying price tags."
Perhaps more importantly, Begikhani is also a researcher at the UK-based University of Bristol's Gender and Violence Research Center. According to the field research and testimonials of Begikhani's team, ISIS kidnapped more than 2,500 Yazidi women.
Meanwhile Nareen Shammo, a Yazidi activist based in Iraqi Kurdistan has compiled the names of at least 4,601 Yazidi women currently missing.
In the first month after the mass abductions, Shammo says she was receiving calls and messages from up to 70 different hostages a day. Now, she can't reach a single hostage.
After more than a decade reporting on conflict in the Middle East, I was still ill-prepared to hear about the scale of this kidnapping and modern day enslavement.
Suddenly, the words of a 19-year-old ISIS imprisoned fighter whom I interviewed last weekend in a Kurdish prison in northern Syria made sense.
The young man, horribly disfigured from bullet wounds to his abdomen and arm received during his year of fighting on the frontlines, described how ISIS attracted fresh recruits with the offer of cash and "wives."
ISIS actually justified its enslavement of Yazidis in its own online magazine.
"One should remember that enslaving the families of the kuffar -- the infidels -- and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of the Shariah, or Islamic law," the group announced in the ISIS publication "Dabiq."
The Kurdish authorities say they have rescued around 100 Yazidi women, in part through the payment of ransoms to Arab tribesmen who acted as intermediaries.
Thousands of women remain hostage. And with ISIS successfully defending its territory from a loose coalition of Iraqi military, Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga, Syrian Kurdish militants and US-led airstrikes, it doesn't look like a white knight will charge in to rescue these poor women any time soon.
Begikhani said all of the 100 Yazidi women rescued from ISIS appeared to have been systematically raped, likely by more than one man.
The 19-year-old girl I spoke with here in Iraqi Kurdistan was deeply traumatized, and incapable of showing any joy or humor. Her mother and two brothers are still being held hostage by ISIS.
Asked what she would say if she met the 70-year-old Arab man who took her home and ordered her to convert to Islam at gunpoint, she says: "I wouldn't want to tell him anything. I just want to kill him."
Jana says she has given up her dream of becoming a doctor.
READ: Kurdish women a force to be reckoned with for ISIS
CNN's Gul Tuysuz contributed to this report.

• Young Yazidi woman says ISIS jihadis kidnapped her and other women, and raped them

  
  

• Yazidi women treated like cattle, says one adviser to Kurdistan government on gender

  
  

• ISIS has kidnapped more than 2,500 Yazidi women, according to research by his team

  
  

• ISIS actually justified its enslavement of Yazidis in its own online magazine