PUNISHMENTS, VIOLENCE, AND POLICE STATE CONTROLS
Among the countless atrocities committed by ISIS since their inception, the issue of slavery and sexual violence against women and children may be the most grievous. The US State Department has claimed, in a statement by its Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues, that the “de-humanization of women and girls is central to ISIL’s campaign of terror.… A coalition that fights ISIL must also fight this particularly egregious form of brutality.”832
In order to fight the brutality of slavery and sexual violence against women and children, which are often intertwined, it is necessary to understand how it takes shape within the world dominated by ISIS.
The crest of the ISIS war crimes tide can be traced back to August 2014, when ISIS forces took control of the northern Iraqi Yazidi town of Sinjar, in Nineveh governorate. The territory was home to Iraq’s Yazidis, a rural semi-isolated community whose members practice a religion that ISIS has declared apostasy, and therefore subject to mass murder and enslavement.
As part of Operation “Asdullah Balawi,” ISIS combat forces that took parts of Northern Iraq turned their attention to capturing and ethnically cleansing the region. On August 3, 2014 ISIS forces blitzed the area, pushed the few Yazidi militiamen out of the town, and proceeded to conduct a pogrom that would make the Czars blush. Within a matter of days, mass murders of all captured Yazidi men would begin; as many as five thousand were summarily executed. Almost five hundred thousand Yazidis fled to Iraqi Kurdish areas or tried to escape across the Turkish border. Despairing Yazidi women and children struggled over mountains with ISIS in hot pursuit. After being denied passage by Turkey, they began to starve on the mountaintops. As US, Australian, and UK aircraft struck ISIS tanks, an allied airlift brought in food. American and Iraqi air force helicopters worked tirelessly to save as many as they could, and an Iraqi general would die in a crash after saving hundreds in his dozens of helicopter flights to get out as many as he could. While many Yazidis managed to escape to the mountains or to Kurdish territory, thousands of men, women, and children were captured and killed by ISIS. The UN estimated that some twenty-five hundred women—some still girls as young as twelve—had been taken by jihadists.833 The US State Department has quoted this number of captured women to be between 1500 and 4000.834 The number of total captives or murdered captives reported by the UN in 2016 is estimated to be as many as 3,500, which would include mainly women, children, and the elderly who could not move quickly enough to escape.835
Why Does ISIS Hate the Yazidis?
After Sinjar was retaken from ISIS in November 2015, it was apparent that countless women and children were seized, moved, and whose whereabouts remain unknown. Soon after liberation, Yazidi forces started to find mass graves of mainly elderly women and men, but the young women were abducted and made slaves in ISIS households. The Yazidis are not the only minority being brutalized and taken into slavery. For Christians, Alawites, Druze, Turkmen, Shia Shabaks, and Sunnah tribes, any woman can be pointed out, declared an infidel, and sold, though all were guaranteed protection by traditional Islamic jurisprudence.840 ISIS cares not a whit about that.
For the women who suffer this fate, sometimes the greater dishonor might be in the sexual violence than in slavery,841 since by virtue of their community, a woman’s privacy and virtue must be guarded and determines her standing in the community.842 This makes for yet another reason why violence against women and girls, including rape, may be under-reported.843
Shockingly, ISIS shows great pride in how they justify committing their crimes. They claim that raping a prepubescent virgin is a form of worship to God, with the same justification they use for beheading, suicide bombing, and slaughtering children. In the cultist view of ISIS, all human atrocities can be accounted for as love of God.
PEDOPHILIC RAPE
In addition to claiming rape and slaves as God’s rights to fighters on earth, child rape and group-sanctioned pedophilia are considered highly desired benefits of these rewards, despite all being forbidden in Islam. In contradiction to traditional Islam, and according to ISIS’s own written rulings, sex with children, particularly prepubescent girls, is allowed and encouraged: “It is permissible to have intercourse with the female slave who hasn’t reached puberty if she is fit for intercourse… However, if she is not fit for intercourse, he (the owner) can only enjoy her without intercourse.” In this respect, ISIS allows oral and anal rape.
Rape of captured women is likewise permissible so long as they too are considered slaves or unbelievers.
ISIS views sexual conquest and slavery as a right owed to fighters just as it did in the time of the Prophet Mohammed. However, the Prophet tempered the rash actions and behaviors of his followers and exercised respect towards religious minorities and the chastity of women. ISIS scoffs in the face of Islam and spits on the words of the Prophet while reveling in the murder, rape, and sodomy of children. Accepting and worshiping God with these defilements, they reject Islam completely.
SLAVE AND HUMAN TRAFFICKING SYSTEMS
Through their online language magazine, Dabiq, ISIS announced to the world how they delighted in having captured, enslaved, and marketed Yazidi women and children. Not only that, they find themselves justified in this by their cult interpretation of the Qur’an and Sharia Law.844 One such article, published in October 2014, is titled “The Revival of Slavery Before the Hour,”845, 846 and goes on to claim that the abandonment of traditions like slavery—and toward women in particular—had resulted in the spreading of sin, with men being tempted without this alternative to marriage.847 Needless to say, countless Muslim scholars over centuries have repudiated this very literal interpretation of the Qur’an.848
ISIS issues official price lists for females, from the ages of one to fifty. The ISIS purchase list report talks about the female slave’s market “decrease” and how this has affected “revenue and financing.” Top price goes to younger women, with the value being $172 dollars. 849 Also according to the price list, it is forbidden to purchase more than three slaves unless they are foreigners like Turks, Syrians, and Gulf Arabs.850
Their “Research and Fatwa Department” has also issued a pamphlet titled: “Questions and Answers on Taking Captives and Slaves.”851 These instructions can be very clear: “It is forbidden to have intercourse with a female captive if [the master] does not own her exclusively.” Or: “A man may not have intercourse with the female slave of his wife, because [the slave] is owned by someone else.” And: “He can’t sell her if she becomes the mother of a child…” and other such rules.852 These rules explicitly condone child rape.853
One of these many rules—which prohibit a man from having sex with a pregnant woman854—has grim implications for some captives. According to source quoted by CNN, some men bring along doctors to the slave markets to verify if the women are virgins and to provide abortions, if the slave buyer deems it necessary.855 Part of the reason for these official documents regarding slavery and violence against women is ISIS’s necessity to justify its actions to its own members is to cloak it within Islamic jurisprudence, and to squelch any questioning by jihadists.856 Another curious aspect of this bureaucracy is that ISIS created a legal mechanism to set slaves free. Freedmen receive Certificates of Emancipation signed by an actual judge of the Islamic State, and their previous owners are said to receive a heavenly reward for doing so.857 This occurs mainly when a slave converts to Islam.
ISIS has also established a sizeable internal infrastructure to accommodate the ownership, sale, and transportation of slaves in the form of sales “infrastructure,” “networks,” and a slave bus system. Like any major commercial enterprise looking to expand, ISIS has turned slavery into a commercial institution along the lines of the Nazis. All of these activities chillingly fit into the larger strategy of ISIS’s self-proclaimed caliphate.858
There are countless witnesses who have managed to escape ISIS after being submitted to slavery and sexual violence, and though each must be taken independently, the consistency of their testimonies throws light into the how the ISIS machine operates.859
In practice, this system of slavery, human trafficking, and the sanctioned sex trade works roughly like this: Younger women and girls who are captured are separated from their families, often according to whether or not they are married or have children.860 Though some of the victims are children themselves, they are the most desired. The women are detained in several locations for short periods due to fear of detection; lines of chained women could indicate official ISIS buildings, which may then be targeted for air strikes.861 The slaves travel in trucks and buses to slave warehouses in the cities of northern Iraq near the border with Syria and in eastern Syria. They stay in schools, prisons, military bases, government offices or, as they are sold, private homes. These places are usually crowded and disgusting affairs, but there seem to have been prior preparations for receiving them. In many cases, they are starved and water is withheld to weaken them and limit their chances for escape.
The ISIS slave network is a well-oiled machine where leaders and their fighters can have their pick of the women to buy. The remaining women are bid on and bought by others or given as gifts for fighters in combat actions who have distinguished themselves.862 The NGO “Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently” believes that members of ISIS initially took only virgins as sex slaves, but the scope of the program and number of estimated captives belies that.863
Generally women and girls are sold in public slave markets. Those who are not sold as virgins can expect to be raped multiple times and later be passed off to other fighters.864 The girls and women can be placed on the block and auctioned off or they are photographed with identification number and sold online and at auction houses.
This market-like approach to slavery has given rise to a counter-industry, that of smugglers, who attempt to free these women and children—at a price, of course. The New York Times related the case of a family who paid $15,000 to have their daughter back.865 There is even a highly controversial Canadian organization, Liberation of Christian and Yazidi Children of Iraq (CYCI) that works to fund the rescue of women in captivity. They claim to have done so for some 130 women, paying at most $3,000 a head. Their purpose and results have been questioned, as it can be seen as not only funding terrorism, but also fomenting sex trade.866
To some fighters, the prospect of a Muslim wife is high on their expectations for reward of service. To this end they employ the un-Islamic practice of forced marriage. There are many such accounts, and in some reports these “weddings” are even celebrated with parties, the women dressed as brides and forced to fake happiness for pictures. The price for those who refuse to take part can be extreme: in August 2015 Iraqi news agencies reported that ISIS executed nineteen women for refusing to have sex with their jihadist “husbands” after forced marriage.867
As for the women who have managed to escape or be freed—and whose testimonies help reveal the ISIS system—Human Rights Watch claims that there have been attempted and successful suicides among them, during and after their captivities.868, 869 They are in need of urgent medical and psychosocial care to deal with eventual pregnancies and children born as result of rape, stigma, and reintegration.870
Some have received immediate treatment while others had to wait weeks. Even those who received treatment were often tested without being told what for, or informed of the results. This is all complicated by the fact that many of them can be reluctant to receive support due to their upbringing or traumatic experiences, and that the treatment they do receive may not be sufficient without specially trained professionals or the necessary equipment.
ISIS PROSTITUTION
ISIS declared that as a component of its sexual Jihad that its fighters have the religious right to “temporary marriages.” Called Muta’ah marriage, it is a form of sexual transaction in which one can “marry” a woman after paying her or her male guardian a “dowry”. Then the “marriage” is consummated” by having have sex with her for an hour. Once the allotted time is finished the man “divorces” her by stating it three times according to Islamic law. Surprisingly this is a common practice in Shi’ite Islam but which ISIS has adopted as just and acceptable.
ISIS SOCIAL PUNISHMENTS (HUDUD)
Hudud is a word used in Islamic law to describe the acceptable practice of issuing punishments for crimes that violate the social order. The word Hudud is plural of the Arabic word had, which means “limitations” or “restriction.” The reason that the word is drawn from the word “limitations” is less to define the border of transgressions than to describe the minimal requirements for the application of punishments. Islamic jurisprudence is meant to work within the belief that God is the ultimate accountant of transgressions and that man-made laws simply control the basic behaviors but do not pardon sins. That is God’s role.
Except in Saudi Arabia, it is rarely applied, or rarely applied strictly. The crimes with a well-defined punishment under Saudi religious law are: (a) theft—amputation of a hand; (b) having illicit sex—one hundred lashes; (c) accusing someone of having illicit sex with insufficient proof—eighty lashes; (d) drinking alcohol—eighty lashes; (e) apostasy—exile or death; and (f) banditry—death.871
In the modern day, Sharia law coexists alongside modern laws, as most Middle East nations have a basis in British or French colonial law.
The form of Hudud ISIS practices could be best described as “Hudud Ultra.” They have arranged for all punishments to be carried out in the precise manner of seventh-century Islam. In fact ISIS has codified an excessive form of Hudud in order to eliminate any tolerance or compromise that was adopted since the Qur’an was written. That makes the ISIS variation far more inflexible than even the most the stifling extremes of the Qur’anic- and Hadith-based Hudud found in Saudi Arabia.872,873
Each ISIS organization has a Sharia law advisory committee and a judiciary. The Sharia court for each level from the highest command to the street level brings the transgressor before them, listens to the case, and doles out the punishment. Usually the prisoners are held for some time in a Hisbah jail, as there is often a long waiting list for punishments.874
When it comes to the execution of people under their variation of Hudud, ISIS’s leaders have a broad and vivid imagination. They have created a wide variety of diabolical methods even more vicious than those of the medieval period. Like gifted “artists” who do not simply steal, but who “steal with genius,”876 they are willing to take a normalized mode of execution such as the Saudi capital punishment of beheading877 and allow all of their men to apply it to those they see fit.
All actions in ISIS are religious and prophetic in nature and in which the punishment has to fit the Hudud. If there is a method to their madness it is the method described in the divine comedy of Dante Alighieri’s Inferno. They take the phrase “eye for an eye” quite literally. If you have burned someone (or bombed them from the sky), you will be burned alive; if you have blown up a person with an RPG rocket, you will be killed with an RPG.878 However, truly clever and inspired executions are carried out for the ISIS media machine, such as lacing explosive detonating cord around the neck of ten victims to have all of their heads fly off in a row. Islamic law allows precisely none of these punishments, and they are so vile and contemptuous to the religion as to be not only un-Islamic, but anti-Islamic:
Gun execution: Shooting a victim or victims in the back of the head.879
Beheading one or more victims:880 Beheading can be done by the traditional Kalashnikov bayonet or by the ceremonial Islamic swords (Saif) carried by the religious police.
Decapitation through explosive detonation cord: ISIS rigs explosive detonation cord around the necks of their victims and decapitates them in a ring of fire.881
Death by dragging: Victim is chained to a vehicle and dragged at high speed until he dismembers.
Death by drowning: in one instance a steel cage containing five victims was submerged into a swimming pool. Cameramen filmed the victims when they were above the water as well as with underwater cameras when they were below it, until all five of them drowned one by one. The men’s mouths spewed with white foam when the cage was lifted from the water.882
Immolation: Victims are placed in cages or trenches filled with flammable liquids and then set aflame.883
Immolation (human torch variation): ISIS hangs victims face down by their feet with chains so they looked like human “swings.” They then light lines of a flammable substance on the ground so that the flames moved slowly toward them. When the fire reached the squirming victims they ignited and began to burn. Quickly engulfed by flame, they become human torches. In one instance, four men were burned alive, they were shown a video of an ISIS fighter who had been fried over an open pit by Shia militia in Iraq. The message in the video was simple: any man whose allies kill an ISIS member by fire will die by fire as well.884
Explosive execution: ISIS executes individuals and groups using explosive detonations of various fashions. The simplest method is to sit victims over explosive charges or and mines and set them off using a remote detonator. This has been seen in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Other variants have included rigging mortar shells looped over the victim’s necks so that they hang over the chest or placing victims in a vehicle or small boat filled with explosives and detonating them as has been seen in Yemen. In Syria ISIS has executed groups of victims by placing them in a vehicle and shooting it with RPG-7 rocket launchers until it burns.
Death by burial: this was done to Syrian children by ISIS religious police for breaking the fast during Ramadan, according to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.885
Death by “mashing” or “mutilation” of a man or woman’s body: one “crushes” either part of it or all of it, either lightly, severely, or almost entirely via stoning, falling from a roof, or being run over and flattened.
Stoning to death a man or woman who is an adulterer: i.e., bruising his or her skin, “mashing” his or her flesh, and even breaking a few bones; comparatively, this is a far milder way of “crushing” a man or woman’s body.886 The first publicized instance of an ISIS execution by in general, put methods in alphabetical order stoning was that of a married woman who allegedly committed adultery in the Syrian city of Hama. In this instance ISIS officials asked the woman’s father if he was willing to forgive his daughter. For whatever reason, he refused. As a further humiliation for her, he joined five ISIS “officials” and pummeled his daughter with fist-sized stones. Her body was laid out in a shallow hole so that she could not flee, and that each blow would strike home. The participants threw solid stones at her from short range and with great force until she died.887
Death by falling: Gay men are to be thrown from a high roof after being dangled from the edge, then dropped: shattering his body, and fracturing and breaking many of his bones via the fall; based on the height of the roof, this may amount to “crushing” a man’s body significantly.888
Stoning to death a gay man who has survived after falling from a high roof: thereby shattering his body, and breaking many of his bones via the fall, and finally stoning his body to finish him off; comparatively, this amounts to “crushing” the human body far more than one could by merely stoning it.889 890
Death by squashing: “Traitors” or an enemy fighter are run over and flattened by a tank. In one video the victim “confessed” on screen to having run over [four] ISIL fighters with a tank, though he was a Syrian infantryman.891
CRUCIFIXION
ISIS tends to lay out its victims, ‘dead bodies in an aspect of crucifixion, to display the result of crossing the religious establishment. Usually a sign with the description of the transgression is placed over the body. Live crucifixions have yet to be recorded but no doubt have occurred. According to a report by the UN Committee for the Rights of the Child, there were “several cases of mass executions of boys [by ISIS], as well as reports of… crucifixions of children and burying children alive.” Two children were reportedly “crucified” by ISIS for not having fasted during Ramadan in Mayadin in the province of Deir Ez-zor. “The two boys, who are assumed to have been younger than eighteen, were killed and then shown to the citizens of the town in a public display, each with a sign around his neck that revealed his ‘crime’” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. This is a perfect example of apostasy and the anti-Islamic nature of ISIS. It is well known that people traveling over 25 km, pregnant women, and children under the age of ten are allowed to eat and drink water during the daylight fasting hours of Ramadan.
EXECUTION OF HOMOSEXUALS
The execution of gays is a public spectacle for a more complete humiliation in front of one’s friends, neighbors, and family members. Scores of people will often attend the event and, apparently, often cheer for the death of the “sodomite.”892 The method of choice for a gay man appears to be death by falling from on high, with an occasional variation. For instance, the victim will be dangled over the edge of a roof and then dropped to his death, or pushed over the edge of a roof while seated in a chair. The mode of execution is a ham-handed symbolization for the theological concept of a “fallen” man.
WHIPPINGS AND BEATINGS
Whippings are part of the new ISIS version of Hudud. Under the ISIS code of Hudud, the drinker and the slanderer receive eighty lashes as his or her punishment, while the unmarried “adulterer” receives one hundred lashes and exile as his or her sentence.893 Whipping is carried out using a bamboo or solid wood Mahsassil, or a traditional camel crop of approximately one meter. The crop gathers enough momentum to raise welts on the body and break them open when enough strikes are administered. The crops bloody the victim and in most instances leave permanent scars on the back.
Beatings by ISIS are very similar to being “jumped in” to an El Salvadorian drug gang: a squad of men descend on the victim and punch, kick, stomp, or smash the rifle butt or barrel tip of a Kalashnikov until they are exhausted. In the ISIS edition, the victim is not allowed to protect himself or punch back.894